SharePoint Knowledgebase Part 1 – Best Places for Online SharePoint Knowledge

Looking back on stats for the past 12 months, by far the most popular search terms which took people to this blog relate to some combination of PDF, iFilter, WSS, MOSS etc and these visitors click through to one of the PDF related posts here, here and here. 

But next up come searches for some variant of “SharePoint Knowledgebase”, which find the blog through a little mention I gave to SharePointKB.org.  So I got to thinking, what are these people searching for?  Are they looking for an online knowledgebase containing the information they need about SharePoint?  Or are they looking to set up a knowledgebase site on their own SharePoint installation? 

If you are one of those searching, please post a comment and let me know what you were looking for.  In the meantime, I thought I would put together posts on the two different possibilities – best places to look online for SharePoint information (this post) and a follow up later on options for setting up your own knowledgebase site.

So, here’s a brief list of places I like to look for SharePoint information, how-tos and general knowledge:

End User SharePoint – Mark Miller’s “No Geekspeak on SharePoint” site has gone from strength to strength over the past year, and I probably have more SharePoint bookmarks from posts here than any other.  Excellent coverage of the sort of topics end users and new SharePoint adopters need to know about and excellent guest contributors.  Also if you sign up for the weekly newsletter, you get access to lots of extras and downloads.

Microsoft’s End User “Get the Point” blog – This team produces content for end users, recent excellent posts on SharePoint lists, slide libraries and using an Issues List.

SharePoint Magazine – an online magazine dedicated to SharePoint, often publishing longer articles or series on specific topics.  My favourite is Paul Culmsee’s series of InfoPath articles on the Humble Leave Form.

SharePoint User Group UK – although based in the UK, online members from all over (4,743 at last count).  Very active forums, member questions frequently answered by well respected SharePoint MVPs.  And if like me you are based in the UK I can recommend the group’s regular meetings.

So if you came here looking for SharePoint knowledge, I hope these links help.  Next time I will talk about options for creating a knowledgebase site on your own SharePoint installation.

Technorati tags: SharePoint, knowledge base

More on PerformancePoint – Now Free If You Have SharePoint Enterprise CALs

So I was a little too quick off the mark with yesterday’s post on the retirement of PerformancePoint.  The bit I missed, due to the full announcements coming out later in the day from Microsoft is that if you already run SharePoint with Enterprise CALs, PerformancePoint Analytics and Scorecarding can be used with no additional licence cost.  You can read more about the strategy here.

This is good news and will certainly be an attractive option for organisations already investing in BI technologies based on SQL Server Analysis Services, Reporting Services etc.

Technorati tags: performancepoint, scorecard, business intelligence, sharepoint

So, Farewell Then PerformancePoint

Interesting post today from Peter Koller giving details of Microsoft’s decision to retire PerformancePoint.  As Peter says, the comments he makes are his own (a Microsoft press release is expected soon), but there are some points worth noting:

• It sounds like the scorecard, dashboard and analytic capabilities will move from PerformancePoint to SharePoint Server Enterprise ( a very good thing I think, particularly for those of us working in the SharePoint space).
• The features in the next release of SQL Server (code name Kilimanjaro) and the work being done with Excel and Project Gemini are the future of the mainstream Microsoft BI platform.

I can certainly understand the points made by Peter Koller on the high cost of sales for PerformancePoint particularly in the current economic climate.  From conversations with my own SharePoint clients, I definitely see the need for a lower entry point for hosting scorecards, dashboards and and drilldown analyses in SharePoint.  I would like to see something like Dundas Chart for OLAP Services, but nicely wrapped into one or more SharePoint web parts with full vendor support – perhaps from Bamboo Solutions ?

Technorati tags: performancepoint, scorecard, business intelligence, sharepoint