Session Abstracts

SharePoint Sessions:

Accelerate the Future by “Caching-In” for SharePoint Performance
Speaker: Sean McDonough

Caching is a critical variable in the SharePoint scalability and performance equation, but it’s one that’s oftentimes misunderstood or dismissed as being needed only in Internet-facing scenarios. In this lively and fast-paced session, we’ll build an understanding of the caching options that exist within the SharePoint platform: object caching, BLOB caching, page output caching, and the Office Web Applications’ cache (for SharePoint 2010). We’ll examine each option in detail, discuss how it works, identify how it can be controlled, and cover common pitfalls that may impact its use. We’ll also walk through a handful of “what if” scenarios at the end of the presentation to test audience knowledge (just for fun, of course!) Those who attend this session will leave with the knowledge needed to leverage and control caching in their own SharePoint environments.

Benchmarking Governance with the SharePoint Maturity Model
Speaker: Sadi Van Buren

As SharePoint gains in popularity and adoption worldwide, an increasing number of resources are available to help organizations understand and navigate the different aspects of this platform. What’s missing is a cohesive way to analyze and understand the whole.
The SharePoint Maturity Model applies a holistic view to a SharePoint implementation, and brings standardization to the conversation around functionality, best practices, and improvement. The speaker will take the audience through the competencies and levels, share current data from assessments against the Model, and provide templates for self-assessment.

Case Study: Using MMS in Site Creation to Drive Search-ability
Speaker: Chris Givens

Learn how to create an advanced end user site creation process that utilizes Managed Metadata to solve the content search problem.

Coding for the Future – Substaining Upgradeable Patters for SharePoint Development
Speaker: Rebecca Isserman

Confused on how to get your code into SharePoint 2010? 2012 is the year to get your lingering 2007 solutions into 2010 as the first step in your next upgrade. In this session we will use some real world examples of upgrading code from VSEWSS, WSPBuilder, Custom Built Visual Studio Solutions. We will actually upgrade these solutions and discuss the ins and outs involved in upgrading each solution type. We’ll also discuss building upgradeable solutions in the future for vNext using 2007 to 2010 upgrades as examples. You will leave with clear advice on how to get your code upgraded and running with Visual Studio 2010 tools so you are ready to take advantage of all the power that they offer.

Commerical Model for SharePoint 2010 Private Cloud
Speaker: Zlatan Dzinic

Many large enterprises are considering either using Office 365 cloud solutions or investing in their own Private Cloud. In case of SharePoint 2010 Private Cloud, enterprises are struggling to realize ROI and way of recovering the cost of both implementing the Private Cloud solution and maintaining it at the same time. This session will cover Private Cloud SharePoint architectures for large enterprises, governance and commercial model for recovering cost and realizing return on investment.

Data Visualization with SharePoint and SQL Server 2012
Speaker: Paul Swider

One key factor driving the self-service BI market is the growing volume and complexity of data. As a result, enterprises will adopt new interactive reporting tools designed to put more data analytics capabilities into the hands of business users. In this session you will learn what self-service reporting tools are available in SharePoint and how they can be used to create business solutions.

Deep-Dive into FAST Search Architecture
Speaker: Chris Givens

This session will explore the various architectural components of FAST Search including installing, configuring, customizing and maintaining FAST Search for SharePoint 2010.

Demystifying SharePoint Information Architecture & Governance: A Real World Approach for Implementation Success
Speaker: Ben Curry

If you want to learn a practical approach to designing information architecture and governance, this is the session for you! Come see how to create URL taxonomies, noun taxonomies, and associated process discovery methods in a simple and straight-forward approach. Last, we’ll take a look at using Managed Metadata Services and other enterprise content management product features to meet the requirements defined in the first half of the session. We’ll discuss how and when to leverage multiple managed metadata service applications to meet your ECM, process automation, and collaboration needs.

Designing and Testing a SharePoint Server 2010 Farm
Speaker: Ben Curry

All of the options and endless combinations of configuration SharePoint options and service application topologies can be overwhelming. This session provides a thoughtful approach to designing your SharePoint Server 2010 server farm and gives you confidence that you are heading in the right direction. You’ll learn how to architect SharePoint Server 2010 for performance, and get live demonstration of performance testing tools! SharePoint Server 2010 has lots of flexibility in how an ITPro can architect a server farm. This session will give the attendee a solid understanding of farm services and help you make intelligent decisions when designing and implementing SharePoint Server 2010 server farms. The second half of the session will be full of tips, tricks, and tools to aid you in tweaking server farm performance. As usability, maintainability, and security must be ‘baked in’ and not ‘spread on’, these concepts will be guiding principles throughout the session.

Extending InfoPath with SQL Server 2012 Business Intelligence Features
Speaker: Paul Swider

Increasingly, organizations are building InfoPath based form solutions. In addition InfoPath is being used to represent business process and workflow. Do you know how to leverage the rich reporting features in SharePoint and SQL Server with InfoPath data? In this session you will learn valuable techniques which can be used to create interactive reports and dashboards using data captured using InfoPath forms.

Getting Ready for SharePoint vNext
Speaker: Chris McNulty

Microsoft’s next version of SharePoint is on the horizon – but there’s plenty of time to tune up your SharePoint 2010 environment to make things better now AND better for an upgrade. Based on a review of current upgrades, architecture, and content management, we’ll give you a smooth readiness plan for your current SharePoint system. We’ll review SharePoint maturity, best practices in coding, content consolidation, interface readiness, and database optimization.

Governance Planning Best Practices – Part 1: Setting the Stage
Speaker: Susan Hanley

A SharePoint solution without a governance plan is like a day without sunshine. It’s sad, it’s depressing, and you often have to change your plans and expectations, which leaves a lot of people dissatisfied!

In this two-part session, governance expert Sue Hanley will provide an overview of why governance planning is so important (and how to make sure you get the budget to do it) and then provide a step-by-step approach for having the appropriate conversations to create a practical, effective, and “consumable” governance plan for your SharePoint project.

In Part 1, you will learn detailed, practical recommendations for your SharePoint 2010 Governance Plan – why you need it, how to “sell” the concept, and how to ensure that your governance plan gets adopted.  You will take away specific ideas that you can apply to create a sustainable governance plan for your SharePoint 2010 solution.

Governance Planning Best Practices – Part 2: Show Me How
Speaker: Susan Hanley

In Part 2 of this two-part session, governance expert Sue Hanley will walk through the specific steps she uses to gather the information and obtain the decisions necessary to develop an effective SharePoint governance plan. You will leave this session with a detailed, practical, step-by-step approach that you can use to create a governance plan that works for your organization. You will get outlines for each governance workshop session and specific recommendations for how to ensure that your SharePoint solution drives sustainable business success.  For the most value, try to attend both Part 1 and Part 2.

Heavy Metal PowerPivot Remastered
Speaker: Jason Himmelstein

Undoubtedly, PowerPivot is the shiny new toy in the Microsoft BI toolbox, but installing and configuring this powerful new addition to the SharePoint stack can be a daunting task. Join us in this session as we help navigate you through the pitfalls and traps to a successful implementation. We’ll show you the best practice for configuration and discuss some implementation choices and the reasoning behind them. We will also give a comparison of features between SQL Server 2008 R2 & SQL 2012 to help ease the decision of jumping in to a new version.
In the second half of this action packed presentation we will show you some flashy examples of PowerPivot in action, give you an understanding of how dynamic a tool the new version of PowerPivot really is, & take you on a guided tour of Power View. Lastly we will show you the integration between the new SQL 2012 features & SharePoint 2010 and how the experience has improved in the new version.

jQuery and SharePoint – More than just a pretty face
Speaker: Mark Rackley

When you think of jQuery your mind may immediately drift off to scenes of fancy buttons, hidden fields, and groovy animations. However, the power of jQuery can also be harnessed to create powerful business applications that before could only be accomplished by cracking open Visual Studio. In this fast past paced session learn how to:

  • Use jQuery with the Client Object Model and SPServices to quickly and effectively interact with data from SharePoint
  • Use jQuery in conjunction with third party API’s like Bing Maps to interact with SharePoint
  • Create powerful interactive reports that make your users sing your praises.

Leveraging external data sources in your SharePoint Designer workflows
Speaker: Phillip Wicklund

In the real world your business processes don’t stop where SharePoint ends. Enterprise BPM solutions require you to integrate many systems, such as SharePoint, line of business applications such as Great Plains and SAP, as well as services such as Biztalk and WCF. This session helps take your SharePoint Designer workflows into a new frontier by allowing your power users to easily connect to and interact with external systems. You’ll see a brief demo of BCS/SPD integration, but then we’ll dive into custom SPD actions and conditions that leverage pluggable workflow services and external data exchanges to communicate and receive events from external systems. Also, we’ll cover how to create custom parent/child workflows within SharePoint Designer, whereby you can have a parent workflow start and wait for child workflows that reside in a completely different farms!

Managing the SharePoint Disruption with End-to-End SharePoint Governance
Speaker: Dan Holme

In many organizations, SharePoint is a disruptive technology: It’s no longer business-as-usual for users, for developers, for IT, or for the enterprise. SharePoint shines a spotlight on everything that’s good and bad about your business processes, project management, change management, information management policies, and IT service delivery. Governance—from the business strategic to the technical level and everywhere in between—is critical.
SharePoint MVP Dan Holme shares the experience and lessons learned from thousands of IT professionals, managers, developers, end users and CIOs around the globe. This comprehensive discussion will highlight the business, cultural, and technical impact of SharePoint on an organization, and the steps you can take to plan for and implement SharePoint as a platform that will scale to support your dynamic requirements.

Organizational Change Management – Creating an Adoption Strategy
Speaker: Erica Toelle

How to analyze the organization’s culture (politics, readiness, etc) to create a strategy for training, communication, and stakeholder & leadership support. Includes deliverable templates.

Real World Enterprise Social Computing Governance Strategies
Speaker: Shadeed Eleazer

Implementing a successful Corporate Social Networking Governance Plan is a topic that has become a necessity for organizations seeking to leverage the enterprise features of SharePoint 2010. In this session, attendees will gain an understanding of how collaboration impacts Social Networking, and the methods for ensuring successful Social Networking
adoption both internally and leveraging popular Social Networking platforms for business usage.
Topics covered within the Real World Enterprise Social Computing Governance Strategies
include:

  • Analyze the key Enterprise feature dependencies that are essential to a winning social strategy
  • Identify the main sections that must be included in any successful Social implementation
  • Demonstrate how Managed Metadata, Site Columns, and Content Types are used to fine tune SharePoint 2010 Data and People Search results.
  • Share strategies and best practices to improve Corporate Social Networking Buy-In for technical professionals.
  • Detailed demo of key Enterprise social features and deliver strategies for increasing user adoption based on case studies and real-world examples
  • Introduce templates, policies, and examples for proper management of Tagging and Notes, Enterprise keywords to improve folksonomies within workcenters
  • Explain the importance of creating Social Networking policies and guidelines leveraging examples from various business sectors
  • Discuss key strategies for implementing Social Networking into training, documentation, and Knowledge Management
  • Explain the roles that Site Owners, Power Users, and Management play in the Enterprise rollout of a Corporate Social Networking strategy

SharePoint 2010: Making Application Governance Work
Speaker: Jamison

In the second part of a three-part series, Scott Jamison discusses the importance of SharePoint governance. This session focuses on part two: application governance, which focuses on the custom solutions that your organization will likely build within SharePoint. This session discusses the customization policies that developers and power users can/should/must adhere to, and key recommendations for keeping SharePoint solutions well-organized and well-behaved.

SharePoint and ADFS together like – like peanut butter and jelly
Speaker: Rick Taylor

Supporting authentication and authorization for SharePoint can be challenging, especially if you have partner organizations involved. Claims-based authentication provides you with the ability to authenticate across multiple platforms. Come to this session and learn how the two products come together in order to support federation.

SharePoint and Silverlight From the Ground Up
Speaker: Bob German

SharePoint 2010 and Silverlight 5 are a winning combination for building rich, interactive solutions for intranets and extranets alike. During this session, you’ll learn how to incorporate Silverlight into connected web parts, editor parts, navigation and field controls to enrich the gamut of SharePoint UI solutions. You’ll also see how to integrate Silverlight with jQuery and the SharePoint ribbon and other UI features.

SharePoint Branding Essentials for Developers
Speaker: Derek Cash-Peterson

This presenation will discuss the planning necessary to start a WCM development project and how to carve up a design comp into master pages and page layouts. We will do code demos on the use of site templates, content types, wiring up MMS fields. Also we will start to look at commonly used items that you can start your toolbox with such as expanding navigation and linear breadcrumb controls. Finally, we will show how to deploy branding related code to your SharePoint environment and doing the initial design QA on the site.

Technical Drilldown of Power View in SharePoint 2010
Speaker: Zlatan Dzinic

This session will cover highly technical, behind the scenes overview of Power View in SharePoint 2010. It will also provide suggested architectures for Power View, example solutions, all the way to best practices for building performant Power View reports with demos.

The Undiscovered Country: I Have Excel, I Need PerformancePoint, and I’m Afraid of Analysis Services
Speaker: Chris McNulty