Is SharePoint a good fit for an association?  What about a charity?  Should a non profit be using SharePoint?  The typical consultant answer is “it depends.”

First, let’s oversimplify SharePoint.  SharePoint is software used to build websites.  That’s it.

However, SharePoint is more than just a single-purpose web site tool.  It’s a platform that you can use build your Intranet, extranet, private social network, professional network, search engine, and public-facing website.  It’s more than just a web content management system, blogging system, wikie, or document sharing interface.  Once you and your team knows a little bit about SharePoint, you can focus on doing your job and less on learning and supporting niche applications and tools.

Sean and I finally finished our book: SharePoint for Nonprofits: The Definitive Guide to SharePoint for your Nonprofit, Association, Charity, and .ORG.   We actually finished it during the week of Thanksgiving 2010, but I’m finally getting around to chatting about it.

There are hundreds of really great SharePoint books already out there that cover the admin and code level stuff.   This book is NOT about installing SharePoint or writing code.   SharePoint for Nonprofits provides details about leveraging specific needs of trade associations, membership societies, volunteer organizations, and other nonprofit associations, charities and .orgs; and how SharePoint might be used to satisfy some of these needs.

SharePoint 2010 is great, but what are the Top 5 enhancements or new features that are available in SharePoint 2010?  Everyone who works with SharePoint will have their own Top 5 lists.

1. Social Network.  The world is now social.  I know, in reality the world has always been social.  The entire Internet is based upon the concept of social.  Being social is the new black.  Status updates, tags, notes, following, being followed – it’s all in SharePoint 2010 out of the box.  Users can tag and make notes everywhere – on docs, wikis, blogs, CMS pages, videos, pictures.  Everywhere.  Organizations have spent a ton of money in the last 4 years custom building these tools in a variety of platforms.
   
2. Business Connectivity Services (BCS).  BCS allows you to connect to external data sources.  Easily.  If you are connecting to an external SQL database it really could not be easier.  With SharePoint Designer 2010, you can map to an external data source, map an External Content Type to the data and use the intuitive SharePoint list interface on your external data.  Even better, this functionality exists in the free version of SharePoint – SharePoint Foundation 2010.
3. SharePoint Designer 2010.  SharePoint Designer 2010 is free. With a completely reinvented user interface, this is now an extremely powerful tool in your SharePoint arsenal and not a tool to shy away from.  From creating external data sources and managing the UI to creating data views and reusable workflows (see Sean Bordner’s post), SharePoint Designer 2010 is my tool of choice for leveraging the power of SharePoint.  SharePoint Designer 2010 works with all versions SharePoint 2010, from Foundation up.
4. Ribbon toolbar.  The overhaul performed on the SharePoint UI is great.  I’ve heard nothing but great reviews from end users.  People are used to working with Microsoft Office, and the familiar ribbon toolbar decreases the learning curve tremendously.  Good on ya.
5. Search.  Search refinements, improved people search, and FAST Search for SharePoint – all great things.  Of course, FAST search is amazing, but it adds a little cost and complexity and requires additional hardware to run.  Search refinements are probably the most requested customization on the previous SharePoint search tools.  With these capabilities now available out of the box, it’s really a full feature search tool that can (and maybe should) be used on solutions across the enterprise – internally and externally.  SharePoint Search Server Express 2010 provides much of this functionality for absolutely free. You can plug this into your existing web site technology and completely revamp your search with modern functionality and flair quite easily.

That’s right.  You can use the free version of SharePoint 2010 to run your public facing website.  SharePoint Foundation 2010 is free.  SharePoint Foundation 2010 may be a good fit to run your public facing website.  In order to look at this in a completely scientific manner, realize that there are literally hundreds of web content management systems out there (see CMS Matrix).  In reality, I see about 10 CMS platforms in use.  There are the commercial platforms (SharePoint, SiteCore, Ektron are the most frequently used ones) and there are a couple of free options (WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Plone are pretty common).    I would be very surprised if anyone was able to find a single CMS platform that is all things to all people, but I wanted to present SharePoint Foundation as an option for running a FREE CMS platform.  Even if you knew that there is a free version of SharePoint, what most people don’t realize is that SharePoint Foundation is a great option for running web sites of all kinds – not just team sites.  It is a great option for many reasons, but in reality it is supported by Microsoft (not just a community or a small fly-by-night company), it is FREE, and it is extremely easy to get started.  SharePoint is also quite large.  The ecosystem of users, authors, conferences, blogs, communities, and so much more.  From a functionality perspective – it’s hard to beat SharePoint.  Even the free version, SharePoint Foundation, offers simple data connectivity (through BCS), cross browser support, accessibility, support for Office Web Apps, blogs, wikis, templates, document support, health analyzer, support for presence, and MUCH more.

In order to show some of the completely of what comes with this free version of SharePoint 2010, I thought it would make sense to use Wikipedia.  Doesn’t everyone use Wikipedia as a credible source?  It is WIKIPEDIA, after all.

Wikipedia shows that a web content management system typically has the following components:

Copyright 2010. John Stover

This is one of the biggest strengths of SharePoint.  It is a platform.  I’ve been a SharePoint evangelist for a few years now, and one of the most important facts about SharePoint is the full feature set of the platform.  I read the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Web Content Management, August 2010, last night.  I’m most curious about the cautions Gartner lists about each vendor in the quadrant.  The cautions are really not issues or technical shortcomings, but rather politically correct adspeak indicating cautionary yellow flags that CIOs should at least ask the question about. 

In regards to SharePoint, one of the cautions listed basically paraphrased what I continue to preach as one of the biggest strengths of the platform.  Decision makers will have to “make a trade-off between investing in a strategic platform, covering multiple touch points of their organization, and the need for greater responsiveness in a market whose dynamism continues to increase.”

Really?  Make a decision between a strategic platform that is well-suited for the entire enterprise or pick a niche application that will serve a single use for a very short window before needing replaced?  Hmmmm….  What would you do?

Copyright 2010. John Stover

Microsoft has some pretty good information posted about the hardware and software requirements necessary for SharePoint 2010.  I still get asked for real world, or ‘best practices’, recommendations all the time.  Like everyone else, I want to get the best performance for the best price.  It’s difficult to strike the balance between ‘good enough’ and ‘optimized’.

A large majority of the SharePoint projects that I work on end up being small-ish SharePoint farms (between 2 and 8 servers).  Due to the licensing required for Windows, SQL Servers, and SharePoint servers, most organizations do try to get by with as few servers as possible, yet still want the best possible performance.  The most common configuration that I see in the SharePoint world involves a single dedicated SharePoint server and a single dedicated SQL Server.  From there, organizations usually first add another SharePoint server, then a 3rd SharePoint server, then a second SQL Server, and then the sky is literally the limit.