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I am sure Bryant would let me off the hook for skipping this blog entry, since I’ll be at the AIIM Conference the day my post is due, but something just happened that I want to share

Last week, I talked about how we were planning to demonstrate some of SharePoint’s capabilities to a newly formed group in our company that has a lot of content to create and make available to others. Last Friday, we conducted the tour. I need to point out that there were six us of in a virtual meeting using Microsoft Lync, sharing voice, video and my screen. I should also add that this was the first time we used the video conferencing features of Lync. We got everyone hooked up and the train left the station for all points SharePoint.

First stop – The document library we use to build our Annual Report. This group has to build a complex manual, so I wanted them to see a document built in sections and the benefit versioning brings to that process – 10 sections, 10 documents. Despite the fact that some of the sections had been revised 8 or 9 times, we only had one document per section. No “draft”, no “final”, no “realFinal”, and meaningful version comments describing each revision. I showed them how we can publish a major version, delete the minor versions or delete all the versions. We talked about how you can manage who can see drafts, and how to manage check-in/out. Judging from the comments, they liked what they heard.

Next Stop – The custom list I use to store the minutes I prepare and the correspondence I get from the AIIM NE chapter as well as the information I keep from Toastmasters (where I am also an officer). I showed how, by using metadata, I can filter that list to appear to include only AIIM NE minutes that have been distributed. Again, the group seemed to like the scenery.

Stop (n) – Since we will want to put a good face on their site, I showed a site that I think is amazing. One of our VP’s uses SharePoint to support committee meetings. She builds her meeting agenda on the main page in SharePoint, with links to all the exhibits. When her members land on the site, it’s all about saving them time.

Final Stop – Our recently completed engineering inspection report process site was used to demonstrate several SharePoint features, including: Document Sets, workflows, a task list and a discussion list.

Back at the station, but before we wrapped up, I asked: “so what did you guys think of the technology behind this meeting?” Several people started talking about what a good fit SharePoint seemed to be, and how they knew this would make their project so much easier, and how important they now realized it would be to plan their deployment. Then they asked if they could start with a topical list of content that they hope to share, with a description of each type and what might happen to it. Then they scheduled another meeting to review that list. After about 5 minutes of their praising SharePoint and making plans, I managed to break in to tell them that I was asking what they thought about Lync. They liked that too.

To all of you attending the AIIM Conference, I hope to meet you during the next few days.