When I told people I was writing a blog about SharePoint, I got a lot of interesting responses. As the title of this document might suggest, most responses were firmly in the negative. Here are some examples:

• “Better you than me.”
• “SharePoint? Is it still 2004???”
• “SharePoint sucks – Dropbox is so much better!”

You get the idea.

As an administrator, you want your users to use only the tools you give them.

While this sounds heavy-handed, this policy can be the only thing standing between you and an expensive data breach. One way to enforce this policy is through the use of a modern intranet.

 

In today’s post, we’re going to look at some of the best preparatory practices for migrating to SharePoint 2016 to help ensure your move to the latest version of the platform is a success.

 

As most of the SharePoint world may have heard by now; SharePoint 2016 is available as of May 4th, 2016 for purchase commercially; via MSDN; and through software assurance and volume licensing agreements you may have established with Microsoft. As tends to be the cycle over the past decade, this means many of us will be scrambling to understand what SharePoint 2016 offers; and to begin the upgrade "pitch" to your stakeholders to upgrade from your current version of SharePoint to the latest/greatest iteration of the platform.

End the sales document “treasure hunts”, use SharePoint and CRM together

One of the many challenges sales people have managing sales cycles with their prospective customers is the seemingly never ending parade of documents to close a deal.

Quotes, specifications, purchase orders, RFPs, RFQs, NDAs, SOWs, and many others that can become overwhelming to manage, let alone collaborate with anyone else. Most of us have probably seen cobbled together solutions like network share drives, public email folders, or out of sheer desperation, personal folders on computers that are shared with absolutely no one. These solutions become dumping grounds for documents, and users typically abandon these tools out of frustration due to the lack of organization and poor search capability.

Are you a cowboy riding an ostrich?

If your collection of software applications running your business looks like The Island of Misfit Toys, then it’s worth considering some new alternatives.

CRM & SharePoint Integration 

If you are familiar with the very powerful interface which allows a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) user to attach seamlessly documents to a given entity (account, contact, opportunity, etc.) using the CRM/SharePoint integration, you may also be aware of a potentially dangerous gap in the security model.


I have found that the out-of-box integration is well designed, intuitive, and easy to use. I can take any document and with a few clicks of the mouse, associate it to a CRM entity while saving it in a SharePoint library. This interface gives users the best of both worlds: CRM for field level data and SharePoint for document management. The possibilities are seemingly endless.

Is document security important for your clients and your business? Do you store medical, financial or legal documents within SharePoint/Microsoft Dynamics CRM? The safety of these materials along with sensitive information like salaries and employment contracts are often unknowingly compromised! Do I have your attention now!?!