2010 Sneak Peek – what I saw

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Tom Rizzo in his overview has a 32 minute presentation talking about SharePoint. Much of it will be familiar to our partners and customers who have deployed SharePoint 2007. Some points that came across strongly:

  1. Broader browser support
  2. Better search results (the FAST acquisition)
  3. “Composites” –  Sounds very interesting. Rapid business solutions

Minute 10 onwards we hit the demo

  1. Ribbon UI – customizable and contextual
  2. List enhancements
    1. Multiple checkout
    2. Selection checkbox (like in windows explorer)
  3. UI ehancements
    1. Asynchronous interface so no waiting time
    2. Dialogs gray out the background
    3. Live preview of web edited content
    4. Image tools
      1. uploading images is easier
      2. resizing is easier
      3. styling – features are similar to word or powerpoint
    5. Silverlight – OOB webpart and insert the address of silverlight app
    6. Theming (from Powerpoint) so you could do the work in the client UI and just have that updated in SharePoint – great for web-designers!
  4. Visio Services – visio diagrams can be seen in the browser!
  5. SharePoint Designer
    1. LOB data can be taken offline in SharePoint designer
    2. Entities – back end systems connectivity (BCS)
      1. somewhat like sql enterprise manager
      2. CRUD – create, update & delete ops all from designer! (w/SQL) perhaps it’ll use WSDL to work with Web Services
  6. SharePoint Workspace
    1. Take data offline
    2. integration of BCS – so you can edit data offline in Workspace and update data using BCS to the LOB app when you’re back in your intranet! – I wonder how conflicts will be managed?

Some great display of PowerPoint 2010 features – not entirely relevant to SharePoint 2010.

He promised that the best way to move to SharePoint 2010 was to have a great 2007. And frankly, looking at the changes, I see several amazing enhancements, but nothing as disruptive as the move from 2003 to 2007. We’re using the same underlying concepts and the data should move fine. We’ll need to see how to move processes and custom webapps – again the abstraction offered by .NET should be useful here.

All in all, I’m looking at a less traumatic move for those with 2007. And for those starting fresh, and for those moving, a wonderful experience with enhanced web 2.0 functionality and some cutting edge tools like BCS!

I’m still looking forward to the Search features Tom mentioned and ECM – especially with how we manage document libraries and records.