Alan:  When you are talking about Microsoft SharePoint 2007, you are not really just talking about a product; you are talking about something that is far more than a product. Our guests today are Craig Jensen, President and CEO of AppDev and Martin Schaeferle, Vice President of Technology with AppDev. Welcome back to Let’s Talk Computers, Guys. 

Craig:  Thank you for having us, Alan. 

Alan:  When you are talking about SharePoint, this is not like Microsoft Office, where you get it out of the box and you just start working with it. You can’t work with Microsoft SharePoint “out of the box”, can you?

Martin:  No, you can’t. SharePoint is more like a framework or a foundation. In a simple sense, it could be used to create collaboration sites. A lot of people don’t know that SharePoint is actually part of Windows Server 2003 and 2008. It goes under the name, Windows SharePoint Services. 

With this, it allows you to build for a single department, a collaboration and sharing site.  But, it is unlikely that straight out of the box it is going to provide you all of the functionality that you’re going to need.

Alan:  But, why is that?

Martin:  Every company is going to have different needs in terms of what type of information they need to share and the type of security they want around it. There are a lot of things that go into it. I think what we saw early on was that companies were creating vast amounts of office documents, whether it’s Word or Excel or PowerPoint, or even Outlook Email. Companies were struggling in order to manage all of this information. 

And so Microsoft came out with SharePoint initially to try to allow businesses to get control of these documents and allow departments, and employees within a department, to share these documents so that there isn’t duplication or information that is lost. But it was virtually impossible for Microsoft to come up with a solution, compared to say Word or Excel that would satisfy all situations. So, they had to build a framework that they sell and then it’s up to the company to customize it based on the needs that they have. 

Alan:  How many people think that Microsoft SharePoint is like Microsoft Office and are very disturbed to find out that they have to do all this customization and where everything has to be kind of like a set of Lego's, isn’t it?

Martin:  I think it’s very common that companies go into SharePoint, not fully understanding what it is that they’re getting.  A lot of information that we get from Microsoft is that they are even behind the curve in getting SharePoint developers and SharePoint administrators trained on this tool. 

A lot of companies thought initially, “Well, I’ll get SharePoint and I do an install just like I did with SQL Server or Exchange and I follow a wizard and – bang, I’m up running and my company is sharing documents.”  They quickly discover that that isn’t the case or it isn’t exactly what they need, and to get past that, they also need to get developers involved. 

There’s a huge learning curve in understanding SharePoint as a framework. It’s essentially ASP.NET 2.0 Code under the hood, but you have got get up to speed on it and know what you can extend and where to put the tweak in order to get a particular behavior to happen. 

Alan:  This is where your training comes in because you really have to work with someone who has been in the trenches that understands that this is not something that is “store-bought,” that you just start using. It is like Lego’s.  You know, you get a box of Lego’s and you dump them out on the table and now you have to explain what each part is so that you can understand how to put it together, don’t you?

Craig:  I’ve really found that within the market, a lot of companies have a need for SharePoint applications. They have a need for developing SharePoint within their company and they do not have developers that are experienced or able to do it.

What we have come up with is a number of courses – all the way from Exploring SharePoint, which really gives you an overview of the product, to SharePoint for Developers and SharePoint for Administrators. Then we’ve added a couple of other courses on to that -- the first being the SharePoint Web Content Management course and next, SharePoint Business Processes course.  And we will continue to add more courses.

What we’ve really found within a company is that there are going to be various people involved in writing applications.  The need for training is really large.  Because if they get into it without being adequately trained or without having the knowledge of what to do, they run a large risk of developing applications that aren’t going to work for the company.

Alan:  But, where do we get started?  What is the best way to attack this beast?

Craig:  If a company has a need for SharePoint, we have a training course called Exploring Microsoft SharePoint Server, which is an overview and gives you an idea of what SharePoint can do and how it can be used within the company.  From there, you can move into the various other courses, depending upon what the application is that is needed for the company. 

Alan:  People want to maintain all this information, but they want to maintain it on a Web presence because you never know where your audience is.  Moving to the Web is part of SharePoint, isn’t it?

Martin:  It’s about collaboration and sharing, and it’s about not only sharing within a company, but as the Internet has created a bond between companies and vendors and suppliers and your customers, everyone uses it to get information and disseminate information.

One of our new courses that we are coming out with is called Web Content Management.  What it focuses on is on creating a content management system that allows companies to more efficiently manage their Web sites.  Companies, as they are growing, will start off with a small site and then they add to it and add to it, but it soon becomes rather unyielding in the sense that in order to do any changes you have got to get the IT department involved because it’s all written in ASP.NET or some code.  That adds hurdles in getting things changed. 

And then they want to go international and all of a sudden they are looking at, “Well, now I’ve got to build a whole new site.”  Things like, “Well, I want to post this page, but I need to get approval by my boss and so I need to set up a deployment site.”  So, there are a lot of hassles that companies have to put up with. 

One, among many of the features of SharePoint, is that it comes with a Web Content Management System.  It allows for your site to essentially be stored componetized within a server and it actually pieces together web pages on the fly when it gets sent out to the web user. 

Alan:  Because, when you’re talking about the Web user now, the Web user is global, it’s international.  It may be somebody who is reading in Chinese or somebody who is reading in Japanese, not just English anymore. 

Martin:  Exactly.  With a content management system, it’s intelligent enough to detect both what language that this user wants it to be and it might also detect whether this is a new customer or one of your gold partners and so it might even elect to present the information differently.  Or it may be a manager that needs to approve pages and so the manager, when he goes to the same Web site, might get different pages to look at from more of a review standpoint.  There is a lot of power in there. 

Alan:  Well, why is it that every time that we turn around trying to make something simpler, we actually end up making it more complex in the learning curve?

Martin:  That’s true.  With solutions that are of pre-baked or that give you a framework it’s not as easy as starting with a clean slate anymore.  With a clean slate you’re basically on “ground zero,” so you build up.  But, when you work with frameworks, suddenly you have thousands and thousands of ASP.NET code that already exist to give you that starting point.  To really create solutions quickly you need to understand that framework so that you can take it and run.  Otherwise, you may create solutions that don’t fit properly; the connectors don’t work or you may spend a lot of your time trying to learn the framework while there are much more efficient ways to get up to speed. 

Alan:  I have seen so many developers do what they call “overkill.”  They get packages like this and they think that they need to have every part of it functional before they can do anything.  That’s not the way that SharePoint was designed, was it?

Martin:  No, SharePoint is a very “componetized solution.”  It has a core foundation, which is WSS or Windows SharePoint Services, providing you simple collaboration portals. But then you can extend that through as I was talking about –Web Contact Management – but there is also Enterprise Search, Business Processes, Business Intelligence, and Data Connectors.  Companies will need to choose what’s applicable for their particular situation and then from there they piece together what they need to build the solution that they want.

Alan:  This is not like just a programmer who is sitting down and writing a program where one programmer takes one course.  This is a set of developers that all have to work together and this is where you really need a comprehensive training package that can be shared with multiple people.

Craig:  A likely scenario for SharePoint is a larger company, where you’ve got many people that have the need to utilize a SharePoint application.  Having people all trained consistently, trained in the areas that they require to be trained in really involves a comprehensive plan. 

An easy way to do this for us is for a company to run our KSource hosted product, which a company of anywhere from one to hundreds of people can be trained on SharePoint in the area that they need.  They can get that training hosted online or they can install a media server within their Firewall.

Alan:  But how does your training help developers or a team of developers get up to par in working with SharePoint?

Martin:  One of the key features of the training is that it not only provides them the instruction and goes through all of the benefits and features, but they actually watch on the screen solutions being built.

The training that we have presents the student with the straight out of the box solution.  And then using tools like Visual Studio or SharePoint Designer they can actually watch an industry expert build enhancements or extend the solution to create very customized needs. 

In our Web Content Management course we have two instructors, Doug Ware and Matt Ranlett.  Doug is out of Atlanta and has been working with SharePoint well before it was released, well in the beta cycle and has been building SharePoint solutions in the Atlanta area for over a year and is very familiar with it. 

Matt Ranlett is a SharePoint MVP, as well as he is on the INETA Board of Directors as a Vice President of Technology.  He too is very ingrained with Microsoft’s technology and is a SharePoint expert.  The two of them have created an outline and then built a training course that within hours provides a lot of information for someone to get up to speed to really get an understanding of the framework, not only by understanding the benefits but by actually watching someone build the solution in front of them. 

Alan:  These are the type of courses where you don’t have to go from the start to the end.  You can actually pick up anywhere in-between to review it over and over again as opposed to going to a class where if you miss one session you are lost.

Martin:  It’s a great way to get up to speed on particular technology.  You can jump around to get at very specific technologies, things that you want to learn.  You can also go back or pause or come back the next day and finish out the training.  It’s something that you have and your team have for a long time.  So, you can constantly refer to it and get refreshers within that technology.  That’s something that you don’t get with a classroom instruction style.  As soon as you leave the class the information kind of dribbles out the back of the brain shortly after, and it’s tough to get that back.

Craig:  Our training really brings into play the best of everything.  It’s the best of instructor-led training and the best of self-study.  You can go through all of the information.  The modules are in order, starting from the beginning to the end, or you can stop and jump into any one module.

It gives you the best of instructor-led training because you have a book; you’ve got the media, showing the author or instructor going though the material.  You’ve also got labs to practice it.  You can also to it at your own pace and at your own time. 

Alan:  One of the things I really like about your courses is the examples; these are not just like, “Hello World” examples.  These are real-time examples that I can take back to my business and use over and over again – because they were developed explicitly for this course.

Martin:  That’s true.  We have always provided within our training, practical education.  The instructors that come in and put on these presentations have been in the trenches; they understand the issues that developers will run into.  And so what they are here to do is to basically give them a year’s worth of experience within SharePoint so that when they start their project they minimize the upswing in learning the material.

Alan:  What are we looking at as far as the cost of getting started with learning SharePoint 2007?

Craig:  You can get involved with learning SharePoint, starting with the Exploring course for around $600 to $700. 

If you purchase the entire suite, which includes the Exploring; it includes the SharePoint for Developers; SharePoint for Administrators; Web Content Management; and Business Processes, and ends up being over 148 hours of training including 1,750 pages of courseware.  You can get into that whole thing for $3,295.  If you look at all the material that you get, it’s an excellent value.

The other way is to look at it from a company’s standpoint where you have multiple developers and administrators that need training.  An example would be a company where you have 20 different people that need to be trained on various aspects of SharePoint.  We have a package with our KSource Online Learning where a company can get into that for less than $350 per developer.

Alan:  And if somebody would like to find more information about your great training, where would they go?

Craig:  They can go up to our Web site at http://www.appdev.com or you can call one of our Learning Consultants at 1-800-578-2062.

Alan:  Craig and Marty, it’s been our pleasure to have you as our guests here at Let’s Talk Computers, talking about Microsoft SharePoint 2007 and how we can learn the easy way.  We look forward to talking to you again real soon.

Craig:  Thank you very much.

Martin:  Thank you, Alan.