Wednesday 21 May 2014

End of Office 365 Auto-Hosted Apps & Getting Most out of Sharepoint


 5 Pointers for Sharepoint and Auto-Hosted Apps migration

5 Tips to get the most out of SharePoint and information about Office 365 Auto-Hosted Apps Migration.


Microsoft has recently announced that the Office 365 Auto-Hosted Apps Preview program will end on June 30, 2014. This means effective from June 30th developers will not be able to create new Auto-Hosted apps in SharePoint. Before we press the panic button, read here  about the announcement from Microsoft. Vendors have to migrate from Auto-Hosted Apps to provider hosted apps, you may find the instructions for Auto-Hosted app migration here

While such announcements are proof that SharePoint is getting more streamlined, its high time organizations think about Maximizing Value and Getting the Most out of SharePoint. 

Below are the Top 5 pointers that can kick start your thinking:-

1. Clear strategy :

While the upcoming workers are more interested and accustomed to social collaboration which is an unstructured collaboration like (chat, file sharing, online meetings, real-time connections), many organizations still depends on the structured collaboration (document lifecycle, workflow-enabled activities, team sites). SharePoint is a great collaboration tool, which can bridge the gap between unstructured and structured collaboration. However organization should have clear policies and strategies that align to social collaboration to make the best use of SharePoint.

2. Search:

Search is perhaps the most important and definitely business critical feature. Also this is the number one reason why people get most dissatisfied with SharePoint. Microsoft made huge investments in improving the search experience within SP2013. There are wide array of features that organizations must use to solve this problem.

3. User Adaptation:

The worst nightmare for organizations while investing in SharePoint is the user adaptation. Business users struggle with SharePoint and most of the time does not explore more than the document upload. While training and designing UX is the key point to overcome this issue, there is also a small catalyst that can help. Provide a social identity to your users and enable them to rate, comment and tag. Provide accurate organization chart and Target information. Most importantly sync activities to outlook via social connector. In short give everyone a profile page, a social identity and see how quickly your employees turn into SharePoint ambassadors

4. Governess:

In simple who does what. Implementation of SharePoint will do wonders, if only everyone knew their roles and rules. Design a clear role chart and assign it to your employees. For example who does the Industry news, and how often this person needs to update the content of Industry News.

5. Content:

Last but definitely not the least is the content. SharePoint itself isn’t going to do anything for you without good content. While assigning roles helps to bring in the content, it’s often the quality of content that would help your organization. A good place to start would be, how often you would update your organization chart and whether your employee contact information is latest.

SharePoint is a great tool and that’s why it’s in the spotlight all the time. If you haven’t already implemented SharePoint or struggling with any aspect of it then finding the right consultant to help you would be a worthy investment. Please feel free to visit our page and check out the SharePoint services we provide. If you have any comments about the article please feel free to write it in the comment section.

Best
Srivats
Srivatsan Aravamudan


Srivatsan Aravamudan

Design and Communication

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Thursday 8 May 2014

Can mail attachments be converted into meaningful reports ?

How would you collate files of different types sent as attachment to the system into central repository and produce meaningful reports?

Let me introduce the MailCube, our state of art web apps that was developed for a client in service industry.  The challenge is to gather, save, sort and process the data sent via email as attachment and produce meaningful reports instantaneously to the client who has sent the data.

To achieve this complex task, we have developed the MailCube which collaborated our two expertise – Data warehouse and Business Intelligence. MailCube uses ETL to extract and process data, while Business Intelligence is used to produce reports and dashboards to aid the management in making business decisions at ease. Below Image shows the overall process.

MailCube contains the following stages:


Email Listener: 

Runs 24 hours 7 days a week and checks the email system for new attachments.
When a new email arrives with attachment, the email listener grabs the file and sends it to file process

File Process :

Segregates the files according to type and system
Extracts Data and prepares it to be uploaded to central repository
Data sent to SQL Database

SQL Database:

Data is read and stored into the database
Data is processed for next stage
Data is sent to Data writer

Data Writer :

Prepares reports based on pre-defined report schema definition
Sends the reports to the client via Email

Helpdesk:

Monitors the errors and alerts
Recurring errors are identified and customers are notified for subsequent actions

MailCube has reduced the processing time for the customer substantially, sending the processed data and reports within few minutes from the time the raw data is sent via email. Data warehouse and Business Intelligence could be best used in unison and this project is live proof of that.  Are you facing similar situation? What kind of solutions you have used to overcome this challenge? Please feel free to write your thoughts in the comment section


Srivatsan Aravamudan
Design and Communication

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