Links for today:
EndUserSharePoint.com has a lightweight and easy charting implementation for SharePoint. It has only one fault: it transfers data to a Google API before rendering the graph. Couple this with the wide-ranging – and often justified – information security paranoia within corporations and you’re opening a whole new can of worms. But, I have to admit, it is a really cool idea and I think that many SharePoint users stuck without Exel Services or behind restricted installations are grinding their teeth now.
Just stumbled upon this handy list of Intranet Case Studies which sports quite a few big names. Although some are too vague in their presentation to really get an understanding of the described Intranet, there is still a lot of useful information, not to mention inspiration, that can be found there.
Ever wondered how to move your lists or libraries across various SharePoint sites or installations? Well, I often have, and therefore found this compilation of SharePoint List Migration Approaches very helpful. Although, I might add, none of these approaches should be undertaken by an inexperienced user.
Again, I have to come back to what I have written about the ROI of Enterprise 2.0 applications. Here and here I phrased an idea of using sociological tool sets to grasp the outcomes and possible benefits of using blogs, wikis, social software, and other so-called Web 2.0 apps in organizations. Granted, the main organizational form in Germany is very rigid and hierarchical, and might pose quite an obstacle to overcome in this regard, so I really dig this outline of a quality metric for Enterprise 2.0 that was posted on the blog of Ethan Yarbrough. It’s more a rough sketch and by no means a detailed strategy yet, but it neatly incorporates a mix of quantitative and qualitative measures, which can yield, as I have said before, reliable and valid results.
Normally I’m not the guy that uses a task management scheme (which, I have the feeling, sometimes only exist to fill its creator’s pockets) or similar procedures. A good old Excel sheet, or nowadays a task-centric web app, always provided all the task management I needed. Despite all that i have to admit that Tracks (local installer here) looks quite promising. Especially for freelancers, where the line between private and professional tasks is often a blurry one.
Some terms are too often used with only a rough and blurry definition of what they might contain and in which context they can be applied. I am as guilty of this as is every information worker. So, to make sense of terms like Knowledge Management, Internal Communications and eCollaboration, they have to be defined first. Regarding Information Architecture and User Experience, this article tries to incorporate these topics in a unifying concept. It is thoughtful, written with insight, and only the first in an upcoming series, so you are hereby ordered to read it – not only because it accomplishes the feat of simultaneously coining and explaining a new term along the way: the Enterprise-Wide Information System.
How to install and configure WordPress when you are stuck with one of the worst hosters in the world, like some friends of mine were:
This is obviously not a very good way to spend some of your precious hours. And i haven’t even mentioned the circumstances of working with more than one domain in the same Strato account yet. I am just so glad to have marksimon.de hosted on a reliable hosting provider that made the setting up of this site a breeze.
As i mentioned here before, i think that a sociological perspective might be able to shed light on the much-debated Enterprise 2.0 & ROI-topic. Well, so how could a starting point for this approach look? This list of social software usage offers some promising hints. Granted, these examples are all formulated in a way that measuring hard figures might seem nearly impossible at first, but you have to keep in mind that social interaction between employees can also yield a measurable revenue – even if it is only one employee posing a question.
Definitely a tool to keep an eye on: ThoughtFarmer. In contrast to SharePoint, this seems like a really easy-to-use and intuitive portal and collaboration suite. And on a related note, this must be one of the neatest intranet rollouts i have ever seen.