Spec me a.... SharePoint developer! (Cobweb?)

OCdude

OCdude

OCdude

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We're going to be migrating most of our documents into SharePoint soon and in addition to that, we need someone to help us with the design and implementation so we actually make the most our of SharePoint (instead of using it as just a dumping ground for Office documents!)

Can anyone suggest anyone?

I'm going to be speaking to Cobweb about providing hosted SharePoint soon... but i'm not sure if they actually offer development?!

Cheers!
 
Did you look into going with Office 365 for hosted SharePoint? SP is a totally huge product and there is so much you can do with it but it really does require good governance in order to control it properly. If not, then you can end up with a raging beast that won't be tamed!

Would you expect to eventually host your own farm on your own network or will that not happen? It's always hard to know where to start. I've just completed a week long course on SharePoint architecture and the head is well and truly hammered!

O and you probably aren't looking for a SharePoint developer - they are the guys that will write custom solutions against the SharePoint object model. A good consultant is what you are after but be prepared to pay as this is probably one of the most in-demand skills around at the moment.
 
We use sharepoint @ work, ours is hosted on our own servers and managed by the server / web team. I find managing permissions a pain (people for some reason added individuals into it instead of using AD groups), let alone trying to design it! Ours on whole works well though
 
I support a small SharePoint farm. Clustered SQL back end, 2 Front End servers on a Hyper-V cluster (all built by me). I'm not a developer, but I am a SharePoint Admin MCITP. I did a lot of stuff before any devs needed to get involved, and that's only because some of the higher ups wanted extra functions that aren't available out of the box. As ringo says, if you don't know why you need a dev, you might find you don't actually need one.
 
Many people will say that it is best not to do any custom solutions on SharePoint unless you absolutely have to. The issues really arise when you come to do upgrades. If you had custom solutions built for MOSS 2007 then migrating to SP2010 could cause problems depending on your upgrade method. Recompiling all the code against the SP2010 object model doesn't sound like fun to me!

It's probably worth starting with a small farm and get a few user groups to do a pilot. See what the initial uptake it, get lots of feedback, do some planning, then some more, then some more, then document it all, plan more and then deploy!
 
ringo747 said:
Many people will say that it is best not to do any custom solutions on SharePoint unless you absolutely have to. The issues really arise when you come to do upgrades. If you had custom solutions built for MOSS 2007 then migrating to SP2010 could cause problems depending on your upgrade method. Recompiling all the code against the SP2010 object model doesn't sound like fun to me!
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Yup, this weekend i'll be taking out a solution that a previous dev said had been "tested" but blatently hadn't as it's throwing exceptions all over the place.

Sandbox solutions are nice for a lot of situations.
 
Sandboxed solutions are probably one of the best new things with 2010 if you can cope without some of the common things like SPRunWithElevatedPermissions.

How do you go about testing custom solutions? On the 2007 projects I worked on they just stuck them in their own web app with its own app pool so they could let it run without any risk of it bringing anything else down.
 
ringo747 said:
Sandboxed solutions are probably one of the best new things with 2010 if you can cope without some of the common things like SPRunWithElevatedPermissions.

How do you go about testing custom solutions? On the 2007 projects I worked on they just stuck them in their own web app with its own app pool so they could let it run without any risk of it bringing anything else down.
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We have a full test farm.

Unfortunately this older solution was required before I had a good grasp of the ins and outs of SharePoint. I've since done a bit of dev work myself so know quite a few of the things that can go wrong. In SharePoint it's VERY handy as an admin to know a bit of the dev side even though we have a dedicated dev team.
 
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Yeah it sure is... I've done bits and pieces of custom code but it has mostly been things like site/list definitions with event receivers, custom masterpages etc. The less customisations the better. Blocking the use of SPD isn't a bad idea either!
 
Euology from this forum works for Cobweb and I used to. If you have any questions regarding specific service from Cobweb then you could PM him, I'm sure he'd be happy to help or get someone to speak to you direct. He is an Exchange admin but I'm sure has knowledge on their other services.

I don't think they will offer help on assisting you design your own environment, you probably want a SP consultant or similar for that. For hosted solution where you just use it and not have to worry then someone like Cobweb would be ideal.
 
Knubje said:
Euology from this forum works for Cobweb and I used to. If you have any questions regarding specific service from Cobweb then you could PM him, I'm sure he'd be happy to help or get someone to speak to you direct. He is an Exchange admin but I'm sure has knowledge on their other services.

I don't think they will offer help on assisting you design your own environment, you probably want a SP consultant or similar for that. For hosted solution where you just use it and not have to worry then someone like Cobweb would be ideal.
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Quoted for truth. I do indeed work for Cobweb and can confirm that although we host SharePoint sites, we don't get involved in development of them, sorry! :(
 
Ah that answers my question then :P

Eulogy - i'm meeting some of your sales guys next week, do you think they might be able to recommend some developers, or would they really have zero involvement?

If not - does anyone know where I can start looking? :D

Thanks!
 
Based on what I know I would say it's unlikely, but I would not like to presume absolute knowledge on the subject, they may have a solution for you, I don't want to step on any toes as it were :)

I would say though that if you are not familiar with SharePoint (again, don't want to presume) then I would get stuck in with Vanilla first. Custom dev should only be needed to get SharePoint to do something that it can't do out of the box. The more recent versions (2007/Foundation 2010) are getting better and better with each release.
 
OCdude said:
Ah that answers my question then :P

Eulogy - i'm meeting some of your sales guys next week, do you think they might be able to recommend some developers, or would they really have zero involvement?

If not - does anyone know where I can start looking? :D

Thanks!
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I'd look for some form of Microsoft training/company that deals with SharePoint and get a consultant in to assist you designing/creating a system. It probably won't be cheap though.

I know we have spent a HUUUUGE amount on our SP project; consultants, independent VMWare clusters, storage, redundancy out of the wazooo, training and so on.

It's all well and good "having a go" but with things like SharePoint, unless you have experience of it, it is worth doing right from the start and having some help.
 
Okay well i've had Cobweb in to give me a quote - I didn't realise that the SharePoint product actually includes initial consultation and setup/customisation of your site :D

Thinking about going the whole shebang and getting hosted desktop/exchange/sharepoint.

Eulogy - how come you're (as in Cobweb, not you personally!) so cheap? Is it because of the sheer size of your infrastructure?
 
Economies of scale I guess, can't speak for the other services as I am most heavily involved in Exchange, but the bod here made a decision over a year ago now to reduce prices to stay competitive with BPOS/O365.

Mailboxes are becoming cheaper and cheaper as storage becomes cheaper, and each subsequent version of Exchange reduces I/O requirements on disks which further allows you to upscale user counts without overloading the disks.

In short, we can keep costs down and pass those savings onto customers :)

We are seeing very steady growth across Exchange at the moment, I think the recession has been good for us!
 
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