Manufacturing Trend: SharePoint for Manufacturers
By Jack Burnett
Microsoft SharePoint first launched in
2001, and has been associated with document management and
collaboration. Since then large manufacturers implemented
SharePoint, most often when they needed to set up collaboration
with all their plants. Bundled "for free" with other
Microsoft enterprise software, SharePoint mostly sat unused at
small and mid-market manufacturers.
Lately however, manufacturers are discovering that SharePoint is
actually a web technology platform, capable of being configured
into business process integration and workflow automation
solutions. SharePoint is becoming the IT infrastructure
for custom developed applications and third-party products, like
Infor's Workspace. With the latest version, SharePoint 2010,
manufacturers are reducing IT costs and increasing
productivity.
Three Levels of SharePoint Use in
Manufacturing:
- Company, plant, department and project team sites - Web portals
for collaboration, document management and project management
- Point Solutions - Internal business applications using
SharePoint infrastructure with custom functionality for data
management, reporting and distribution
- Line-of-business application integration - Organizing ERP
transactional data, sales and operations data, quality data and
customer service data together in one place and adding work flow
automation
Using SharePoint
SharePoint is becoming the preferred choice for project
management, even for manufacturers that haven't standardized on
other Microsoft platforms. Without a collaboration system,
employees exchange ideas and plans mostly through e-mail, which
overloads inboxes and creates document versioning issues. Instead,
project leaders use SharePoint to easily set up a portal where team
members manage tasks, store documents and post status reports and
news. SharePoint also is the central repository for all the
company policy, HR and other business documents.
A packaging manufacturer using SharePoint for managing documents
saw SharePoint as a natural extension for IT business tools.
When the business needed to track operations performance on the
shop floor and provide a quoting tool for sales, SharePoint was the
technology platform for those two custom point solutions. In
three weeks, employees had the tools with better access to
information in one system, increasing productivity and visibility
of information.
A petrochemical industry service provider required its project
teams to track their time following the business rules in its
financial system. A custom timesheet management application
housed in SharePoint and integrated with Microsoft Dynamics GP and
ADP Payroll Services provides a familiar interface for
employees. The application formats and delivers the timesheet
data to the Dynamics GP project accounting module.
Which SharePoint
SharePoint 2010 Foundation, Standard or Enterprise - At a
glance, Foundation provides all of the base functionality, Standard
adds the social elements, better search and advanced metadata
functions, and Enterprise includes more advanced business
intelligence and reporting.
For small and mid-market manufacturers the decision is simple -
SharePoint 2010 Foundation. This "free" edition contains all
the core functionality and architecture drawn on by the other two
commercial editions.
SharePoint Foundation includes document management and
collaboration, wikis, discussion boards, blogs and the ability to
organize data and control access. It includes integrations
with Microsoft Office, and a mobile interface. It also
includes all the Office Web Apps - web-based versions of the
standard Office applications. Most
importantly, manufacturers have a web technology platform
to quickly and cost-effectively implement internal business
applications.
TwinEngines and SharePoint
At TwinEngines, SharePoint 2010 Foundation is our repository of
all the information we want to share. We use a custom project
management template to easily create a web portal for each
customer. We track our project labor costs with a custom
timesheet application tied to Dynamics GP for invoicing.
For our customers we have created .Net Windows application
technology that is tried and tested over the past 15 years.
We have transitioned that proven .Net Windows platform to a web
technology platform using SharePoint Foundation 2010. Today
there is still a place for each platform for manufacturers, but the
line between them is blurring.
Our value is business process work flow automation, integrating
data from ERP, MRP or financial systems into the SharePoint
platform with custom development. SharePoint Foundation
provides a common interface for sales, operations, quality,
customer service employees, and connects customers and partners to
your business.
Bringing all internal manufacturing applications into one
platform and providing a single view of data across ERP/financial,
CRM and operations systems - including cost estimating,
configurators, production scheduling, work order processing,
inventory and shipping - enables manufacturers to be agile,
effective and connected.
Using the SharePoint technology platform, TwinEngines
solutions enable more efficient operations and reduce
your IT costs.
SharePoint WSS or Office SharePoint Server 2007 - MOSS Standard or Enterprise
By Jack Burnett
I help small and mid-market companies solve business
problems with IT-based solutions and improved processes. As a
Microsoft Gold Partner, TwinEngines has SharePoint technology
as one of the tools in the toolbox. So after the problem
is understood and goals and objectives are finalized, we
start defining and architecting the solution that is
the right fit for the best value. When that solution
involves collaboration with employees, customers and
vendors or business intelligence, then I reach into the
toolbox for Microsoft SharePoint as an option.
Solely speaking from the technology perspective, this is where
it gets confusing. That's because we have to answer the
question, "what Microsoft SharePoint technology is right for the
solution and corporation?" Is it Microsoft SharePoint
Services? Is it MOSS 2007 Standard Edition? Is it MOSS
2007 Enterprise Edition? What about Forms Sever or Search
Server? What are the costs involved?
Windows SharePoint Services, WSS, is
a platform for building Web-based business applications.
It has administrative controls for managing storage and Web
infrastructure providing a cost-effective way to implement and
manage a high-performance collaboration environment. WSS is
included in Windows Server 2003 and later versions. If you own
Windows Server then you already have WSS. Since there are no
additional licensing costs, I look at WSS as the first choice when
architecting a solution.
Office SharePoint Server 2007, MOSS
2007, extends the capabilities of Windows SharePoint
Services by providing organization and management tools, and by
making it possible to publish information to the entire
organization. MOSS 2007 offers ready-to-go,
enterprise-wide functionality for records management, search,
workflows, portals, personalized sites, and more. It has its
own licensing costs.
There is a lot of information out there to explain SharePoint,
because it can do so many things. In working with Microsoft over
the years, I have discovered 3 links that help explain what is
the right SharePoint technology and what are the costs:
1. Which
SharePoint technology is right for you?
2.
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Related Technologies
pricing
3. Microsoft
Windows Server 2008 Licensing Model
At TwinEngines we bring in licensing specialists as part of our
team. We provide a complete picture of a solution in terms of
strategy, technology, process and support. We also show the
short term and long term costs and ROI. We look at business
problems first, and pull out the SharPoint technology tool when we
think it will help our customers achieve the goals and objectives,
with the best return on investment.
MOSS 2007 Search Configuration Tip
By Michael Losapio
Greetings, MOSS 2007 enthusiasts! Just wanted to share a
quick tip about configuring search in the Shared Service
Provider...
Here was the situation:
When setting up a client's MOSS 2007 environment, the server name
was used for the main site collection's URL (server: SRV-MOSS, URL:
http://SRV-MOSS). As you can see, this isn't the best URL for daily
use, so the client requested a default alternate access mapping of
http://portal. After making the change the the default access
mapping, something happened - site-wide search continued to work,
but searching "This Site" and "This List" no longer worked.
Here was the solution:
It turns out that when I'd configured the SSP's search content
source, I'd used the http://SRV-MOSS URL for the URL to crawl. DO
NOT DO THIS. For all searching to work properly, be certain that
the URL you're crawling is identical to the default URL in your
alternate access mappings.
Here were a couple helpful links that led me to my
solution:
Microsoft TechNet Article
SharepointSearch.com
Hope this saves you some time!
Site Usage Reporting in SharePoint - WSS 3.0
By Michael Losapio
One of the neat features of WSS 3.0 is the new reporting
capabilities. I'm going to go over enabling this usage reporting in
Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (note: this configuration is
different if you're using Microsoft Office SharePoint Server
2007).
First what you'll need to do is create a folder somewhere on your
SharePoint server where the usage logs will reside. If you're super
anal retentive like me, you'll probably have a small, dedicated
partition just for logfiles - this is where you should put your new
folder (name it something to the effect of WSSUsageLogs or
SharePointUsageLogs). Be sure the ASPNET and Network Service
account have full access to this folder.
Next you'll need to open up the Central Administration site on your
SharePoint server (Start --> Administrative Tools -->
SharePoint 3.0 Central Administration). Once open, click on the
Operations tab. You should see a "Logging and Reporting" section on
the Operations page, and under that a "Usage analysis process"
link. Click on that link.
On the Usage Analysis Processing page, check the "Enable logging"
checkbox, put in the path to the log folder you created, and set
the "Number of log files to create:" to 1. Finally check the
"Enable usage analysis processing" checkbox and set the Start and
End times for the processing to occur - this should be non-peak
hours, either before or after you run your SharePoint backups...
you do back up your SharePoint site, right (If not, more on that
soon!).
After setting up logging in the Central Administration, you can
then view a site's usage report by visiting the site, clicking Site
Actions, Site Settings, and then the "Site usage report" link on
the Site Settings page (you must have administrative priviledges to
do this). Once on the Site Usage Report page, you can view such
nifty things as metrics showing the most-viewed pages/files as well
as how often individual SharePoint users are visiting your site.
Enjoy!