| | | Seamless Teamwork: Using Microsoft SharePoint Technologies to Collaborate, Innovate, and Drive Business in New Ways, by Michael Sampson The following is an excerpt from Michael's Introduction: My day job is running an industry analyst firm. Industry analysts look at what is happening with vendors and products at the level of the industry as a whole, instead of being worried about the messiness of individual situations. Analysts look for trends. One of the trends I have been watching is the emergence of Microsoft SharePoint as a major force in multiple industries. The collaboration strategy of Microsoft in the late 1990s was centered on Microsoft Exchange Server, but with the dawn of a new millennium, Microsoft started to position SharePoint to take a far greater role. As the years have passed and the versions of SharePoint have ticked over, SharePoint has become increasingly central to the collaboration strategy of Microsoft, and indeed to many conversations about collaboration in organizations today. The final frontier is for SharePoint to take a central role in the work of individuals and teams in day-to-day organizational life. This book outlines a way to make that happen. The focal question is this: How can a team make the best use of SharePoint for team collaboration? Or saying that in a slightly different way, how can a team use all of the capabilities in SharePoint to work effectively with others they can't be with, to enhance team collaboration, and to drive business forward? Seamless Teamwork is not written for my normal clients—the CIOs and IT decision makers in organizations. It is written for the business managers, team leaders, and end users in organizations who have been told by IT to use SharePoint. This book is about a revolution in the way that people work together in business teams. Seamless Teamwork explores a better way for work teams to communicate, collaborate, and coordinate their activities through SharePoint, a recent addition to the Microsoft product line. This use of SharePoint is instead of Outlook in certain situations and in addition to Outlook in others. Actually, it's in addition to a number of other products in the Microsoft product line—products such as OneNote, SharedView, Groove, Windows Live Messenger, and more. Seamless Teamwork is organized around the idea of someone getting a new project to lead at their place of work, something that everyone reading this book should be able to relate to or aspire to. So, read this book, bring its principles and ideas to life in your projects with SharePoint, and learn how to get the best out of what has been made available from Microsoft, and in the process reach the business, professional, and personal goals that you embrace. Learn more about Seamless Teamwork: Using Microsoft SharePoint Technologies to Collaborate, Innovate, and Drive Business in New Ways, by Michael Sampson. |
Editors' Picks
For Developers
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Here's an excerpt from Dino's Introduction, in which he describes his motivations for writing the book and shares his thoughts about AJAX's future:
This book is the Web counterpart to another recently released book I co-authored with Andrea Saltarello: Microsoft .NET: Architecting Applications for the Enterprise (Microsoft Press, 2008). I wrote it, in part, in response to the many architectural questions—both small questions and big ones—that I was asked repeatedly while teaching ASP.NET, AJAX, and Silverlight classes.
Everybody in the industry is committed to AJAX. Everybody understands the impact of it. Everybody recognizes the enormous power that can be derived from its employment in real-world solutions.
Very few, though, know exactly how to make it happen. There are so many variations to AJAX and so many implementations that even after you have found one that suits your needs, you are left wondering whether that is the best possible option.
The fact is that AJAX triggered a chain reaction in the world of the Web. AJAX represents a change of paradigm for Web applications. And, as the history of science proves, a paradigm shift has always had a deep impact, especially in scenarios that were previously stable and consolidated.
I estimate that it will take about five years to absorb the word AJAX (and all of its background) into the new definition of the Web. And the clock started ticking about four years ago. The time at which we say "the Web" without feeling the need to specify whether it contains AJAX or not ... well, that time is getting closer and closer. But it is not that time yet.
Tools and programming paradigms for AJAX, which were very blurry just a few years ago, are getting sharper every day. Whether we are talking about JavaScript libraries or suites of server controls, I feel that pragmatic architectures can be identified. You find them thoroughly discussed in Chapter 3, "AJAX Architectures."
Architecting a Web application today is mostly about deciding whether to prefer the richness of the solution over the reach of the solution. Silverlight and ASP.NET AJAX are the two platforms to choose from as long as you remain in the Microsoft ecosystem. But the rich vs. reach dilemma is a general one and transcends platforms and vendors. A neat answer to that dilemma puts you on the right track to developing your next-generation Web solution.
I believe that this book is ideal reading for any professionals involved with the ASP.NET platform who are willing or needing to find a solution that delivers a modern and rich user experience.
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