Why mapping you may say? Because maps are useful, fun, and they are everywhere. They have become the essential tool for anyone looking for a specific location or driving directions. Maps are accessible via standalone desktop client applications, web browsers, mobile browsers and applications, GPS units, etc. In the business realm, maps get even more useful as they have power to present lots of complex geographic information in a simple visual way. A variety of business models can and should utilize mapping technologies on their internal and customer-facing web sites. To get some ideas, I encourage you take a look at an informative blog post written by my colleague Jason Heilig entitled How Virtually Any Business Can Improve through Utilizing Web Mapping Technology.

Why SharePoint? Because it’s a perfect environment for hosting data-driven applications in general. SharePoint is the content management and collaboration platform of choice for millions of businesses. It provides extensive collection of APIs that can be used to get any LOB application’s information into SharePoint, and expose SharePoint content via intranet, extranet, and public sites.

Although mapping solutions can be implemented using a variety of technologies, one of the best ways to do it for the web is to utilize Silverlight and Bing Maps. SharePoint 2010 and Silverlight are a match made in heaven – if you hosted a Silverlight application in MOSS 2007, you will appreciate how simple it is to do in the new version. SharePoint 2010 uses Silverlight to enhance user experience and provides an easy way for hosting Silverlight applications on any page. For more details, take a look at my blog post entitled Silverlight Enhancements in SharePoint 2010. Bing Maps provides the Silverlight Control API that makes it easy to utilize powerful mapping technology within your custom interactive solutions.

To show how to host a Silverlight application in SharePoint 2010, you will first need to create one. If you don’t already have one, you can follow the walk-through provided by Credera’s mapping and Silverlight expert Kevin King in his blog post entitled Building Interactive Maps with Silverlight and Bing Maps. This is not your typical Hello World application, is it?

My colleague and our CRM pro, Rick Gipson, has also written a similar blog post entitled Hosting a Silverlight Application in CRM 2011. If you use CRM within your organization, you should check it out.

So, here’s how to host a Silverlight solution in SharePoint:

• Upload the Silverlight application to a SharePoint library
• Add a Silverlight Web Part to any page
• Customize the Silverlight Web Part

Upload the Silverlight application to a SharePoint library

In order to be able to host a Silverlight application in SharePoint, all you have to do is to add it to a SharePoint library. Silverlight application is essentially a .XAP file that needs to be hosted in SharePoint. You can use Site Collection Asset Library, or any library within a sub-site. In my demo environment, I have a sub-site called Mapping, which has an asset library called Assets, where I uploaded the .XAP file. Since we will need the path to this file in the next step, just right click on the file within the library and choose Copy Shortcut in the context menu.

Add a Silverlight Web Part to any page

Navigate to a page where you want to add the map. Edit the page and click on Add a Web Part in the desired zone. Navigate to the Media and Content category, choose Silverlight Web Part, and click Add. A modal dialog will pop up asking you to enter the URL of the application package, paste the path you have in the clipboard and click OK.

Figure 1 – Adding a Silverlight Web Part

The mapping application should now render on the page. If you don’t see it, then check the path you supplied to the web part for errors.

Yes, you guessed it right, you can also display externally hosted Silverlight applications in SharePoint by providing their full URL to the Silverlight Web Part. Keep in mind though that this web part has a hard-coded timeout period of 5 seconds, so if for some reason the .xap file does not load during that time, you’ll get an error. There are some workarounds for that though.

Figure 2 – Silverlight Web Part Timeout Error

Customize the Silverlight Web Part

As usual, you can open the web part settings dialog and set the desired web part title, height and width, etc.

SharePoint also allows you to customize this particular instance of the Silverlight application using initialization parameters. So, if your Silverlight application accepts any, you can enter them as one string in the Custom Initialization Parameters field under Other Settings in the tool pane. Each parameter should be separated by a comma, as shown below:

param1=value1,param2=value2

Make sure not to add spaces in between the parameters. The maximum length of this string is 255 characters, so you need to be creative or use some workaround to fit all your parameters.

Figure 3 – Silverlight Web Part Properties

And here is the final result.

Figure 4 – Silverlight Map Hosted in SharePoint 2010

As you can see, hosting a Silverlight application in SharePoint 2010 is a pretty straightforward process. Not only can you host a Silverlight solution in SharePoint within minutes, but you can also customize it with the help of initialization parameters without much effort.

In the future posts, we will explore how to extend this application with data stored within SharePoint.

“At Credera, we have the opportunity to work with clients at various stages of Agile maturity and help them avoid some of the common pitfalls of Agile development. Our consultants and project managers use a variety of agile and traditional project management tools every day to help our clients,” said Bell.

Date: Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Time: 8:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m.
(breakfast & lunch provided)
Location: Bent Tree Country Club
5201 Westgrove Drive
Dallas, TX 75248

Registration is required.

At this seminar, you will have the opportunity to:

• Learn the core fundamentals of Agile development practices and what they mean to the various roles within your development team
• Understand how to apply software configuration management, continuous integration, static analysis, and quality management best practices within your team
• See how an integrated set of best-of-breed tools can help to enable quality, collaboration, and visibility for development teams, their managers, and executives
• Hear examples from industry leaders of how development organizations have reduced risk, boosted productivity, and cut development costs with Agile

To register to attend and view the event schedule, please visit http://acty-dallas-20120522-credera.eventbrite.com/

Seminar hosts include: Accurev, Credera, Electric Cloud, Rally Software, and Software Quality Engineering (SQE).

• Cloud Overview and Opportunities
• SharePoint Online
• Enterprise Content Management (ECM)
• Sites & Communities (Collaboration & Social Computing)
• Composites (Workflows)
• Search
• Business Intelligence (Insights)
• Development

One of the featured speakers is Jesus Salazar, a Principal with Credera and member of Microsoft’s SharePoint Development Advisory Council, who will present on Information Architecture: From Small Businesses to Global Enterprises. According to Salazar, one of the top reasons for success or failure in a SharePoint implementation is Information Architecture.  Poor Information Architecture leads to a farm being taken over by weeds and distracting information. Proper Information Architecture leads to users getting what they need, when they need it. Also, sites and enterprise portals are flexible enough for growth and organizational change. Join Salazar as he discusses the proper approach to information architecture, taxonomy, search, navigation, and other related topics.

Salazar has over 11 years of experience delivering enterprise IT solutions for large and medium-sized businesses throughout the United States. Salazar is a Microsoft Certified Professional who held a seat on the Office 14 Developer Advisory Council where he helped shape the features and architecture of the next generation of Microsoft Office and SharePoint.

One of the main attractions of this conference will be the lunch keynote speaker, David Cush, President & CEO with Virgin America. Cush plans to provide insight into how Virgin is using technology to revolutionize the airline industry.

For additional information about SharePoint TechFest 2012, or to register to attend, please visit www.sharepointtechfest.com. Use the promotional code, CREDERA50, for a $50 discount when registering. Conference attendees include technology leaders, business leaders, network managers, web developers, and designer developers.

Please stop by Credera’s conference booth for a chance to win a great prize. We look forward to meeting you and hope you find our presentation and session valuable!

But more often than not, that “fresh coat of paint” is only putting lipstick on a pig. Design is more than making something pretty, it’s a self-exploration process that can result in three significant insights for your organization.

1. Understanding Your Goals

A designer might have 500 opinions on your current design, but without the context of your goals, they’re just taking shots in the dark that don’t scratch your real itch.

Defining the goal is the first step in the UX Stack, Credera’s roadmap for making sure we solve a project’s goals. It also will help us pinpoint what you’re really looking to solve.

Are you looking to increase revenue? Increase conversion rates? Make customers happier? Make your checkout path more efficient? Defining the goal makes sure that a redesign solves actual problems. Design isn’t just a fancy form of self expression to make something look pretty. It’s how a product achieves your goals.

Design is a secondary issue that is usually representative of a much deeper primary issue that we’ll uncover in the early stages of the UX stack.

Once the goal is defined, we can begin to reframe the problem: design a faster horse versus inventing a new way to get around.

2. Redefining Your Problem

More often than not, projects start by modeling the opportunity – something like a business model or a business requirements document.

That approach is task focused, looking at what new things my users can do. It results in incremental improvements that can sustain a company’s growth for some time, but rarely does it produce an entirely new product class. Over time, it becomes the downfall of established companies.

The Design Process redefines the challenges facing the organization. It asks questions like “do you build a horse and buggy or do you build a means of transportation”? It is experience focused, understanding the underlying job you are doing for your users.

That’s in contrast to design as an outcome, which is the coat of paint delivered at the end of a project.

3. Focusing on the Experience, not Tasks

The iPad is not a new idea. Microsoft and their partners had been making Tablet PCs for nearly a decade. So why did Apple leave everyone in the dust?

They started with a different goal, one that was experience-focused: “create the best experience for things people do every day: email, web browsing, and photos,” as Tim Cook said in the iPad 3 announcement.

Microsoft focused on adding a task for laptops: the ability to touch the screen.

Reframing the core goal fundamentally shifts the design work. It forces you to think beyond features and what the product looks like. It detaches you from old ideas and starts with a blank canvas.

In the iPad’s case, it went so far that it eliminated all references to a traditional computer, ushering in the “Post-PC” era.

Microsoft added a bullet point to a feature checklist, Apple defined a new category of device.

Experience Design is about rethinking how your business can better serve your user’s pain points. How it looks is one tool in our kit, but a successful design project is about digging deeper, understanding your goals, redefining your problem, and often times rethinking why we’re even tackling the redesign in the first place.

• Enterprise Content Management (ECM)
• Power User
• Social SharePoint
• Infrastructure/Administration
• Composites (Workflow)
• Search
• Business Intelligence
• SharePoint Developer

One of the featured speakers is Jesus Salazar, a Principal with Credera and member of Microsoft’s SharePoint Development Advisory Council, who will present on Information Architecture: From Small Businesses to Global Enterprises. According to Salazar, one of the top reasons for success or failure in a SharePoint implementation is Information Architecture.  Poor Information Architecture leads to a farm being taken over by weeds and distracting information. Proper Information Architecture leads to users getting what they need, when they need it. Also, sites and enterprise portals are flexible enough for growth and organizational change. Join Salazar as he discusses the proper approach to information architecture, taxonomy, search, navigation, and other related topics in his session (SIA 103) from 1:30-2:30 MDT on day one of the conference.

Salazar has over 11 years of experience delivering enterprise IT solutions for large and medium-sized businesses throughout the United States. Salazar is a Microsoft Certified Professional who held a seat on the Office 14 Developer Advisory Council where he helped shape the features and architecture of the next generation of Microsoft Office and SharePoint.

One of the great reasons for attending SharePoint Fest Denver is that the seminars presented are focused on providing practical techniques and practices that you can put to work in your organization. For additional information or to register to attend, please visit http://www.sharepointfest.com/Denver. A 10% discount is applied when three or more people from the same organization register together. Conference attendees include technology and business leaders, architects, and developers.

For a chance to win a great prize, stop by Credera’ s conference booth in the exhibit hall. We look forward to meeting you!

The Windows Azure load balancer will often spread your application across multiple VM’s running on different servers. This nifty bit of magic is almost universally useful, unless your application relies on the use of the Session object. If a user makes a request to your application, there is no guarantee that subsequent requests will be routed to the same server. Imagine a user arrives at your eCommerce website hosted in Windows Azure and adds an item to his shopping cart. He then browses around the site for a while and decides to check out. His “check out” request is routed by the load balancer to a different VM, which was created automatically to handle the load of many users who are also shopping. The new VM says to this user, “Hey, you don’t have anything in your shopping cart.” The user thinks to himself, “I could have sworn I put those items in my cart!” He may have, but those items were stored in a Session object on the first server, by a programmer who didn’t know how to manage state in Windows Azure.

As an Azure developer, there are two primary techniques for managing state. The official method, supported by Microsoft, is using Windows Azure AppFabric Caching. This allows you to provision a cache in your cloud application, which can be rapidly accessed by the various roles in your distributed application. The most common uses are for output caching and, of course, for managing session state. If you only care about usability and convenience, there are almost no downsides to this approach. However, it is the most expensive option. The prices range from $45 per month for 128 MB of caching, up to $325 per month for 4 GB.

A somewhat less convenient, but far more cost effective, approach is to use the Table Storage Session Provider. This is part of the feature set of the Windows Azure ASP.NET Providers library, developed by members of the Windows Azure team. Although developed by the actual Azure team, this library is not officially supported by Microsoft. The Session Provider creates a Session table by default, so developers can use the Session[“key”] = “value” syntax by default, and it will persist across all roles in the application.

This approach preserves the familiar syntax of managing state, and is much lower priced. $0.14 gets you 1 GB of storage, and every 10,000 transactions per month is only $0.01. The downside is that there is some initial setup work to be done, such as changes to the webconfig, and the compiling and integration of the Windows Azure ASP.NET Providers library. In addition, developers will need to manually manage the rows in the storage table to emulate a true session object.

The Session table has a field which holds the time at which the session object stored in that row will expire. As a developer, you must manually check against this field and delete the row yourself when the expiration time occurs. Creation of session objects requires manual creation of table rows, and removal of session objects must be done manually as well.

Regardless of the approach that is best for your application, it is important to keep in mind that the standard ASP.NET state management will not work correctly unless you limit your Azure application to a single role. Doing so negates many of the most attractive advantages of the Azure platform. These techniques will allow you to manage session state in a way that keeps pace with the scalable, robust architecture of Windows Azure applications.

With my roles on change management projects, I’ve seen constructive, hard feedback at work with the client on several occasions.  For instance, Credera team leads regularly meet with executive sponsors on change management projects.  The meetings can be uncomfortable at times; however, the project sponsors respect the honest feedback.  As a result, we are able to deliver projects unlike others in their organizations, realizing benefits more quickly.

I recently read Daryl Conner’s Leading at the Edge of Chaos, and the book outlines a 10-step model that leaders will cycle through before becoming masters of creating change in their organizations.  Step 8 is Antabuse—a word I had never heard before.  After a quick Google search, I discovered it’s essentially “feedback” for those who struggle with alcoholism—if you take Antabuse, you’ll get sick if you drink.  This definition / analogy seems overly harsh at first, but the point is that effective feedback isn’t always fun to receive at first.  However, it does build strength, and it’s important to accept feedback (i.e., hear and act on it, not just listen) in order to become a master of change management.

All organizational change consultants should provide effective and frequent feedback for their client – even if involves having a hard conversation with your client or your project team.  What I find unique about Credera is that we take our own medicine.  It’s not always an easy pill to swallow!  Mr. Conner says that the current challenge for those who have mastered the leadership role of change is to “never let your confidence outweigh your humility”.

I had a chance to taste the medicine this summer after organizing a training project that received great response during the pilot launch.  My boss made recommendations during the initial rollout of what could be done to make it better based on many years of experience.  My immediate reaction was twofold: he was right, and how did I miss that myself?  If he would not have given feedback, my “iron” would not have gotten sharper, and I would have missed an opportunity to improve our delivery.

Whether you’re becoming an expert in leading change management or growing in another area, feedback will provide opportunities to improve.  This sharpening process will help refine the iron.

Although this capability is not new with the latest version of Dirsync, one of the most useful features of this tool is the ability to filter the Active Directory accounts synchronized to Office 365. Many organizations have a large number of application driven accounts, extranet accounts, service accounts or non-mailbox enabled accounts that would only clutter up the Office 365 directory.

The easiest way to implement filtering in Dirsync is to do so before it synchronizes with Office 365 for the first time. So it is very important to remember to uncheck the “Synchronize directories now” box when completing the Microsoft Online Services Directory Synchronization Configuration wizard. After that go to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Online Directory Sync\SYNCBUS\Synchronization Service\UIShell and double-click miisclient.exe to open the FIM 2010 interface.

Open the Properties of the SourceAD Management Agent as illustrated below.

To filter out Organizational Units containing accounts that don’t need to be synchronized, select Configure Directory Partitions on the left-hand pane and then click the Containers button on the right.

Clear the MSOL_AD_Sync account from the credentials prompt and supply domain administrative credentials. Then select the OUs that need to sync with Office 365.

To create more granular filters on searchable criteria, select Configure Connection Filter at the Properties page and Users on the right-hand pane.

For example, the filter illustrated below would omit any users without a mailbox.

Dirsync runs every 3 hours, the first time it syncs it will do so according the filter definitions set in the previous steps. Synchronization activity can then be monitored from the Operations tab of the FIM 2010 interface.

It is also possible to implement Dirsync filtering after the initial sync, but it is more involved and requires greater familiarity with FIM 2010. Credera has extensive experience in designing, planning and implementing Office 365 migrations. If you have questions about this post, upcoming posts or Office 365 in general, please contact us.

When skimming my Facebook feed this morning I noticed that a few of my friends had all read an article entitled “15 Things You Should Give Up To Be Happy.”   After reading it, I not only saw how these tips could be used for personal improvements, but also for professional improvements; in particular, for growing or refining successful leadership traits.  Some that stood out to me were …

Give up control

Good leaders are leading themselves, their families and others all the time.  This does not mean they are controlling everyone all the time.  Benevolent leaders put others interests ahead of their own interests. When they fail to do this they ask for forgiveness and seek to reconcile any relationships they have damaged.  Good leaders don’t try to control, they encourage, help and set others up for success.

Give up on blame

Blame will never lead to a resolution, as blaming someone else is an excuse and a waste of time.  Good leaders look for ways to move from issues to options. They provide clarity on the facts and a recommendation to move forward together towards something better.  Anytime you can blame a problem, you are missing the opportunity to owning the solution.

Give up resistance to change

In my previous article on Change Management, I discussed that change is an inevitable occurrence, and successful ownership and management of it can make or break companies and leaders.

Give up self-defeating self-talk

One of the hardest things to do is to overcome yourself. Character (not competence) is the iceberg that sinks many a leader. When you are a child, your parents tell you “you can do anything.” Contrast that with the “no you can’t” mantra that resonates in many organizations.  Self-doubt happens to all of us and it is important to fight the urge to allow passivity or discouragement to set in.

What other similarities do you see with some of these goals for being happier in the workplace and in life?   Will creating a personal leadership culture in your company cultivate happiness among your employees?

L stands for Listen

For most of us, listening is incredibly counter-intuitive. We want to speak, talk, gab and prattle. “I have something important to say,” we think, and if indeed the other person insists on speaking first, well then, I’ll use that time to think about what I want to say rather than listen! Instead, we need to slow down and actually (and actively) listen. Our clients and colleagues have important things to tell us. By actively listening, we get a chance to understand what is important to them, what is on their minds, what pain they are trying to eliminate, or what opportunity that they wish to seize.

A stands for Affirm

Affirming is important for two primary reasons. One, it gives us a chance to validate that we have heard the other person and that we think their words are valuable. (They wouldn’t be telling us, if it weren’t important, right?). Affirmation also gives us a chance to ensure that we heard the right things – to clarify. If I do not understand where a client or a colleague is coming from, then the rest of the conversation is likely to go nowhere productive…fast.

P stands for Permission

Permission to speak. Before I offer my perspective on something or give someone advice on what I think, how Credera could help, or what they should do next, I need to make sure that I have their permission. It’s the polite thing, and interestingly, I’ve never had anyone turn me down. (They may not have agreed with my perspective, or followed through on my recommendation, but they have always granted me the permission to offer up my thoughts on the matter).

D stands for Discern

Remember the beginning of this blog, when I was so eager to talk? Well, now I have a little more context (and I am glad I kept my mouth shut initially). I am better prepared to discern the words, message, approach, etc. that will be effective in helping my client or colleague.

With the right context through active (L)istening, the right understanding through (A)ffirming my counterpart, the (P)ermission to give my perspective, and the (D)iscernment to use the right messages, the right words, and the right solution, I am now ready to have a great and productive conversation and a better than average chance at helping a client or colleague solve their problem or seize their opportunity.

Right now, some bank run by some guy you’ve never met has nearly all of your money. Why is that? It is because his company has evolved a wide array of skills, infrastructure, and knowledge such that his ability to protect and distribute your money has exceeded anything you could hope to match, barring major investment and training. Similarly, Microsoft has brought to bear upon the problem of computing infrastructure vast experience, resources, and knowledge. Migrating data to Azure eliminates the expensive and failure-prone task of double specializing in both the business you are actually in and the IT industry.

Microsoft has constructed several hardened facilities around the globe in which to house their Azure services. In North America, those facilities are in Chicago, IL and San Antonio, TX. Each facility has the ability to remain fully functional in the event of power outages, including extended off-grid operation. Environmental controls are self-contained and will remain online for as long as the facility remains powered, either by the grid or by fail-safe mechanisms. Customers can also leverage geo-replication. Thus, if the Chicago facility suddenly explodes, your millions of dollars’ worth of data can be restored from the San Antonio backup. In addition, only a small number of operations personnel have access to the facility. They must regularly change their administrative access credentials and cannot access customer accounts without following a formal process that can only be initiated by the customer. The access each member of the operational staff has to the systems is proportional to the depth and breadth of background verification performed by Microsoft.

From a software perspective, redundancy and security are at the very core of Azure’s architecture. Each hosted service is divided up into a number of virtual machines (VM,) each of which runs an instance of a role within an application. The software for these roles is not granted administrative privileges for these VM’s. Any communication between the VM’s, as well as that of all internal components of the Azure architecture, is protected by SSL encryption. The various underlying components of the Azure system are also isolated. The Hypervisor (the daemon that manages the multiple VM’s as well as the root operating system) strictly enforces VM isolation, and is equipped with additional security abilities such as packet filtering (to prevent, for instance, VM’s creating spoofed traffic and other well-known security exploits).

It should be noted that while Azure automatically encrypts communications, it does not automatically encrypt your data. If you wish to store encrypted information in your Azure storage account, your application must first perform this encryption before sending the data to Azure. The .Net framework provides a convenient and powerful cryptography namespace that makes implementing the highest levels of encryption as simple as making a few function calls. No math degree required. Additionally, Azure will not protect data from an application whose design is inherently flawed from a security perspective. If you write an application that is blatantly vulnerable to SQL injection attacks, Azure will not compensate for your design. It is as secure as an application hosting and execution environment can be, but there is no substitute for a developer who designs with security in mind.

Another important safety factor for your data is availability. If the VM on which one of your role instances runs crashes, Microsoft has created software agents that constantly monitor such events and will gracefully move your role to a new VM. This will even protect from hardware failures, as the software agents can traverse the entire networked landscape to create new VM’s. There is also a sophisticated monitoring agent that engages in profuse logging and reporting, the contents of which are processed into human readable reports and made available to customers.

Microsoft has gone to great lengths to make Windows Azure an elegantly architected, high performance fortress. With guaranteed 99.95% uptime, stringent physical security, and robust failover mechanisms in terms of both electricity and software virtualization, customers can sleep well knowing their data is safe.

Perhaps your company is an early adopter of the Cloud.  If you are similar to many companies Credera advises, you may have encountered these questions:

Does it make sense to move to the Cloud?  What application(s) make sense to migrate?  What are the right planning tools?  Is a hybrid approach best?  What is the best approach for migrating to Office 365?

Jesus Salazar, a Principal with Credera and member of Microsoft’s SharePoint Development Advisory Council, presented on the topics of Office 365 Migration Planning and the 7 Key Governance Tools for Office 365 at Share Cloud Dallas in March 2012.  Salazar has over 11 years of experience delivering enterprise IT solutions for large and medium-sized businesses throughout the United States.  He is also a Microsoft Certified Professional who held a seat on the Office 14 Developer Advisory Council where he helped shape the features and architecture of the next generation of Microsoft Office and SharePoint.

Highlights from the Office 365 Migration Planning presentation include:

• Why Office 365?
• How to Plan, Prepare, and Migrate
• Considerations for Infrastructure & Exchange, SharePoint, Lync, User Experience, and Mobile
• Deployment Readiness Tools
• Tips, Tricks, and Pitfalls

Credera is here to address your questions, advise the best approach, and lead and/or implement the decision that is right for your company.  How can we help you?

I recently presented at a SharePoint Conference earlier this year laying out a handful of “Tools” that help with Information Sharing and Collaboration (ISC) Governance. You can view that presentation here – 7 Key Governance Tips for Office 365.  A lot people like to refer to ISC Governance as “SharePoint Governance” but I contest that Governance is not technology specific. Technology can drive the decisions you are forced to make but in true Governance, if you aren’t focusing on addressing problems within the business process or function, you may end up in the weeds really quick.

In full disclosure, some of the tools I have laid out may be easier to incorporate if you are currently using SharePoint but it is not required. At this conference we laid out 7 helpful tools (not necessarily 3rd party software tools but components or elements) that help support effective governance. If your organization is missing one or more of these, give them a try and see if it helps. Enjoy!

1. Collaboration Center of Excellence – This is not just a “Governance Team” although they sometimes do the governance. This is a team non IT people who are well educated with the problems and potential solutions around Information Sharing and Collaboration. The problem is that most of the time IT holds all of the knowledge or know how around this which can make it hard to get people bought into the solution. A good Center of Excellence empowers end users, promotes ownership of solutions, and increases helps to increase user adoption.

2. Governance Workspace – If you have SharePoint as part of your ISC, build a workspace! A secure SharePoint workspace helps provide continuity and accountability between governance meetings. This is especially important as people can get busy and attendance can be inconsistent sometimes. At a minimum, it promotes real world collaboration experience for the team and takes the theory out of it. This is also a great way for the team to challenge themselves to improve how they collaborate. Be creative with your site but KEEP IT SIMPLE!

3. CXO (where X != I or T) — An Executive Champion is critical for many reasons. First off, they are closest to business objectives and can provide direction and ensure business alignment. Second, they can ensure time and money are being invested appropriately to manage your information. Lastly, they can exert influence on the rest of your organization when needed to ensure people are listening and taking ISC seriously. Typically someone on the operations side of your organization will have the most clout. If you find getting someone like this on board, there are lots of amazing statistics on SharePoint, Lync, Exchange, or Enterprise Search that should catch their attention. Did you know that according to IDC, employees spend on average 10hrs per week simply looking for information?

4. Ongoing End User Surveys – Surveys are so simple to do in SharePoint or any decent portal technology and can help you keep a pulse on your user community. Getting objective feedback from users should always be a priority for any organization and anonymous feedback sometimes can help you get to the root of most problems quickly. Without a pulse on what users are getting value out of, you are shooting in the dark! If your responses are low, small incentives work wonders. It is amazing what people will do for a $5 Starbucks Gift Card!

5. Reporting/Auditing – Web analytics are immensely useful to understand what people have a hard time articulating or find difficulty remembering. Good analytic reports (Top Pages, Top bad urls, Top search keywords, Failed searches, etc.) are a goldmine and if used to proactively find problems can help you quickly resolve usability and user adoption issues. SharePoint on premise has most of these reports out of the box. If you are using SharePoint Online, you may need to add Google Analytics to derive most of this information.

6. Agile Development – Testing and Quality Delivery are generally one of the things that organizations try to focus on improving when it comes to ISC Governance. I believe that Agile development is a great model to follow to ensure users are spoon fed new features and tools in a digestible manner. Also as volatile and shifty as ISC can be, Agile will help you to ensure you are able to focus on business priorities as they ebb and flow.

7. The “Tune Up” – No matter how good you are at governance and how long you have been doing it, over time, a governance process can get stale and so can the team. What do you do when you are “out of good ideas”? GET A FRESH PERSPECTIVE. Find other organizations using similar technologies and share ideas. Technology conferences are a great place to meet like-minded people. Experienced consulting firms also have a wealth of knowledge. They typically have seen dozens and dozens of different problems and multiple solutions applied across a variety of industries.

Hopefully you found at least a couple of new ideas and things to try as you embark on your governance journey. As always, please don’t hesitate to contact me or Credera if there is anything we can help you with. All the best to you and good luck!

As partners, we:

• Focus on long-term strategic value
• Work together toward common goals and treat each other as teammates
• Build into each other (e.g., hold each other accountable to achieve business objectives, grow skill sets across the entire team, share risk and responsibility, maintain a set of core values, etc.)
• Communicate often and freely, including being free to discuss hard or unpleasant topics
• Celebrate and congratulate each other on successes
• Refrain from pointing fingers and instead become solution-focused during mistakes or problems

When clients think of us as vendors, it typically creates a different atmosphere and attitude:

• Focus on fulfilling short term need
• Motivated by other, perhaps unknown objectives (i.e., business, personal, or political)
• Willing to sacrifice others to meet those objectives
• Focus on protecting oneself or one’s company (e.g., grows skill sets of one person or party, acts defensive or choose to blame, transitions risk and responsibility, etc.)
• Only communicate what they perceive is necessary
• React defensively when discussing hard or unpleasant topics
• Receive all the credit when successful
• Look for someone or a group to blame in the face of adversity

Now, I’ve been successful with both types of clients, because that is my job.  Understand the business objectives, determine how to achieve those objectives, and make it happen.  That is what companies pay Credera to do.  The question I ask myself is, “Did we take this opportunity to meet our business objectives AND do something life-changing for our people (jointly), our client, the customers, our company, or our community?”  What if there was more benefit (i.e., strategic, financial, personal, or otherwise) that we could have gleaned from this situation?  Shouldn’t we always try to achieve more than we set out to do?

By now you are probably saying “Of course, but that sure sounds pie in the sky”.  Well, I have several client examples where it isn’t.  I’ll write about one …

I have had the pleasure of working with Kelly Beam, VP eCommerce and Customer Experience, at National Geographic Society (NGS).  The division for which she works generates revenue that is ultimately used to further NGS’ mission (i.e. to inspire people to care about the planet through conservation, research and exploration, and education).

Our firm has worked jointly with her team on a few different projects.  Let’s go back to our first development project together, though.  At the end of that project, we conducted a “Lessons Learned” meeting and spent 2 hours discussing what worked well and what needed improvement.  We celebrated achieving our project objectives and timelines, but we also talked about what didn’t go so smooth.  In that conversation, I really appreciated Kelly’s openness and frankness.  And even more, I appreciated that we each owned certain mistakes and focused on solutions to continuously improve our overall team performance.

In addition to enhancing our project execution, we discussed future development and customer experience needs.  My team articulated investments we thought would reap them significant rewards, and Kelly’s team communicated their initial strategy and roadmap for the next year.  From there, we drafted a joint plan and agreed priorities.   There wasn’t guesswork.  There wasn’t deceptiveness.  We spurred one another towards the right answers.

Two projects on their roadmap included enhancements to their eCommerce website as well as developing a mobile version of their website.  Fortunately they chose to expand our relationship, and we worked on these projects together.  We implemented some of the changes identified in our “Lessons Learned” meeting from the year before.  The result… better communication, clearer roles and responsibilities, improved testing cycles and processes, smoother deployments, enhanced trust, oh and of course, technology that worked as desired, was friendly for customers to use (e.g., mobile site rated 5 out of 5 on the Go Mo scale, etc.), and established long-term growth potential.

Now, I’m very respectful that they are the client.  They can work with whomever they want whenever they want.  And we continually seek to ‘win the right to keep them as a client’.  That is as it should be.  But, it isn’t a relationship that operates in fear or doubt.  Nor is it focused solely on short-term needs.  Instead, our continued relationship focuses on achieving business success, continuously improving, doing things the right way, and ultimately progressing National Geographic Society’s mission.  Now that is a greater purpose, indeed!  And one that makes me proud to be their Partner!

To determine if any Recipient Policies in Exchange 2003 have Mailbox Manager Settings, run the Get-EmailAddressPolicy “Policy Name” | FL command and verify that HasMailboxManagerSetting is set to False. If it is set to True, open the Exchange 2003 System Manager, go to Recipients, Recipient Policies and right-click the policy, select Change property pages… and uncheck Mailbox Manager Settings.

Unfortunately updating Recipient Policies that use LDAP filtering is not that simple. Running the following PowerShell command will upgrade all Recipient Policies:

Get-EmailAddressPolicy | where {$_.RecipientFilterType –eq “Legacy”} | Set-EmailAddressPolicy –IncludedRecipients AllRecipients

However, the upgrade will also convert each policy’s LDAP filter criteria into (&(mailnickname=*)) – which is basically a wildcard that applies to all mailboxes. The result of this conversion will be that the first policy with this mailnickname=* criteria will get applied to any mailboxes not subject to a higher priority policy. This has the potential to change users’ e-mail addresses and cause severe disruptions in message delivery.

In this case the best practice is to convert the LDAP filters to OPATH filters. There is a PowerShell script in the TechNet Script Center Repository that was written to convert existing LDAP filters to OPATH filters. Administrators can also remove policies and manually recreate them using a command like this:

Set-EmailAddressPolicy “Contoso.co.uk” -RecipientFilter {((MemberOfGroup -eq “CN=Contoso UK Users,OU=Groups,DC=contoso,DC=com”))} -EnabledPrimarySMTPAddressTemplate ‘SMTP:@contoso.co.uk’

This method should only be used during maintenance windows because it could cause brief delivery disruptions while being implemented.

No matter the approach, the takeaway is that any organization planning to implement hybrid coexistence between Exchange 2003 and Office 365 should evaluate their Recipient Policies beforehand and develop a strategy for updating them. Credera has extensive experience in designing, planning and implementing Office 365 migrations. If you have questions about this post, upcoming posts or Office 365 in general, please contact us.

Refusing to settle for what our culture tells us is appropriate is hard. Pushing back against steady cultural influence is a daily challenge. I’d like to share with you a little bit about what that might look like. It is a three-part strategy.

Sketch art courtesy of Floodgate Creative. Thanks guys!

Number 1. Loving what you do

This is your craft. This is the work that you enjoy pouring energy, time and thought into. You are better at this than most people. And, when you execute well your craft makes a significant positive contribution. It is fun to work on something and have it make a difference/impact. I love marketing. From my perspective marketing is the amplifier of truth. Truth in my business is great work. I love to use the marketing amplifier to help others see the great work that has been accomplished, the great people who did it and how it has ultimately helped others. When others see or hear the amplified sound of great work they want more of it. When they want more of it our firm grows. As our firm grows we build into more leaders and are able to be more generous with our resources. As we build into more leaders and are more generous the world changes. Truth permeates. Lives change.

Number 2. Loving who you do it with

This is pretty straightforward but incredibly important. Loving who you do it with has a double meaning. I love the people I get to work with. I really do love them. Sometimes I even tell them that. I know that may sound a little strange, but it is true and they need to know it. Everyone needs to know they are loved. They are incredibly smart, diligent, hard working and honorable people. Those I interact with have something unique and great to offer. Excellence inspires. The second element of loving my friends at work is the act of caring for them. I greatly enjoy opportunities to help using whatever resources we have to meet a legitimate need. This is fulfilling and I love it. Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t love people perfectly and have to ask for forgiveness often … but I really do love my friends here and they are gracious enough to forgive me when I mess up.

Number 3. Loving who you go home to

Again pretty straightforward, but also has a double meaning. My wife and kids are awesome. Everyone should have someone that is a friend to them like my wife is to me. She loves me in an unfair way, even with all of my issues. I love her too, a lot. Our kids are pre-adolescent and have maintained an innocence that is sweet, charming and whimsical. They inspire me to want to be great so they can have someone to look up to and emulate. On my best days they know the depth of my love and concern for them and do want to emulate me. On my worst days I am asking for forgiveness and experiencing grace. What a great group of people. I love them deeply.

Right now, I feel like I am exactly where I am supposed to be, doing exactly what I am supposed to be doing.  Life is short. Don’t waste it.

Many businesses today rely on a multi-faceted brand marketing approach, which has given rise to the average Exchange organization supporting significantly more than a single e-mail domain for their business users. Organizations with a large number of messaging domains will find that this increases the complexity and cost of establishing hybrid coexistence with Exchange Online due to prerequisites that must be met for each domain. Both the Office 365 portal and the Manage Hybrid Configuration wizard employ proof of ownership verification via DNS. Office 365 verification involves querying public DNS for a TXT record in this format:

Office 365 verification subsequently populates the list of accepted domains available to be added in the Manage Hybrid Configuration wizard. The wizard then requires further proof of ownership in the form of a public DNS TXT record in this format:

This TXT record is comprised of 86 randomly generated characters and is suffixed by two = symbols

The Manage Hybrid Configuration Wizard also requires both public and internal DNS A records for the Outlook Autodiscover Service. Each messaging domain must have autodiscover.domain.com pointed to the hybrid server. The reasoning behind this requirement is that a large percentage of support calls to Microsoft are driven by difficulties configuring Outlook to connect to the appropriate server. The Autodiscover Service does this for end users and all they are required to provide is their e-mail address and password. So regardless of whether or not an organization plans to support Outlook as a messaging client, they will be compelled to build the infrastructure to support it in order to establish hybrid coexistence.

In addition, the Manage Hybrid Configuration wizard also requires a Subject Alternative Name (SAN) certificate that includes entries for Outlook Web App, SMTP TLS communication and each messaging domain’s autodiscover FQDN.

New Exchange Certificate wizard in the Exchange Management Console

Provisioning these resources in a timely manner can be complicated if the organization’s public DNS is not centrally hosted and managed. SAN certificates can support up to 100 alternative names, but again coordinating approvals for every domain included in a timely fashion can be complicated for decentralized organizations. Large capacity certificates are also costly and should be budgeted for accordingly.

The bottom line is the Manage Hybrid Configuration wizard (ergo hybrid coexistence) will fail if any of the above mentioned resources are not accounted for. Credera has extensive experience in designing, planning and implementing Office 365 migrations. If you have questions about this post, upcoming posts or Office 365 in general, please contact us.

Some of the items should be fairly straight forward. Historical data can generally provide an estimate of bandwidth and database usage, but when it comes to calculating compute instances and VM size, many IT Managers will find themselves uncertain what they would need. To assist in this, let’s first take a look at the VM role sizes offered by Microsoft.

The prices per month for each, at the time of writing, are $30, $90, $180, $360, $720 from ExtraSmall to ExtraLarge respectively. So with the exception of the transition from ExtraSmall to Small, going to the next size VM is exactly twice the cost, which, is mirrored in the increase of resources you get at each level. With each step, CPU Cores, Memory, Disk Space, and Bandwidth are all doubled from the previous. If this is the case, then, is there any advantage to any one of these over the others? The answer is yes. In the majority of cases, the best bet will be to go with the small instance, with the reason being that because all of these resources scale equally to cost it is possible to achieve the exact equivalent to a larger VM simply by increasing the number of instances. For example 8 small instances is equivalent to one ExtraLarge instance, with the advantage of the fact that when not needed these small instances can be turned off and will cost nothing.

By hosting the application in this manner, it increases the effectiveness of the number one reason that a business would transition to the cloud anyway – Scalability. Obviously 16 smaller instances can be more finely adjusted to the application’s usage than 2 ExtraLarge can. If traffic gets higher or lower than expected, two Small Instances can be added at $180/mo for the time that they are running, versus adding another ExtraLarge for $720/mo.

The only exception to using the smallest instance, is in the case of the ExtraSmall, which offers only 1/20 of the bandwidth of the Small, making it only feasible for very lightly accessed applications or, more likely, a QA environment.

From this point, it becomes much easier to estimate the compute instance requirements of migrating the application to Windows Azure. Take the current server(s) total resources (CPU, RAM, etc) and find how many Small instances it would take to recreate it. This gives a good starting point, however, remember that these instances can be turned on and off to meet demand, and beyond the first instance, there is no charge when the instances are off. This can lead to significant cost savings, and is the primary incentive to migrating to the cloud.

“Investing in our local communities with other business leaders is a very important part of the Credera culture. Great leaders set the pace for positive change in their communities. It is a privilege to work along-side many of these leaders as Credera clients and friends,” said Salazar.

Credera is a proud supporter of the Colorado Technology Association and recently Co-Sponsored the C-Level @ A Mile High event on March 15, 2012.

Credera Denver Office Address:

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In Windows Azure, the maximum database size is 50GB. The reason for this? The idea is that the data should be ‘partitioned’ by logical divisions that make the data as scalable as the application is. Essentially the goal would be to change the above scenario to one more like this:

In this scenario, the data spans across several databases and possibly across datacenters. This is not redundancy, although Windows Azure certainly supports it, this is partitioning of the data. Each of these four databases holds a portion of the total data for the application, and to get the most out of this separation, careful thought must be placed into how the data is divided.

So, how should the data be divided? Geographic region is usually a good first thought. For instance, consider an application that serves up data for a distributorship. Let’s say that this distributorship has 5 geographic regions that it serves. The Windows Azure application could use 5 separate SQL Azure databases, rather than one large one. In each database, the data for each individual geographic region is stored (accounts, contracts, sales, etc). The application would have access to all 5 of the databases; however, the vast majority of queries to the data will only need to hit one of these databases. Dividing the data in this manner has made it significantly more scalable than one single database connection would be.

The catch here is that it is extremely important that a great deal of thought is put into how to divide the data. If the application is often doing read/writes on data from several of these databases, then it could actually slow the application. Every application will be different, and once the decision is made, it will likely be difficult to change the way it is partitioned. But done correctly, the application will scale much better.