Hal Zucati here for SharePoint IT Pro UA.
It’s Tuesday here in Atlanta and I wanted to give you a brief recap of the conversations I’ve had with customers here at TechEd 2011.
I talked with close to 30 people yesterday on the subjects of SharePoint, Business Intelligence, and what the word “scenario” meant to them.
SharePoint
- “Very useful tool, instrumental in providing the features and functionality required to allow business to grow.”
- “Works better than my car, and I drive a Porsche.”
- “After we implemented SharePoint Server 2010, we saw a 50% increase in internal website traffic and a 14% decrease in internal service requests.”
- “If only it came with a comprehensive instruction book.”
I pointed the last customer to our TechNet Library, which they had not seen: “Roadmap to SharePoint Server 2010 content”, http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff627858.aspx
Business Intelligence
- “What’s that? Like Military Intelligence?”
- “SQL Server 2008 R2 and Excel, what else is there?” (I actually got several variations on this response.)
- “Microsoft has that? Really?”
I pointed the last customer to the Business Intelligence in SharePoint Server 2010 Resource Center, http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ee692578.aspx.
Scenario
- The most common first response I got was a funny look — one that appeared to represent a mixture of confusion, annoyance, and indifference.
- “That’s where you (Microsoft) try and guess what we’re going to use your stuff [products] for and then tell us how to do it …”
- “It’s what I (the customer) put together when I want to sell my boss something.”
- “I honestly have no idea, but it sounds bad.”
After receiving the replies, I showed each of the people I talked to the following article, which includes an example of what we define as a scenario: “Approval Workflow: A Scenario (SharePoint Server 2010)”, http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee704556.aspx
Thanks to eveyone I spoke with on Monday and to everyone reading this.
– Hal Zucati
SharePoint IT Pro UA
