Getting the most from Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010
This week we were at the SharePoint User Group in Edinburgh (perhaps one of the less well known Fringe attractions).
The event is held every couple of months at Microsoft’s offices on Princes Street and it’s an excuse to find out what is happening in the Sharepoint world and in the Microsoft Scotland community generally.
As we’ve discussed on a number of occasions previously, SharePoint 2007 and 2010 are mammoth products, meaning it is sometimes difficult to know just what you can use SharePoint for or where to start. However helping to resolve those issues Tara Hellier of Microsoft gave an insightful presentation on the use of Microsoft Project Server with SharePoint 2010 Enterprise edition. Tara was able to cover some of the valuable new features in Microsoft Project Professional Edition for the desktop and the increasingly important Sharepoint relationship.
Importantly, the new version of MS Project Server now requires a SharePoint Enterprise license to run – this is a few steps up from previous versions where the product was stand-alone or could work with the “free” version of SharePoint - WSS 3. The advantage of the jump to the enterprise license of SharePoint is that it now has far greater collaboration capabilities, and takes advantage of the new ribbon user interface that is now familiar across the Microsoft 2010 range of products.
In brief once you have Project Server and SharePoint Server installed, the analysis you can do on your projects is simply astounding:
• By managing projects and synchronising them with your Project Server, team members can update the project plan allowing you to show live project progress.
• You can analyse your planned projects and Project Server will tell you which combination of projects will give you the best return given your budget and resource constraints.
• Project server will let you analyse the most efficient new hires to make by skill set, and let you know which projects they should be used on to give you the best return on your investment.
If you need to know how to get the most from your Microsoft SharePoint 2010 deployment, give Objective Associates a call on 01786 430076