5 Safety Concerns of Using SharePoint on Mobile Devices

The growing popularity of smartphones and tablets has encouraged many companies to upgrade their existing software by including specialized features and functionality to target the new users. Microsoft has upgraded SharePoint with loads of features to target some of the most popular mobile operating systems including Windows, iOS and Android. The mobile capabilities have made it easier for many application developers and resellers to optimize their users’ mobile experience without putting any extra time.

At the same time, these features have enabled users to access a variety of content on their mobile devices anytime and anywhere. Most companies, nowadays, allow their staff to access corporate resources through their mobile devices to reduce project cost. With more and more users accessing SharePoint 2013 on their handheld devices, it has become essential for companies to keep the mobile experience of their employees and customers safe and secure.

So the IT department often finds it a daunting challenge to completely control the way the corporate resources are being accessed by various stakeholders. Many companies even look for the best techniques to prepare a comprehensive SharePoint mobile security plan. However, you can always concentrate on some common mobile security measures to ensure that your employees and clients will access SharePoint content without compromising the security of sensitive corporate content. This can help you unleash the powers of custom sharepoint development while keeping security strengthened.

5 Common Security Guidelines for Using SharePoint on Mobile Devices

Securing Content when the Mobile Device is Lost or Stolen: In comparison to computers, the chances of a mobile device being lost or stolen are much higher. So you must make a policy to protect the sensitive documents and data of your company, in case a user’s mobile device is lost or stolen. If a person is allowed of access corporate resources on his smartphone or tablet, he must be asked to protect his mobile devices through a lock or pin. Also, you must explore options to remotely wipe out the documents and data stored on the mobile device. As the security features vary from one mobile device to another, you must implement policies by targeting the major mobile operating systems.

Protecting Users’ Login Credentials: Most mobile devices allow users to store their username, password, and similar credentials. Some devices even use cookies to store the login credential of users. So you must train your staff about the most effective way to protect their credentials. After completing a task, the user must sign out of the corporate website. Similarly, they must disable all options that allow them to remember their passwords or keep them signed in. It is also important to delete cookies on their mobile browser on a daily basis. These measures will make it difficult for unauthorized users to access the corporate resources in case the mobile device is lost or stolen.

Protecting Communication between Server and Mobile Device: Most users access the data and documents of their organization through their mobile web browsers. So you must implement a strategy to secure the communication between your SharePoint Server 2013 and mobile web browsers. You can always keep the communication secure by enabling SSL. You can even consider using Forefront Unified Access Gateway (UAG) or any other reverse proxy server to keep the communication secure. By securing the communication, you can further minimize the chances of your corporate resources being hacked.

Activate Exchange ActiveSync Protocol: As a communication protocol, Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync is effective in optimizing the device-side security. The protocol is presently available for Windows phones and other third-party mobile devices. You can further administer the device security by administering a comprehensive policy. Normally, the mobile devices of users access the SharePoint Server 2013 through a public-facing URL. So the SharePoint data and documents will remain inaccessible in case a mobile device is lost or stolen. Also, you can use the protocol to remotely wipe a variety of data from the mobile device. The protocol also enables you to prevent unauthorized access by displaying a lock screen that will force the users to enter a complex password.

Impose Multiple Authentications: Microsoft has further updated SharePoint 2013 with multiple authentication modes and methods. However, all authentication methods and modes may not be supported by each mobile device. So you have to make a comprehensive list of mobile devices that your employees use for accessing the corporate resources. Based on the supported mobile devices, you have to understand and implement the relevant authentication modes. Also, you have to decide the files, documents and resources that you will allow your staff to access on mobile devices. If you have made SharePoint sites, it will be easier to decide the mobile devices that can be used to access the resources externally. The external access restrictions will also have a impact on the authentication methods selected by you.

It is also important to review the guidelines for using SharePoint on mobile devices to make the security arrangements stronger and more effective. At the same time, you should also explore the latest security measures recommended by Microsoft to keep your corporate resources secure and inaccessible.

We provide Sharepoint development services. If you would like to know what makes us expert SharePoint developers, please contact us at Mindfire Solutions.

SharePoint and Social Media Goes Together for Unlimited Benefits of Businesses

The social media has become an inextricable part of modern lifestyle. With millions of people using major social networking platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin on a daily basis, the social media has also become an effective medium of web-based communication and information sharing. The social networking platforms have further enabled companies to promote their products and services by targeting customers residing in different regions.

At the same time, many businesses also use social media to stay connected with their existing customers and potentials, along with gathering their suggestions, feedback and views. The huge popularity of social media has further made it essential for each business to choose a content management system that allows them boost public relations by availing the benefits of social media. Unlike the conventional file sharing softwares, the latest version of Microsoft SharePoint offers a variety of functions related to social media and collaboration.

In addition to seamlessly sharing data among your distributed team mambers, clients, vendors and other stakeholders, you can also use SharePoint features to build a customized social media portal for your business just like Facebook. The My Sites feature further enables your employees to create and edit their individual profile pages, and synchronize theire profile with the Active Directory. They can further create public profile to make share both personal and professional information with cowoekers and clients resding in other countries. The social media feature of SharePoint 2013 has made it easier for a business to avail the combined benefits of social media and an innovative content management system. This makes the search for “Top companies in Sharepoint” rise to gigantic global numbers.

Singificant Advantages of SharePoint Social Features

Centralized Location to Store All Your Conten: Each user wants to store all his files in a central location where the information can be accessed easily by others. The My Sites features allow users to have a central location for their personal and professional information. Microsoft has further optimized the features to make it easier for users to access the required information without putting any extra time and effort.

You also have options to use the default Team Template to see links for Sites, Newsfeed and SkyDrive on the top of the page. These links will make it easier for users to quickly navigate within the My Site. Once you make these sites available on several templates, the members of your distributed team can easily navigate from the content related to a specific team or project. Also, they can easily collabaorate the information with their personal account.

Easy to Organize, Access and Share Your Data: Many users look for easier options to organize their content, rather than linking the content to their personal account. Share Point 2013 suuports a concept knows as Follow. The feature enables users to easily and quicky add links and references to specific files on their individual My Sites. At the same time, you can use the features to easily follow documents, people, tags and sites within SharePoint. Based on the things you want to follow, you can see the icon directly that will make it easier for you to access the content in future.

For instance, if your project requires you to create and review new documents, the Follow concept will make it easier for you to add reference to the existing as well as new content. Also, you can review the documents easily by seeing your newsfeed updated. Simialarly, your suggestions and feedback can be viewed by other team members through their newsfeed updates. So they can easily decide the content that they have to rely on, instead of navigating through the entire site.

Options to Start and Continue Conversations: The SharePoint 2013 further allows users to discuss the content by posting, and responding to comments. When one opens his newsfeed, he can view the information on different categories. The section will also see the things that you follow under each catergory. Along with following the content, you can use the feature to interact with other users directly from the site. You can simply add the @ symbol before the name of the specific post, and make it easier for others to find the global address. Also, the mentioned users will get email notifications informing them about the update.

Further, when you create a new team site, it will by default contain a newsfeed. The newsfeed can be used by your teammates to discuss the content. As all your contents are located in a cental place, your coworkers can easily iniatiate a conversation, and participate in discussions. Your colleagues also have options to interact with each other by sending emails. But the interactions through newsfeed will complement the needs of all users. Also, the conversations will remain more centralized within your team or project content.

If you are new to building a social media sharing site using SharePoint 2013, it is advisable to gather instructions provided by Microsoft. The whitepaper further explains how to customize your content management system to avail the features and functionality offered by major social networking platforms.

We provide sharepoint development services. If you would like to know what makes us expert sharePoint developers, please contact us at Mindfire Solutions.

Best Practices for Successful Migration to SharePoint 2013

Each organization selects the best file sharing software to make its communication system more efficient and powerful. Based on its needs and budget, a company has options to choose from a variety of proprietary and open source content management systems. But many companies prefer using the comprehensive solutions provided by Microsoft SharePoint to transform its operations and operations. SharePoint further enables businesses to preserve and enjoy the benefits offered by their existing IT infrastructure, compliance and structured process.

The latest version of SharePoint offers a set of innovative features like easy to design and brand a website; improved business connectivity services; option to perform eDiscovery queries; and customized identity management. SharePoint 2013 further makes it easier for businesses to optimizing the viewing experience of users regardless of their choice of mobile device and operating system. Similar to other smart users, you must be thinking of migrating to the new version to avail a number of advantages. This makes the search for “Top companies in Sharepoint” who can help in migration torise to gigantic global numbers.

However, many experts have highlighted the risks associated with SharePoint 2013 migration without proper planning. The lack of proper planning will further make your IT professionals to spend a huge amount of time and effort. Therefore, it is becomes essential for a user to explore options to make the project successful without increasing stress. It is also important to understand and implement some best practices to migrate to SharePoint 2013 easily.

5 Best Practices to Make a Successful SharePoint 2013 Migration Plan

1. Address Your Business Needs: When you are migrating to SharePoint 2013, you must use the transitional phase as an opportunity to thoroughly assess your business needs and governance. You can even make a comprehensive plan, and decide how to use the upgraded version, and what type of content you want to store in the new system. At the same time, you must review you existing content management system, and decide the files that must be retained or can be discarded. Reviewing your business needs and information infrastructure from the scratch will surely need some amount of time and efforts. But the investment will make your content management system more efficient and relevant.

2. Organize and Externalize Business Data: Often a huge amount of unused data may affect the performance of your content management adversely. So you must make a cleanup strategy by using the data externalization feature provided by SharePoint 2013. The feature enables you to move a huge amount of unused and old data from your main server to secondary and inexpensive data repositories. For instance, you can use a special tool like Storage Maximizer to easily transfer these data from your SQL server databases to other open source databases. The data externalization will increase your server space, while reducing the time required to access relevant information.

3. Make and Implement an Effective Communication Plan: When you are migrating to an advanced content management system, it is important to communicate the changes to all stakeholders. Often the files are accessed by your employees, clients, vendors and website administrators. So these people must be communicated about how to access the data in a faster and convenient way. It is also a good idea to call all stakeholders, and ensure that they clearly understand how to use SharePoint 2013. At the same time, you can also consider sharing a change management system to make the migration easier without disrupting day to day communication. However, you must set a deadline so that the users can understand how to access files through the hefty GUI provided by SharePoint 2013.

4. Evaluate Your Business Environment Thoroughly: Each business has to store and share a wide range of documents, solutions and data. The files will be stored in SharePoint 2013, but these will be accessed by different users, stakeholders and website administrator. So you must gather their suggestion and feedback to optimize your governance plan. Similar to other organization, you may be storing all your data on network file servers and other collaborative systems. When you are making the migration plan, some or most of these documents can be moved into SharePoint. At the same time, you can also consider using SharePoint 2013 as a comprehensive record management system to manage your existing as wells a future data in a more efficient and organized way.

5. Choose the Best Migration Approach: When a business decides to migrate to SharePoint 2013, it can choose from several data migration approaches. However, you must evaluate each approach based on specific criterions like your business needs and potential trouble spots. As the latest SharePoint version does not allow users to directly upgrade their existing data farm, you have to upgrade by attaching a database, or by using third-party tools. However, you have options to run two data farms at a time by using any one of, or combining the two approaches. It is also important to evaluate the pros and cons of each migration approach to decide the best option to suit your business requirements.

We provide sharepoint development services. If you would like to know what makes us expert sharepoint developers, please contact us at Mindfire Solutions.

SharePoint Development and File Sharing - Understanding the Alternatives

Most professionals, nowadays, have to work in a hugely distributed professional environment. With companies outsourcing the projects partially, each project manager have to constantly communicate and coordinate with vendors, clients, partners and distributed team members. The files sharing software has made it easier for professionals to easily collaborate, communicate and exchange information with people associated with the project regardless of their current location. In comparison to other online file sharing tools, Microsoft SharePoint is hugely popular due to its efficiency in facilitating enterprise collaboration. This makes the search for “Top companies in Sharepoint” rise to gigantic global numbers.

However, the small and medium businesses often consider SharePoint to be expensive. Along with paying high license fees, a company also has to invest in hardware, maintenance and data security. Further, a business has to deploy a team of trained and experienced professionals to implement, manage and support the SharePoint. Many companies have launched SharePoint alternatives to make it easier for SMEs to share their files without spending a lot of money. You can even consider using a number of open source enterprise content management systems to avail the features and functionality offered by Microsoft SharePoint.

6 Open Source Alternatives to Microsoft SharePoint

1. Alfresco: Alfresco is hugely popular as an open source enterprise content management system that allows users to easily maintain and organize their files. The file sharing tools comes with a number of handy features like desktop file access, advanced search, editable content and web content management. As the system maintains all your files in a scalable and centralized repository, you can easily maintain it without putting any extra effort. Also, the system offers searching capabilities and efficient browsing, along with wizard based configuration. You can further avail additional support from the Alfresco team by buying the paid edition.

2. MindTouch: Many reports have cited MindTouch as the best file sharing alternative to IBM Lotus and Microsoft SharePoint. The open source enterprise collaborative system further supports the most advanced knowledge bases, intranets and extranets. You can use MindTouch to share the files across the extranet and intranet of your company, along with web dashboards, product documentation and knowledge bases. 
    
3. Liferay: As a social collaboration solution for your business, Liferay enables you to streamline the entire communication at your workspace without putting any extra time. You can use the system for building group cohesion and raising productivity levels. Based on your convenience, you can use the community edition for free without availing any support, or avail additional support by buying the paid enterprise edition. Each edition of Liferay enables you to enjoy features like enterprise collaboration; web publishing and shared workspaces; social networking; identity management; and content and document management with Microsoft Office integration.
   
   
4. Plone: Plone is popular among users due to its easy to install and use features. The users without having technical skills can also use the flexible content management system to create, maintain and share information through a web browser. So the small companies can use Plone to manage their files without deploying a team of trained technicians. Along with offering easy to use and extend features, Plone also uses advanced security techniques to keep your files safe, secure and inaccessible.
   
   
5. Magnolia: As a content management system, Magnolia is popular among users residing in various parts of the world. Despite being available under an open source license, Magnolia offers a number of easy-to-use features to empower a variety of enterprise websites. You can use the page editing interface provided by Magnolia to design the content layout as it will be displayed to your website visitors. While using Magnolia, you also have options to get services and supports from partners and vendors from different countries.
   
   
6. Sensenet: Many large and renowned companies use Sensenet as an open source alternative to Microsoft SharePoint. Along with managing your documents, web content, and business processes, you can also use Sensenet to easily collaborate with your distributed team members, peers and clients in a friendly online workspace. Based on your needs, you can use the Sensenet community edition for free under the GPL license, or buy the commercial enterprise edition with additional support and services.

In addition to these six open source alternatives to Microsoft PowerPoint, you also have options to choose from several other content management systems including WebGUI, Mambo, KnowledgeTree, and Callanos. However, you can also consider several proprietary file management systems that enable you to manage your content without investing a lot of money.

We provide sharepoint development services. If you would like to know what makes us expert sharepoint developers, please contact us at Mindfire Solutions.

SharePoint - Ultimate Enterprise Apps creation Platform

SharePoint, a very important candidate to be the Apps platform for hybrid on-premise and cloud deployments. Several booming apps developed by SharePoint have a cross-platform implementation with higher user experiences and can run any device with ease. App vendors seem willing to require the price of maintaining multiple versions to secure better stability, performance and practicality utilizing the chances within the platform. Modern Apps with an HTML5 interface are more demanding in the web world. It is both a platform and an application. We need to understand where to use it best in each area.

SharePoint comprised of web technologies and standards-based APIs, launched in 2001 by Microsoft. It was version 2007 that first staked SharePoint’s claim as an application development platform. Then an updated version of SharePoint 2010 was released. As application usage grew, customers wanted to customize their site based on their own unique needs. Organizations seeking to involve the business users and analysts in all aspects of development, not just during the requirements gathering process. One of the reasons for the success of SharePoint has been its ability to empower end users. From creating custom views on lists, customizing web parts and building workflows, SharePoint has allowed the end-users to create much of the functionality they need without relying on IT each step of the way. It helps an enterprise to manage its data, applications and information more easily.

The recent trend of social networking makes unstructured content even more difficult. The Content Management Services provided by SharePoint makes it easier, where users find it difficult in terms of flexibility to tag a document, rate it, find and act with the topic matter consultants associated with the document, tired close to period. HTML5-based mobile browser experience, ability to associate multiple master pages to a single site, support for push notification and the addition of geolocation list datatype to make it easier to implement location awareness etc. With so many other worthy enhancements to choose from (enhanced API, performance improvements, BI enhancements), SharePoint database that stores the data, view, queries and macros.

SharePoint helps users to create customized applications in a cost-effective way. There are two main categories of SharePoint solutions are: those executing code on the server (Trusted Solutions) and those who doesn't (NoCode solutions).

NoCode Solutions
 

SharePoint in many ways resemble the integration architectures we see in the public web space, with light-weight interaction between distributed services. This means that a solution can be developed without any in-depth knowledge about the SharePoint platform, which is a great opportunity for novice users who are new to developing their business online by setting up a potential App. 

 

The skill set for NoCode solution development relies heavily on client-side technologies, such as JavaScript, jQuery, HTML and some basic ASP.NET. 

 

NoCode solutions have the great advantage of very low server footprint and thus there is very low risk of deploying these solutions, as they cannot interfere with the operations of the platform. They do not deploy or execute any compiled code to the SharePoint infrastructure, typically consume the SharePoint APIs and data over distributed interfaces such as Web Services or REST via the browser. This advantage is especially important in large-scale multitenancy hosting scenarios such as Office365, where operational stability and tenant isolation is extremely important. 

 

The drawbacks of NoCode solutions are mainly focused around the inability to utilize the raw processing power and services of the native server environment. This means that if you need to do stuff like running scheduled operations, or execute some demanding processing task, you'll need to externalize that task to an external service. Enterprises might also worry about the potential security and compliance risks of using NoCode solutions, as they commonly include mashups, which in turn takes advantage of external services. One example is the use of Google Charts. It provides a very simple, client side Java-script only solution, but the data you are populating your charts with are inherently shared with Google. 

 

Trusted Solutions 

 

SharePoint supports different kinds of trusted solutions, running on the SharePoint server infrastructure and on multiple browser. These types of solutions are established using WSP packages and execute compiled code on the infrastructure itself. The platform carries varying degrees of isolation to permit for different security and operational contexts. Microsoft has managed to set up a comprehensive structure with support for characteristic administration, provisioning and governance over the past two foremost versions of the merchandise.

With evolving trusted answers normally requires .NET programming skills, and furthermore in-depth information about the SharePoint programming APIs and deployment form. Developing the front-end is much the identical as for NoCode solutions, apart from the possibility of leveraging the full power of the ASP.NET web framework. This represents a cost for vendors making an primary entry to SharePoint, but it furthermore represents a important opening to utilize the centre capabilities of the stage.

Trusted solutions make it likely to exploit the full promise of the native stage services, making it possible to construct exceedingly powerful, integrated solutions that hold all facts and figures inside the enterprise at all times. This becomes an progressively significant asset as the breadth of platform services offered by SharePoint continues to grow, with things like the very quick seek and move supplement, presentation point, the secure shop service, visio services, word automation services and more.

Apps in the Cloud

Microsoft is focused on ensuring that all features, capabilities, development models built in SharePoint are 'service ready' - built with both on-premises and SharePoint Online in mind. NoCode solutions are more or less cloud-ready in nature but Trusted Solutions are complex.

 

Microsoft supports all types of Trusted Solutions in the cloud and thus increase their scalability level. Office365 will require establishing process isolation for code running on their servers and with the current SharePoint Architecture, this can only be done at the Web Application level, thus Office365 have to be able to serve these "units" in the scalable way in which they are serving Site Collections today. We expect this to arrive with Office365 in pace with the increasing demand for virtual private clouds which is in demand by upper SMBs. 

 

Once Microsoft has solved this little technical barrier they have in essence unleashed the full power of the SharePoint platform to allow it to be a potential host for Apps of all types, both on-premise and in the cloud. 

 

A complex but complete platform

 

SharePoint, 4 major versions 2003, 2007, 2010 and 2013 support a broad kind of solution kinds with distinct complexity, possibilities, development approaches and governance considerations. The models cater to distinct needs of customization ranging from the least significant of purposes, to the most comprehensive business systems running on the platform. Microsoft has effectively supplied tools to permit explain problems at all grades and they have done it at a stride that has permitted a large community to pursue, invest and apply precious business solutions. 

 
In the future, all of these solution types can run on-premise or in the cloud, served from a single App Marketplace for SharePoint. With sharepoint CMS customization services on the rise, it is nothing but clear that the world is getting ready to harness the benefits CMS has to offer.



We provide sharepoint migration services. If you would like to know what makes us expert sharepoint developers, please contact us at Mindfire Solutions.