Chris Bortlik's Blog

New Role …

Chris Bortlik [MSFT] — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 17:04:52 GMT

I am happy to announce that I have recently accepted a new position within Microsoft. I will still be working with enterprise customers and partners based here in the Northeast but my focus will be shifting to Office 365.

So, why am I making this move now? Here are the top 5 reasons:

On March 4, 2010, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made the public statement that Microsoft was “all in” with the cloud and stated that Microsoft was betting the future of its company on cloud computing. In October 2012, Ballmer redefined Microsoft as a “devices and services” company in his annual shareholder letter. It is clear that cloud computing, including services such as Office 365 and Azure, is viewed as strategic by Microsoft.
Microsoft is not the only company that is embracing cloud computing. Studies, such as those cited in this recent USA Today article, reinforce this trend and the positive impact not only for cloud service providers such as Microsoft, but also for our customers and partners.
This Wednesday, February 27, 2013, Microsoft will be launching the 3rd major service update for Office 365. This update will bring the 2013 versions of Office, Exchange, SharePoint, Lync, Visio, and Project to Office 365. More information on these service updates can be found in the service description updates.
As part of the New SharePoint announcements, and reinforced at the SharePoint Conference in 2012, Microsoft has made it clear that future product updates will be released to the cloud first and Microsoft will be providing service releases on a much more frequent basis – including additional social investments with Yammer, SharePoint, and Office 365.
I have thoroughly enjoyed the past 5 years working at Microsoft and focusing on SharePoint and Office. This new role offers me the unique opportunity to leverage my existing skills, knowledge, and relationships while gaining new experiences working more deeply with Exchange, Lync, Yammer, Project, Visio, and our Microsoft cloud services including Office 365 and Azure.

By no means am I leaving the SharePoint community behind. I plan to continue to be very active and speaking at events including SharePoint Saturday Boston and the Boston Area SharePoint User Group in April.

I also plan to resume blogging more again … as soon as we finish writing and publishing “Essential SharePoint 2013” later this year.

SHARE Conference Series 2013

Chris Bortlik [MSFT] — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 19:44:14 GMT

Are you exploring new and different ways to use SharePoint to get business results?

SHARE is the only SharePoint event truly designed by and for BUSINESS users. It will explore all facets of real-world SharePoint, and you will benefit by learning from hundreds of SharePoint projects that can help you avoid common industry challenges.

Microsoft in conjunction with The Eventful Group is sponsoring a free webinar series that will give you a sneak peek at what you can expect from this year’s SHARE Conference with presentations from SHARE speakers, thought-leaders, and experts.

Monday, February 25, 2013, 2 pm EST

How to Support a Growing SharePoint Community and Build a Culture of Collaboration and Innovation – REGISTER NOW

Carolyn Brehm, Manager, Learning & Collaboration, Bristol-Myers Squibb

Matthew Spewak, Manager, Learning & Collaboration, Bristol-Myers Squibb

Our SharePoint Collaboration Team uses a dual model of support for SharePoint: A) resource supported site development and B) self-supported site development. As adoption of both types of sites has grown, so has the demand for enhanced capabilities and training to support them. Our team has evolved beyond driving adoption of SharePoint to supporting a culture of collaboration and empowering site owners and end-users to utilize SharePoint to support business processes and innovation.

Monday, March 18, 2013, 2 pm EST

Forms, Workflows & Dashboards – Oh My! – REGISTER NOW
Jennifer A. Mason, MVP SharePoint Server, Rackspace

In this webinar, Jennifer Mason, a Microsoft MVP with Rackspace Hosting, will teach you how to create fully automated, highly customized and professional-looking business forms and full-blown business processes using SharePoint, InfoPath, and SharePoint Designer tools.

Microsoft Office InfoPath is a powerful form-creation tool that lets you design forms without writing any code. When you use this product in conjunction with SharePoint and SharePoint Designer, you have all the tools you need to build no-code automated business solutions.

Jennifer has over eight years of SharePoint experience and is a frequent blogger, speaker, author, and SharePoint community contributor. Her primary focus is helping organizations get the most value from SharePoint by building solutions using out-of-the-box tools, to bring immediate ROI to the organization.

My Top 5 Favorite Things About SharePoint 2013

Chris Bortlik [MSFT] — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 17:42:00 GMT

Over the past few weeks Microsoft has put out a ton of information related to SharePoint 2013. Jeff Teper recently blogged about the new SharePoint 2013 customer preview milestone and the SharePoint team blogs regular updates.

Hopefully you’ve also been able to review the various IT Pro and Developer resources available and have signed up for a SharePoint Online (Office 365 Enterprise) trial and/or setup a local SharePoint 2013 environment. Vesa Juvonen has also done a great job summarizing all of the free SharePoint 2013 training resources Microsoft has made available to help you get started.

Personally, I’ve been working with Scott Jamison and Sue Hanley on the “Essential SharePoint 2013” book and have been spending most of my “free time” (also known as nights and weekends!) working on that project - and helping my wife chase around our 4 kids!

Here is a quick summary of 5 of my favorite things about SharePoint 2013 (so far …):

1. Social – Microsoft made significant investments in social computing in SharePoint 2013. Key highlights include micro blogging (with interactive newsfeeds for @ mentioning people, replying, tagging posts, liking, etc.); social search improvements; the ability to mark posts and replies for follow-up; mobile support; and modern community sites that include features such as badges, moderation and reputation scores. In addition to the great work done in SharePoint 2013, Microsoft also recently acquired Yammer, a leader in enterprise social computing.

2. Search – With this release, Microsoft has fully integrated the SharePoint and FAST search engines into a single search platform. This search platform not only powers SharePoint 2013 but Exchange 2013 search as well. Search has become core to many of the key SharePoint use case scenarios – more than just document search – but also being used to drive recommendations; social; analytics; and web content reuse.

3. Web Content Management – There are significant updates in web content management. Some of the highlights include “channels” for targeting content at different browsers and platforms; native support for HTML5 and CSSv3; the ability to use the design tool of your choice (no longer just SharePoint Designer or Visual Studio); the new content by search web part (for aggregating content across sites); metadata driven navigation; and automated language translation services.

4. SharePoint Online – SharePoint Online has come a long way in this version – its 3rd major service update/release. There is now near feature parity between SharePoint Online and on premises including richer support for business intelligence. There are also new related services built on top of SharePoint Online including Project Online and tighter integration with Windows Azure (e.g. Access Services).

5. New store and application model – SharePoint 2013 adds a new application store and development model. This article on MSDN does a great job summarizing these new capabilities.

I’ll continue to post periodically to this blog and my Twitter feed. I also look forward to seeing many of you at the SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas in November 2012.

The (Hidden) Power of SharePoint Content Types

Chris Bortlik [MSFT] — Wed, 23 May 2012 17:38:00 GMT

During my 4+ years working at Microsoft I have had the privilege to work with many of the largest SharePoint enterprise customers based in the Northeast. One of the consistent topics that we end up discussing is SharePoint content types. One of the interesting observations is that so many customers have not yet realized the full power of content types and how they can help enforce consistent policies, templates and metadata while also helping end users to realize the business value of using SharePoint and further driving adoption. I have also been discussing how content types can help with governance by applying retention policies consistently.

Here are a few key concepts that my customers and I often end up discussing:

Metadata and attributes – Making sure that documents of the same type (e.g. sales proposals) have the same attributes (e.g. customer name, deal size) associated with them. 2 additional techniques that I also see people leveraging is reusable site columns and the managed metadata service to drive broader consistency and reuse of these attributes.
Core (base) content types and inheritance – The concept that, just like with object oriented development design patterns, you can implement content types that build upon each other to make the management of content types easier and reusable. For example, if every document within your company has the same attributes (e.g. confidentiality level) then you would create your own company base content types that other content types would then inherit and be derived from.
Retention and audit policies – Information management policies can be enabled to have different rules for how long you retain content and what events get audited (e.g. viewing or editing items). For example, you could apply a retention policy for any sales proposals created to only keep all versions of the document for the first year after the document is created and to only keep the most recent published version after 3 years.
Templates – You can specify that whenever some clicks the “new” menu item within a document library that the content type is displayed and automatically creates a new instance of a document based on a specific document template. This is very helpful for ensuring consistency of documents such as sales proposals and others where the goal is to have a consistent format, look and feel.
Workflow – Reusable workflow associations enable you to have a consistent process applied to content types. One example was a customer that wanted to have blogs reviewed before they were posted. To accomplish this they created a reusable approval workflow and associated it with the base blog item content type.
Document sets – Document sets are a special content type that lets you work with a group of related documents. In our sales proposal example, perhaps whenever a new document set is created for a sales proposal the correct Word document, PowerPoint presentation and Excel spreadsheet can be automatically created. Then the document set can be routed via workflow for approval as a single unit as opposed to individual documents.
Search and filtering – There are many ways that attributes and content types can be used to find content. One of the ways that customers often leverage this is using the Content Query Web Part (CQWP) to get a filtered rolled up list of items based on a specific content type within a given site collection.
Office integration and document information panel – You can specify that the document information panel always be shown by default in Office clients for certain content types. This helps to provide easy access to view and modify required and optional document attributes.
Replication across site collections and farms – One of the challenges prior to SharePoint 2010 was having enterprise content types that could be leveraged across multiple SharePoint site collections or farms. The content type hub (as part of the managed metadata service) allows you to replicate content types across site collections and farms- with a few caveats that need to be considered, such as if you have a workflow associated to the content type.
Content organizer – The content organizer feature within SharePoint 2010 is helpful for routing documents to specific folders or libraries from a central “drop off” library where content organizer rules can look at the content types and metadata and route documents appropriately.

Here are some of the key resources that I often point customers to as they get started with leveraging content types:

Content type and workflow planning - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262735.aspx
Identify users and analyze document usage - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc261954.aspx
Content type planning worksheet - http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=165878&clcid=0x409

SharePoint Conference 2012: Early Bird Registration Open

Chris Bortlik [MSFT] — Wed, 23 May 2012 17:25:54 GMT

Register now to give yourself a competitive edge and get the inside scoop about 'SharePoint 15' while learning how to better use SharePoint 2010. Get informed with the best in the field: Engineers who built the product, Microsoft Certified Masters, and MVPs. Gain invaluable knowledge to increase your productivity and stay ahead of the game through hundreds of focused breakout sessions, hands-on lab environments, and instructor-led lab scenarios.

With over 65,000 customer organizations, more companies have chosen SharePoint as their primary collaboration tool than all other vendors combined. Register now to learn from the best in the industry and be a part of the unique experience only available at SharePoint Conference 2012!
See you in Vegas

My 2011 Year in Review …

Chris Bortlik [MSFT] — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 15:51:13 GMT

As we wind down 2011, I wanted to take some time to reflect back on an amazing year and share my top 5 observations and thoughts from the past year:

1. We have an AMAZING SharePoint community around the world and locally in the Northeast. During the past year alone we launched new SharePoint user groups and SharePoint Saturdays in Connecticut and New Hampshire. We also continued to build upon the momentum established in 2010 around the SharePoint communities in Massachusetts and upstate New York. As you may know, these events are largely community led and sponsored by our Microsoft customers and partners. Many people give up their evenings and weekends to share lessons learned and best practices for leveraging SharePoint. I am honored to be a member of such a great team!

2. Social computing and innovation management continue to be hot topics of discussion with many of my customers and partners. It is more than just building “Facebook for the enterprise” – it is about driving and sustaining long term changes within our businesses; changing the culture; and how we work and collaborate together. This is an area that I expect to see continued growth and focus on moving into 2012.

3. Office 365 and SharePoint Online are generating significant interest and adoption across customers of all sizes and industries since the 2010 versions were launched in June. This recent interview with Tom Rizzo goes into much more detail on some of the trends we are seeing.

4. As SharePoint turned 10 years old in 2011, there continues to be significant focus and discussion on topics around SharePoint maturity, governance and adoption strategies. Many customers and partners are also looking at SharePoint as an applications platform and for advanced scenarios including enterprise search; Extranets; and public facing websites.

5. It is great to see so many people focusing more on engaging the SharePoint end user community. From the end user focused track at the 2011 SharePoint Conference to the new www.iusesharepoint.com resource site to the great End User SharePoint community site, people are looking for new ways to help the business creatively solve challenges using SharePoint. 2012 will be another great year with many end user focused conferences being held around the world.

In closing, I want to thank all of my customers, partners and colleagues at Microsoft for an amazing 2011. Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!

Chris Bortlik

Innovation Management and Ideation Solutions with SharePoint and Project Server

Chris Bortlik [MSFT] — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 21:19:42 GMT

One of the topics that I’ve been discussing often with my customers and partners is innovation management and ideation solutions. This is a hot topic and companies are trying to find new ways to make money, save money, improve processes and increase collaboration with their employees, customers and partners.

These solutions help solve business problems around:

Employee/customer/partner engagement & retention
Generating and surfacing new ideas from “the crowd” (aka crowdsourcing)
Finding the next blockbuster product
Improving existing business processes
Getting constructive feedback
Killer application – driving adoption of collaboration solutions

Some of my recent presentations on driving end user adoption for SharePoint and taking SharePoint to the next level have demonstrated how innovation management solutions fit into the broader Microsoft SharePoint and Project Server landscape. The Microsoft Innovation Management enterprise solutions center provides some great background information and resources for this space. Craig Rode from the Microsoft Manufacturing industry team has some great resources published on innovation solutions available for purchase.

I’ve been looking at innovation management solutions for about 6 months now. In May 2011, my colleague, Chad Gronbach, and I began working with Joe Boggio and 2 partners, Pcubed and DataLan to deliver 2 innovation focused events at the Microsoft Technology Center (MTC) in Waltham, MA Those events were so well received by our customers that we have been working to expand the offerings and focus on innovation within the Northeast District.

Chad and I have recently been teaming up with Simon Floyd and additional Microsoft partners. Customers often ask me what the various options are and the discussion usually comes down to one of build vs. buy. Below are the options that I’ve worked most extensively with and encourage you to check out.

Build

1. The innovation portion of the demonstration that Chad and I built for the MTC event in May was literally built in 1 day using out of the box SharePoint and Project Server capabilities including InfoPath forms, workflows and discussion lists. We constructed an InfoPath forms list for submitting corporate “challenges” that then notified people via a workflow to submit and review“responses” during a period of time that the challenge was active for. We also had an “innovation idea exchange” (SharePoint discussion board) where people could submit ideas and give feedback to others. We leveraged the SharePoint rating functionality for getting feedback and sorting on the top ideas. We also used the SharePoint managed metadata service to allow for consistent categorization of topics. Below is a screenshot of the rollup views that we presented on the innovation site home page. If you are new to SharePoint 2010, then I encourage you to review my prior post on making the business case for social computing on SharePoint 2010.

2. At the SharePoint Conference in October, Simon Floyd presented a session on “Managing Innovation with SharePoint & Project Server 2010”. During this session Simon demonstrated a free innovation solution accelerator that Microsoft is providing “as is” to Microsoft customers and partners to get their solution off the ground with a set of prebuilt SharePoint site templates and webparts – as well as the ability to “promote” an approved idea to a formal project in Project Server. A screenshot of the solution is below. Please contact me if you want more information on this.

3. Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS) has some innovation focused solution areas and accelerators that can be purchased which significantly shorten the time to develop and deploy them while offering for a high amount of customization and flexibility.

Buy

Capgemini and Spigit have teamed up to offer innovation business, consulting and software solutions based on SharePoint and Project Server.
Pcubed and PTC are also offering innovation business, consulting and software solutions based on SharePoint and Project Server.
SharePoint social computing partners like NewsGator and Neudesic are also solutions that many of my customers evaluate in this space. Their solutions are built on top of the SharePoint platform.

Upgrading to SharePoint 2010: Why and How to Get It Done–SharePoint Saturday New Hampshire Recap and Slides

Chris Bortlik [MSFT] — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 20:41:49 GMT

This past Saturday, we had our 1st SharePoint Saturday New Hampshire. Over 150 people attended this event and there were more than 35 sessions delivered. It was an amazing event and we are grateful for all of our event sponsors that made this event possible and free of charge for attendees. Edgewater led the organization of this event flawlessly.

I was fortunate to be a speaker in 2 sessions: the “Stump the SharePoint Pros” panel discussion and “Upgrading to SharePoint 2010: Why and How to Get It Done”

As requested, my slides have been posted on SkyDrive where they can be viewed or downloaded.

Keep an eye on this post on my blog for information on upcoming SharePoint Saturday and user group events in the Northeast. See many of you at the SharePoint Conference next week.

New SharePoint 2010 Courseware: Business Intelligence and Business Composites

Chris Bortlik [MSFT] — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 11:12:14 GMT

SharePoint Server 2010 Business Intelligence Training

View the course: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/hh126809

Learn how you can lay a deep foundation for your SharePoint Server 2010 Business Intelligence (BI) skills in this training course. This course teaches how to use SharePoint Server 2010 as your BI platform and covers the following topics: Business Intelligence Overview, Excel Services, PerformancePoint Services, Visio Services, Reporting Services Integration with SharePoint 2010, and PowerPivot for SharePoint Server 2010. The content is cross referenced with available Advanced IT Pro training (Ignite) per module.

SharePoint Server 2010 Business Composites Training

View the course: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/hh126810

Learn how you can lay a deep foundation for your SharePoint Server 2010 Business Composites skills in this training course. This course covers a SharePoint Server 2010 Composites overview and all of these aspects for SharePoint Server 2010: Access Services, InfoPath Forms Services, Workflows in SharePoint 2010, Business Connectivity Services, and SharePoint BI and Composites Service Application Configuration.

Getting Started with SharePoint 2010? Consider Starting with SharePoint Online …

Chris Bortlik [MSFT] — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 20:09:03 GMT

First, I’d like to start by apologizing for not posting to this blog recently. My wife and I had twin girls about 6 weeks ago and I have been out of the office thanks to Microsoft’s VERY generous Infant Care Leave (ICL) policy that allowed me to stay home and help the family get settled in. I’ve also been trying to focus this blog on unique content with a goal of posting at least 2 times per month. I have recently been investing more time in using my Twitter account to share quick updates, links to resources and news.

Now to the matter at hand …

Earlier this week I spent some time setting up a brand new Office 365 tenant from scratch. I wanted to experience the process first-hand and see what my customers go through. To do this, I created a free 30-day trial account which not only includes SharePoint Online, but also Office 2010 Professional Plus, the Office Web Applications, Exchange Online and Lync Online.

As someone who has setup new SharePoint environments, I was extremely impressed with how quickly my new SharePoint 2010 Online tenant was made available on Office 365. It literally took less than 15 minutes for the environment to be self provisioned and available for me to use. I didn’t have to worry about setting up Windows Servers then the SQL Server then installing and configuring SharePoint 2010. I didn’t have to worry about capacity planning or setting up backups and planning for disaster recovery. I didn’t have to set up a DMZ or VPN connection to make the site securely available outside of my firewall.

Once the setup wizard completes, you get a very clear, concise, action oriented page to help you get started and even build your own pilot or deployment plan. You can also add and invite up to 25 users to participate in the environment during the trial period.

From there I was able to import some users; create my new SharePoint site collection; and setup some demo sites provided to Microsoft employees by the SharePoint team out in Redmond. These sites definitely don’t look like the vanilla SharePoint team sites and also show the power of being able to customize the look of your online My Sites:

I even have SharePoint Enterprise features like Access Services available to me:

So, while SharePoint Online may not currently have full feature parity with SharePoint on premise, I hope you can see that it is significantly enhanced over the prior version of the Business Productivity Online Services. If you are currently starting a new SharePoint 2010 project, I would encourage you to check out Office 365 and see if it meets your needs.

New SharePoint 2010 Content for Business Users!

Chris Bortlik [MSFT] — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 12:42:05 GMT

Getting your users excited and ready for SharePoint 2010 doesn’t have to be challenging! Visit www.iusesharepoint.com to help you get started.

Content for Users:

10 Humorous Webisodes
10 Corresponding How-To Videos
45 Quick Reference Cards
25 Tips and Tricks
Real User Stories

Content to Drive Adoption:

Option A-Lunch & Learn SharePoint Adoption Kit: This kit contains all the materials you need to promote SharePoint within your organization. The kit includes instructions, templates, videos, quick reference cards and more to help you deploy an internal SharePoint resource site - a place to access SharePoint information and tools, and connect around the best part of the day: lunch. Download this kit to show your team how SharePoint makes life, and lunch, a little better.
Option B-Build an Adoption Kit that's right for you: If your organization already has an established learning center, you can download individual pieces to post to and promote the destination that works best for you. These standalone pieces can be used to add interesting and helpful training content to your organization's site and to drive SharePoint learning and adoption. Choose to download one or more of these resources, like webisodes, Show Me How videos, quick reference cards, poster templates, table tents and more.

Slides from My New Hampshire SharePoint User Group Presentation

Chris Bortlik [MSFT] — Fri, 13 May 2011 14:44:28 GMT

Thanks again to everyone that attended, organized and sponsored the 1st SharePoint User Group in New Hampshire on Wednesday night. It was an amazing turnout – far exceeding my expectations.

As requested, below are the slides that I used in my presentation. They are posted on SkyDrive.

Looking forward to seeing people again at future SharePoint user group meetings and the 1st SharePoint Saturday New Hampshire in September.

SharePoint Connections Boston Slides

Chris Bortlik [MSFT] — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 21:29:16 GMT

I’ve just posted the slides that I presented at the SharePoint Connections Boston event this week. These include the slides that I presented on Monday morning during the SharePoint 2010 Development Bootcamp with Bob German and the Migrating SharePoint 2007 Solutions to SharePoint 2010 breakout session that I presented yesterday afternoon.

The links and resources that I referenced during these talks are included in the slide decks and others are on my Twitter feed.

Microsoft Event: Bring Innovation into Focus for Large Enterprise Customers- May 4, 2011 Waltham, MA

Chris Bortlik [MSFT] — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 17:57:48 GMT

This promises to be a great event – Bring Innovation into Focus – Executive Workshop with Microsoft & Pcubed

This limited seating Executive event will take place on Wednesday, May 4th, 2011 in Waltham, MA and is targeted at large enterprise customers– primarily those with more than 1,000 employees. We look forward to hosting you!

Let our experts help you manage your organization’s innovation lifecycle!

INNOVATION…the Key to a Business’ Success, today!

According to a recent survey, over 60% of surveyed companies indicated that their organization’s strategy depends totally or largely on innovation.

However, less than 20% were satisfied in their ability to execute against the key aspects of innovation – including idea identification, development, commercialization and achieving consistent innovation performance.

How does an organization drive a consistent innovation performance which results in greater return on their innovation investments?

Innovation should be viewed and treated as any other business discipline – requiring tools, processes, systems and people to achieve a consistent high level of performance.

This session will expose how today’s innovators are:

· Leveraging social networking and enterprise search to enhance the innovation process

· Instilling structure and process to minimize the ad-hoc nature of innovation

· Leveraging rich collaboration and communication technologies to connect internal communities as well as external partners and customers

· Empowering people to contribute and discover new ideas

· Analyzing and optimizing the investment portfolio, and executing with discipline

· Defining and tracking key metrics to enable process visibility and management insight

Agenda:

Please note that this agenda is subject to change. A final event agenda will be sent to those who register, in advance of the event.

8:00 – 8:30 AM	Breakfast and Networking
8:30 – 9:00 AM	Welcome and Executive Perspective
9:00 – 10:00 AM	Managing Innovation at Microsoft: Joe Boggio, Director of Innovation, Microsoft, US Commercial Sector This session will share techniques and lessons learned from Microsoft’s approach to managing innovation, organizing for innovation and the role that software tools play in enabling innovation at scale.
10:15 – 11:15 AM	Investigate Innovation Strategy and Processes Dr. Shan Rajegopal, Innovation & Portfolio Management Practice Leader, Pcubed This presentation will highlight the Pcubed pragmatic approach for organizations to look at and evaluate their R&D and Innovation Capability and how to deploy an IPM process successfully. In order for the IPM implementation to work well, companies need to manage four key uncertainties which are: resource constraint, organizational appetite to manage innovation process in a systematic way whilst expecting a cultural transformation, technical capability and market demand and expectation. The session will also explore other considerations such as feedback to ideas, communication process, filtering and selection process, team doing the selection, rewards and motivations, which are all areas that influence successful execution.
11:30 – 12:30 PM	Envisioning Center Demonstration with Microsoft
12:30 – 1:30 PM	Lunch and Discussion with Innovation Experts

SharePoint Connections Coast to Coast Tour Coming to Boston April 25-27

Chris Bortlik [MSFT] — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 19:27:28 GMT

I’ll be presenting at the SharePoint Connections Coast to Coast tour in Boston April 25-27. Get your team up to speed for developing, deploying and administering SharePoint 2010 sites and get on the path to success. Enter "SP100" and get $100 off registration!

BONUS: The first 100 people to register per city can attend the SharePoint 2010 Development Bootcamp for FREE! Register now to secure your seat!

Solve today's challenges
Get questions answered by Microsoft SharePoint team & industry experts.

Ensure success with SharePoint
Take away practical guidance and best practices for deploying, configuring, managing, and developing for SharePoint 2010.

Prepare for tomorrow
Learn how to align SharePoint with your organization's strategic objectives.

Master the technology
Dive deep into SharePoint technologies and features in over two dozen sessions taught with an independent, real-world perspective.

Check the website for the full list of sessions and speakers.
Register at DevConnections.com/SPTour or 800.438.6720

Upgrading to SharePoint 2010: Why and How to Get It Done–SharePoint Saturday Boston Recap and Slides

Chris Bortlik [MSFT] — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 14:06:21 GMT

This past Saturday, we had our 4th SharePoint Saturday Boston. Over 250 people attended this event and there were 35 sessions delivered. It was once again an amazing event and we are grateful for all of our event sponsors that make this event possible and free of charge for attendees. ThirdM and Grace-Hunt led the event flawlessly – as usual.

I was fortunate to be speaker in 2 sessions: the Ask Microsoft panel discussion and Upgrading to SharePoint 2010: Why and How to Get It Done

As requested, my slides have been posted on SkyDrive where they can be viewed or downloaded.

Keep an eye on this post on my blog for information on upcoming SharePoint Saturday and user group events in the Northeast. We’re working on launching some in New Hampshire soon!

Got SAP and SharePoint 2010? Connect them with Duet.

Chris Bortlik [MSFT] — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 14:42:21 GMT

Last week, I had the opportunity to work the Microsoft booth at the SAP Boston event. There was a lot of discussion during the event about Duet Enterprise which is a product that is jointly developed by Microsoft and SAP to connect SAP to SharePoint and Office. Duet is a great example of how SharePoint 2010 can be used as a true applications platform and how things like Business Connectivity Services can be used to provide read/write access from SharePoint and Office to back-end line of business systems like SAP.

Lots of people asked for the slides that I referred to for the technical details and the 2 demo videos that we were showing at the booth.

The SharePoint product team has also recently published a series of blog posts on Duet and more technical content has been published on Duet at TechNet.

Register for SharePoint Saturday Boston - Saturday, April 9, 2011

Chris Bortlik [MSFT] — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 11:53:10 GMT

Registration is now open for our 4^th SharePoint Saturday Boston, which will be held on Saturday, April 9, 2011 at the Microsoft Jones Road office in Waltham, MA. The speaker and session lists have been published as well.

This time, I will be presenting a session on Upgrading to SharePoint 2010: Why and How to Get It Done

Hope to see you there!

Slides from “How To Drive End User Adoption For SharePoint 2010” Axceler Webinar Presentation

Chris Bortlik [MSFT] — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 20:51:58 GMT

Thanks again to everyone that attended the “How To Drive End User Adoption For SharePoint 2010” session that I presented on the Axceler sponsored webinar earlier today. As requested, the slides that I presented are linked to below.

3/11/11 Update

Based on some additional requests, here are direct links:

SharePoint Conference 2011 Registration Opens Today at 9A PST

Chris Bortlik [MSFT] — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 13:06:08 GMT

Register today to attend the Microsoft SharePoint Conference, the premier worldwide conference dedicated to SharePoint and related technologies! The 2011 SharePoint Conference will be held October 3-6, 2011 in Anaheim, California, in the Los Angeles area.

SharePoint Conference 2011 will be the only conference to hear experts from Microsoft and around the world share their experience and knowledge about a variety of topics such as cloud services, best practices & real world project insights. The session content will cover products including SharePoint and SharePoint Online as part of the soon to be released Office 365.

Whether you are an IT Professional, IT Manager, Architect, Developer or Project Manager, SharePoint Conference 2011 will give you the tools, knowledge and skills you need to get the most value from your SharePoint investment and projects. Whether you are just getting started with SharePoint or have deep technical experience, SharePoint Conference 2011 will have the content to help you plan, develop, deploy, and govern your SharePoint solution.

In addition to exclusive session content you will have access to Hands on Labs, as well as opportunities to network with technical and industry experts including Microsoft engineers, Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs), Microsoft Certified Masters (MCMs), SharePoint customers and many of our top Certified Partners.

The conference registration fee for SharePoint Conference 2011 is $1,199 and seats are limited! The 2009 conference sold out fast so don’t miss your chance – register today!

P.S. When registering please enter “Chris Bortlik” as the referrer. Thanks!

Slides from Driving End User Adoption for SharePoint 2010 SharePoint Saturday Hartford Presentation

Chris Bortlik [MSFT] — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 20:58:10 GMT

Thanks again to everyone that attended the “driving end user adoption for SharePoint 2010” session that I presented at SharePoint Saturday in Hartford, CT this past weekend. As requested, the slides that I presented are linked to below.

Most of the speakers will be posting there slides shortly and those will all be linked to from the SharePoint Saturday Hartford site. This was our 1st SharePoint Saturday in Hartford and we were humbled to have the event “sell out” a few days before we delivered it. The presenters and attendees are all so passionate about SharePoint. What a great community for us to be part of!

Making the Business Case for Social Computing

Chris Bortlik [MSFT] — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 23:39:31 GMT

One of the topics that I frequently discuss with customers and partners is social computing. Many companies recognize the need for social computing technologies within the enterprise but often struggle with mapping various technology options back to business needs. What follows below are some of the common requirements that I hear and some possible ways of addressing them with SharePoint and Office 2010. What do you think? Are you faced with these, or other, questions? If so, how do you respond?

Requirement: I want to be able to find people and expertise across the company and around the world.

Response: SharePoint people search, My Sites and user profiles are a great place to start. These include the ability to have data fed into SharePoint from external systems including Active Directory, PeopleSoft, SAP and other data sources - as well enabling people to edit them within SharePoint.

Requirement: I want to encourage feedback on content contributed.

Response: SharePoint 2010 adds the ability to rate, tag (both taxonomy and folksonomy) and “like” any type of SharePoint content including blog posts, documents, wikis, videos and pages – basically anything that is stored in a SharePoint list.

Requirement: I want to have a collaborative work environment

Response: Office and SharePoint 2010 add coauthoring (simultaneous editing) in the Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote applications. SharePoint blogs and wikis have also been significantly improved in 2010.

Requirement: I want to have an internal YouTube like experience.

Response: SharePoint 2010 ships with an out of the box web part for streaming videos via SharePoint. An example of this is Microsoft’s own Academy Mobile which was originally built on SharePoint 2007. Many of these capabilities (e.g. storing videos, streaming videos, rating and tagging) are now out of the box features in SharePoint 2010.

Requirement: I want to be kept up to date on certain topics and colleagues.

Response: SharePoint 2010 produces activity feeds so you can “follow” particular people and tags. For example, you can see when a colleague in SharePoint (similar to a Facebook friend or a LinkedIn connection) tags or rates new content. You can see when anyone tags content (internally or externally) with a topic you are interested. You can also see new status updates and when people post comments on a SharePoint note board. Outlook 2003, 2007 and 2010 also now have a social connector that allows you to see SharePoint 2010 activity feeds – as well as updates from Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace or Windows Live – from within Outlook.

Requirement: I want this all to be secured and audited.

Response: Most companies don’t want their employees performing this collaboration on consumer tools like Facebook, LinkedIn, Windows Live, Twitter or MySpace. Unfortunately if your company does not provide collaboration tools like SharePoint, then your employees are left to use consumer grade tools that lack the ability to securely manage and audit content as well as to apply retention policies. Think about it: would you run your corporate email system on consumer mail systems such as Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, etc.? Probably not. So why not use an enterprise tool like SharePoint 2010 for social computing?

Here are some additional resources and events for you to check out:

The Communities examples and case studies from the SharePoint team site.
Attend some of the SharePoint Saturday and user group events which often include sessions related to social computing and provide opportunities to talk with other customers and partners and share experiences and best practices.
If you are in the New England area, consider attending the NewsGator social computing event that I’ll be presenting at on February 16, 2011.

My Top 5 SharePoint Goals for 2011

Chris Bortlik [MSFT] — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 15:50:07 GMT

As we start to close the door on 2010, I’ve been reflecting on what a great year it has been. During the past year we had the official release of SharePoint 2010 and have continued to strengthen our SharePoint community via SharePoint Saturdays and user group meetings. In 2011, I’m looking forward to working with more customers and partners on SharePoint 2010; the public launch of SharePoint 2010 online via Office365; and to continue to learn and give back to the community. Here are some of my personal goals for the next year:

Get certified on SharePoint 2010. My goal is to pass all 4 of the SharePoint 2010 certifications in 2011.
Go deeper on many of the newer SharePoint 2010 capabilities – especially those in the Search (e.g. FAST), Insights (e.g. PerformancePoint Services, PowerPivot, Visio Services) and Composites (e.g. Business Connectivity Services, Access Services, InfoPath Form Services updates) areas.
Learn more about related applications that are built on top of the SharePoint 2010 platform including Duet (for connecting SharePoint with SAP) and Project Server.
Continue to be more involved with the SharePoint community and give back. Locally we are fortunate to have tons of activity happening in 2011 including user groups and SharePoint Saturdays in Hartford, Boston and (hopefully) New Hampshire and Rochester, NY. I continue to be amazed by the passion demonstrated by our SharePoint customers and partners. In addition to these community events, I also want to contribute more content via this blog and Twitter.
Speak at SharePoint Conference 2011 in California in October. I was fortunate to have been able to speak at the 2009 SharePoint Conference (SPC) in Las Vegas and look forward to seeing many of you at the next SPC.

So, those are my top 5 goals for 2011. What are yours?

Slides from Driving End User Adoption for SharePoint 2010 Webinar Presentation

Chris Bortlik [MSFT] — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 18:43:55 GMT

Thanks to everyone that attended the “driving end user adoption for SharePoint 2010” webinar earlier today. As requested, the slides I presented are linked to below. The recording will also be made available soon on the SharePoint Saturday Boston webinar series site.

Slides from Rochester SharePoint User Group Meeting Last Week

Chris Bortlik [MSFT] — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 03:02:05 GMT

Thanks again to everyone that came out last week for the 1st SharePoint user group meeting in Rochester, NY. We had a great turnout and I really enjoyed the discussion and interaction – as well as the SharePint after!

As requested, I’ve posted my “SharePoint 2010 Overview” slides on SkyDrive. You can preview and access them below. Since most of my talk was demo, I’ve included a number of hidden slides with screen shots for people to reference as well.