2018 Projects Update

Our 10-year anniversary aside, 2018 has been a wonderfully busy year for us, with opportunities to work on some challenging and really exciting projects.

2018 Projects Update

Here’s a snapshot of a few things we’ve done:

  • Development of an Office 365 intranet and collaboration portal utilising LiveTiles, with training sessions provided to aid the deployment and adoption among staff.

  • Creation of a staff portal for a 10,000-seat organisation using SharePoint Online to provide project management, support and strategic advice for the release and post go-live stages of the project.

  • Sharing Minds assisted a leading Queensland Government agency to migrate years of data from SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint Online. The migration process was via SharePoint 2013 and utilised Sharegate.

  • A full end-to-end SharePoint Online intranet design and deployment, including project management, provision of a change management framework, train-the-trainer services and remote support.

 
2018 Projects Update
 
  • Migration, using SkyKick, of 200 staff to a new email system, with train-the-trainer services and advice for the change management and communication strategy.

  • Development of a new intranet for a large education client, combining LiveTiles and Office 365. Content from the original intranet was migrated using DocAve.

  • Creation of a SharePoint Online application, for a health industry client, to manage ideas from users. The app provides users with the ability to view ideas, search ideas, vote for ideas, view total votes and comment on ideas.

  • Migration to Office 365 and development of a members’ portal for a leading national retail organisation.  A marketing forms application was also developed using PowerApps and Microsoft Flow.

  • Development of a job seeker portal completed by integrating an existing web application with Azure Active Directory for authentication. Azure AD allowed session-based pass-through authentication to SharePoint Online which was embedded into the web application and permitted users to utilise Word Online.

  • Design and implementation of a best-of-breed government solution that combined a leading records management solution (RecordPoint) to manage a wide variety of content. This project also combined the cloud governance features of AvePoint’s governance and automation product to manage the creation and administration of information within the corporate environment.

  • Sharing Minds developed an apprentice mentoring solution using Dynamics 365 for a leading career training organisation. This solution helped our customer manage a wide variety of information about their customers. 

  • Migration of petabytes of data within a large document management system, using AvePoint, to SharePoint Online and On-Premises.

  • Creation of a fully automated and highly secure end-to-end incident reporting solution using Nintex’s Workflow Platform.  

2018 Projects Update
  • Global information and document management solution integrated with multiple document sources including SharePoint Online, Aconex and ProjectWise, to deliver complete security and reporting capability around the full document lifecycle.  

  • Development of an app to manage tasks assigned to resources from managers based in various locations, using LiveTiles. The app also provides the ability to see task history, add comments and to re-open completed tasks. 

  • Development of a governance application, using Azure multi-tenant authentication and Logic Apps, that controls the assessment and implementation of a trial IoT feature deployed within a regional council. The application also provides a register of IoT devices and their respective deployments.  

  • A leading national education provider commissioned Sharing Minds to build a best-of-breed intranet to manage a wide variety of training courses. This solution involved a series of category-based training schedules that could be overlaid to create a “master” calendar for all events nationally. This solution extended the out of the box capabilities of SharePoint Online through custom development to provide a unique solution for our customer.

Key Takeaways from Sharing Minds’ 2018 Breakfast Series

Did you miss any of the events? The presentations slides are still available! Please contact sales@sharingminds.com.au and one of our friendly team would be more than happy to send you through a copy.

Sharing Minds Breakfast Series

Sharing Minds recently concluded the final event of our 2018 Breakfast Series – a collection of events designed to empower you with the knowledge to create an intelligent digital workplace which fosters collaboration and productivity.


Event 1 | Microsoft Teams Workshop: Governance and User Adoption Made Easy

Ben Creamer presenting

Ben Creamer presenting

The first event, held on Wednesday 19 September, focused on managing governance and increasing user adoption in Microsoft Teams.

The first session of the event was a tour through Teams, where the audience was provided tips to best engage with the tool to encourage user adoption.

Paul Olenick, AvePoint’s Product Strategy Director, led the second session with a presentation centered around the importance of maintaining governance of your organisation’s Teams environment. Paul emphasised the importance of “right-sizing” governance mechanisms and the key areas to balance when managing the usage of Teams.

Ben Creamer and Paul Olenick

Ben Creamer and Paul Olenick

Paul Olenick presenting

Paul Olenick presenting


Event 2 | Microsoft and Nintex Workflow: An Industry Leading Analysis of Workflow Tools

Workflows was the topic of the second event on Tuesday 9 October, with our partner Nintex at the Microsoft Brisbane office.

Sharing Minds’ CTO Adam Clark explained the criteria upon which each workflow technology was judged and the overall process which led to Nintex being chosen during a recent customer engagement. Adam then gifted the audience with his Top 10 Workflow Selection Tips.

Request the slides to find out what Adam’s top tips are.

Nintex Sales Engineer Mathew Johnson demonstrated the ability of the Nintex platform to connect with Microsoft systems including Azure Cognitive Services, Dynamics and Office 365. The demonstration showcased the capabilities of Nintex, including Advanced Workflow, Connectors, Modern Forms, Mobile App, DocGen and Process Intelligence.

Adam Clark and Mathew Johnson

Adam Clark and Mathew Johnson

L to R: Ben Creamer, Amy Degnan, Mathew Johnson, Adam Clark, Geoff Boddington

L to R: Ben Creamer, Amy Degnan, Mathew Johnson, Adam Clark, Geoff Boddington


Event 3 | Office 365 & LiveTiles: Enabling a Modern Workforce with Intelligent Design

The final event of the series took place on Tuesday 23 October with our friend and partner LiveTiles at the Brisbane Microsoft office.

Toowoomba Catholic Schools’ Kevin Berry and Bill Medill walked the audience through their recent project with Sharing Minds to overhaul their corporate intranet site and encourage each of their schools to design their own intranet sites by embracing the capabilities of LiveTiles.

LiveTiles’ Director of the APAC region, Damien Neale, announced their Roadmap for 2019 and Dennis Drover, LiveTiles’ Innovation and Experience Specialist, rounded out the event by demonstrating LiveTiles’ functionality, showcasing the drag and drop design and search bar features.

L to R: Bill Medill, Ben Creamer, Kevin Berry, Damien Neale

L to R: Bill Medill, Ben Creamer, Kevin Berry, Damien Neale

Ben Creamer presenting

Ben Creamer presenting


Thank you all for joining us!

Keep an eye out on our Events page for more upcoming events. To receive your personal invitation, please contact events@sharingminds.com.au

Meeting the QGCIO Panel on Best Use of Teams

As part of my role at Sharing Minds I’m often called on to discuss various topics with our customers, particularly when it comes to features and use cases of various Microsoft tools.

Recently I had the privilege of speaking to the Queensland Government CIO Panel about Microsoft Teams.  I walked the panel through a series of advice and tips in guiding their usage and implementation of Teams.  It’s one of Microsoft’s hottest products at the moment, and careful management and guidance of any roll-out should be considered before implementation.

For any further information or for a chat around your implementation of Teams, please feel free to fill in the form below or give me a call on 1300 611 359.

Ben Creamer - Sharing Minds

Cheers,

Ben
Ben.Creamer(at)sharingminds.com.au


ENQUIRE NOW

TableFilter.JS - Part of a SharePoint Solution

tablefilter.jpeg

What options do you have when you’ve got several lists of data in SharePoint, and wish to present them as a merged, contiguous data set?

THE SCENARIO

Our client had developed several lists of contractor related information on licenses, technical and safety certifications, and medical/vaccination states, all with attached copies of certificates etc. Every time the HR Team needed to check someone's status or current qualifications, they needed to check each of these lists and download the files to desktop or a folder, before they could forward them to prospective clients.

THE REQUIREMENTS

Sharing Minds was approached to assist in developing a SharePoint-based solution to display a single consolidated view of the contractor details, and to allow the selection to be downloaded in a single archive of selected certificate files.

There was also the requirement for a ‘light weight’ solution with few or no libraries to be installed on the server.

OUR OPTIONS

Some of the default options such as a content query web part or search results were not suitable, as apart from 2 fields per list (e.g. ID  and Name) there wasn't a common content type or data structure.  

With no common content types, or other centralising elements that we could use it had become a custom solution, as we did not want to show tuples (i.e. repeated row caused by joining dissimilar lists). 

In a database, we could create a query using unions and joins and flatten it out.  

But we're using SharePoint.  

Using a client-side approach we were able to leverage JavaScript to create a common data structure of nested objects populated by a REST call per list, before pushing the compound list of objects into a table for display. 

Add in the further requirement to sort, search and filter by the many columns imported from the lists, and our first trial was with TableFilter.JS.

TABLEFILTER.JS 

Available from GitHub, well documented with great examples, Max Guglielmi has provided a great framework which takes our humble HTML table and puts a very handy HTML5 spin on it just by pointing it at the table ID.  

Starting out with simple text search on each field (Fig.1) it was able convert selected columns into multiple-checklist, drop down selectors.(Fig.2)

Fig. 1

Fig. 1

Fig. 2

Fig. 2

LIMITATIONS

Now there are caveats here.   

While it can do cascading filters based on selected column, multi-selector cascading filters (think Excel) are still on the feature request list (or we can recommend Chosen.JS if you want program it yourself). There is some limitation to the functionality of the library.  

However, given it is on an MIT license, it's a very generous framework and Mr Guglielmi has a set of commercial extensions available as well.  

So instead of a relatively static table or form which passes filter values back to a second, third etc. REST calls and data refresh, we have a large dataset which we can load, sort, filter and reset quickly and easily

Some of the limitations we encountered were time to load with very large data sets (20K+ items), especially when using Internet Explorer due to its rendering engine and loading dynamic content, as well as the default 5000 item list threshold on REST calls.  

If you’re having similar issues with your SharePoint environment and would like assistance, please contact our Service Delivery Team to arrange for a consultation.

Phone   1300 611 359
Email    info@sharingminds.com.au

Rob Bayly - Sharing Minds

Cheers,

Rob
Rob.Bayly(at)sharingminds.com.au

Microsoft Gold Partner: What does it mean to us?

Sharing Minds - Microsoft Partner - Gold Cloud Productivity

You might have recently seen our announcement about becoming a Microsoft Gold Partner in 2017.  It’s something that we as a solutions provider put a lot of effort and pride into as it distinguishes our business from others.

When you see the Microsoft Gold Partner badge, you'll instantly know that the Partner has met the rigorous requirements of technical examination grades, customer references and the stringent business competency requirements of Microsoft.  We invest time in our staff to study and to stay up-to-date on the latest technologies and even to certify them to make sure they carry a Microsoft qualification. 

It means we are officially endorsed to provide the highest level of expertise, strategic thinking and hands-on skills.  It also means we can offer our customers insights into Microsoft and their vast array of products and services. We are connected into behind-the-scene discussions and roadmaps so that our consulting services can guide you on the right technology path. A Microsoft Gold Partner can help you make the best choice with the greatest confidence.

The Gold Partner title also provides significant benefits to Sharing Minds, including accessing the full benefits of the Microsoft Partner Network (MPN) including unlimited technical support from the Microsoft technical engineers and Signature Cloud Support team

It means we’ll have the best minds on the job, at all times.

Sharing Minds - Ben Creamer

Cheers,

Ben
Ben.Creamer(at)sharingminds.com.au

Why are we excited about SharePoint 2019?

Sharing Minds - Jordan Bell - Why are we excited about SharePoint 2019.png

Some exciting news has been coming out of Microsoft's latest edition of the Ignite conference (Sept 2017), where more than 25,000 customers and partners converged to talk all things Microsoft.

Sharing Minds - SharePoint 2019

A great deal of announcements were made, including interesting applications of AI and mixed-reality into various products. As you might expect, the announcement we found the most exciting is the pending release of SharePoint 2019, expected in preview as soon as June this year.

Further announcements included big plans to better bridge the gap between on-premise environments and the cloud. While today only 35% of licenses are on-premise (reducing steadily from previous years), Microsoft is clearly still focused on providing businesses with both online and on-premises versions and supporting these with updates and improvements.

Reports from Microsoft MVPs give hope to the future availability of the modern experiences seen in SharePoint online in SharePoint Server 2019. This support could include the availability of modern Team and Communication Sites as well as the new Sync Client, which is said to be a vast improvement over its predecessor. SharePoint 2019 will also bring support for PowerApps, another tool which has become increasingly useful and powerful in SharePoint Online.

Communication Site

Communication Site

Team Site

Team Site

Broad plans also encompass the forthcoming Office 2019 productivity suite, as well as Exchange Server 2019, Skype for Business Server 2019 alongside the release of SharePoint Server 2019, outlined in a Collab365 Global Conference keynote talk hosted by Collaboris.

All of this means the next stage of releases will lay the groundwork for a better, more fully featured SharePoint experience no matter whether you are operating on-premise or online. With these platforms right around the corner, now is the time to begin planning how your organisation will evolve alongside.

Would you like some advice on your SharePoint 2019 roadmap?  We'd love to help, so please get in touch today.

Sharing Minds - Jordan Bell

Cheers,

Jordan
info(at)sharingminds.com.au

The Six-Month Milestone

Congratulations!  So, you’ve made it to six months, time to give yourself a pat on the back.  But before you pop the champagne, let’s take an audit of your first six months at Sharing Minds…

In such a short amount of time, we’ve achieved some pretty significant milestones.  I’m filled with a satisfying sense of...