Structure and manage emails in SharePoint with IESS integration
Email is de-facto the standard tool where information, and documents get generated and transferred. While originating as an email, these information and documents need to be subjected to formal document and records management. SharePoint is the preferred enterprise document and collaboration management solution that enterprises have invested in. Our app unifies these different worlds with a single powerful solution. Organizations can leverage our SharePoint based email sorting solution to manage and organize the information and document from email. Our app provides automatic monitoring of designated mailboxes to extract, filter information, attachment categorization, library management and more based on the defined rules and taxonomy. It supports classifications of emails and preserves critical email in the SharePoint based on the defined filters such as “Sent,” “Received,” “Subject,” “Attachments” etc. With the help of this app, one can eliminate the manual efforts in email categorization, filtering and storing in SharePoint. For example, an HR executive can use this app for filtering, sorting and storing the resume received through email. This app, based on the contextual rules like skill matching, desired profile and other taxonomy, can store and process the resume in SharePoint without much manual effort. Consider another scenario, where an executive who receives lots of information, attachments, reports, tasks etc. everyday. He needs to track, manage and sort the information to be used further. With the help of this app, he can set the categorization and sorting rules, implement different classification schemes and then app automatically sort and store all these important information in the relevant SharePoint library with relevant metadata. This metadata can further be used in other SharePoint based business functionality like report/dashboard creation, workflow triggering, assigning task to team members and so on. We believe this app can make your everyday tasks much easier and effective. To know more, contact us at connect@advaiya.com. Can’t wait to see what you think of it, how you use it and how it helps you get work done better.
Assess SharePoint 2007 (or MOSS) for Migration – Part II
In part one of this article we talked about why organizations are looking to move from SharePoint Server 2007 to SharePoint Online, key aspects to consider while designing a migration strategy, importance of assessing customer’s existing environment, and the various possible phases of migration. Read part one – Assess SharePoint 2007 (or MOSS) for Migration – Part I In this part let us look at the approach to prepare and segment the questions for creating a profile of customer’s existing SharePoint 2007 environment, and how the required data can be collected from customer with minimum iterations. Profiling Questions Profiling questions helps you to better analyze the client’s existing SharePoint environment. Prepare questions to carefully assess all the business and technical aspects. Determine what type of questions should be considered to assess the client’s environment and collect the required details. Filter sufficient profiling questions and categorize them in meaningful sections. This will allow you to quickly collect relevant data in order to plan the perfect migration path. One of the ways you can categorize profiling questions could be into following sections- General info, Existing SharePoint 2007 Server Infrastructure, SharePoint 2007 Customizations and integrations, Expectations during migration phase etc. I would recommend to ensure that the questions are not too technical. Provide sufficient hints for expected responses like the OS names, Database name etc. This will help to collect the correct inputs from a client. In case of profiling the infrastructure or a farm environment, you can consider using an analyzer tool (like SharePoint BPA) to collect relevant data which can be used to create your report. While doing profiling, one of the best practices is to avoid asking redundant questions to the customer. This ensures getting quality inputs from client with minimum iteration. The categories could be like the following: General Information In this category ask general questions around the current SharePoint editions like SharePoint Standard or Enterprise, number of users, SharePoint test environment etc. Expectations during migration phase Include questions which help us to identify user expectations during migration phase. They could be like–‘During the migration process do you want to access your content?’, or ‘How much downtime is to be afforded during migration?’, or ‘What about the current taxonomy and URLs? Do you want to use as it is or redefine them?’ Analyze SharePoint 2007 Server Infrastructure In order to analyze and understand the existing SharePoint 2007 Server Infrastructure, we need to collect brief details like whether SharePoint is installed on single server or multiple server farms, virtualization of SharePoint, installed service packs and cumulative updates, Windows Server Infrastructure (AD, federation etc.), the number of web servers, database servers, load balancer, SQL Server version -32bit or 64 bit etc. Analyze SharePoint 2007 Information Architecture To analyze SharePoint 2007 information architecture we need to collect existing SharePoint sites, site collections and web application, size of the SharePoint content databases, existing Site navigation, Sub Site Structure, or Site Map, or search functionality etc. Analyze SharePoint 2007 Customizations, need following details Customization is a very critical part as the current customization is may not be supported on target system due to the fact that the feature is deprecated or whatever the reason affecting it. So to understand the existing SharePoint 2007 customizations, you should include questions around standard SharePoint customizations; like is there any customization using SP designer or any custom code for any specific feature, SharePoint personalization from branding aspects, custom workflows etc. Analyze SharePoint 2007 Integration Another critical point in migration path is SharePoint integration with LOB applications. Include questions around common and specific integrations. For common integrations we can consider integrations with messaging server, communication server, MS-Office, Outlook etc. and for specific integrations like SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) etc. Few examples are: Is your SharePoint environment integrated with Email or any corporate Instant Messaging (IM) and conferencing severs? If yes, please provide the details like version, editions etc.? What kind of Outlook features are integrated with the SharePoint environment – e.g. Calendar, Task Lists, Contact Lists, and Alerts etc.? Analyze SharePoint 2007 Backup and Restore Process Try to include questions like what are their current backup methodologies – at Farm Level or Site Collection, what’s the backup frequency- daily/weekly/once in a month? Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of the SharePoint Environment etc. A smooth migration may be attained by keeping the above details in consideration along with other additional inputs incorporated as and when required depending upon the needs. Our Cloud adoption services team has prepared a ready-to-use profiling questionnaire for you, which can come handy while profiling the customer’s environment. To request the questionnaire, click this .
Assess SharePoint 2007 (or MOSS) for Migration – Part I
As part of the Office 365 suite, SharePoint Online is available as Software-as-Service (SaaS) and helps organizations to reduce their Capital Expenditure (CAPEX) and their Operational Expenditure (OPEX) costs related to servers, storage, and management overhead. To reap these cost benefits organizations are looking to move to SharePoint Online. However, moving to any cloud service required laying down successful migration path and getting proper guidance. In order to migrate their Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 to an improved version – SharePoint Online (Office 365), it is essential to consider all the technical aspects and business drivers while designing and implementing their migration strategy. In this regard, a cloud specialist or cloud consulting company should clearly understand their client’s existing environment by doing an in-depth assessment of the same. This helps long way in order to suggest a complete and actionable migration path to the client. As assessment is the first critical step in the laying the migration path for cloud, let me share experience from one of the projects (SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint Online migration) where our Cloud adoption services team did complete profiling of the client’s environment with a framework based approach, and made recommendations to make their environment migration ready. Our approach for this migration from SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint Online included the a set of steps/phases that helped us to understand the actual SharePoint needs of a client and the complexity within their environment: High level migration phases for migrating from SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint Online 1. Analysis and Planning: The main goal is to technically analyze the source, target systems, identify the customization level, sites and sub-parts which are to be migrated. A complete planning for migration activities has to be developed. For example which content areas can be migrated through automated process and if not then what should be the best manual method. 2. Define Migration approach: Define the strategy for validation and testing of migration scenarios. Perform test migration and finalize migration strategy for production environment. With pilot testing, analyze the issues and the solution applied for the test migration, and also capture the time consumed for the same. 3. Customization Scope: In this phase all the customization work is considered including taxonomy changes, new feature implementation, changes in existing structure and hierarchy. 4. Validation: Test and verify the migrated content, structure, and their mappings as per the targeted content. This also includes fixing of any issue regarding content, webpage links, integration point, structure, content mapping etc. 5. Post Migration Steps: After successful migration, there is some cleanup work, deploy custom code if required. Site navigation and verification of migration content needs to be addressed in this phase. In the next part of this article, we will explore a couple of points about how to analyze the existing customer environment, and how the required data can be collected from customer with minimum iterations. Stay tuned…