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At long last, SharePoint 2010 (SP 2010) hit and hit it a bit earlier than expected. However, for the lucky and determined, we have been digging into SharePoint long before it was officially released. Over the past few months, I’ve noticed a concerning trend and one that I hope to turn around a bit with AIIM Communities. Specifically, with SP 2010 floating around now for a while, released and pre-release, I am not seeing people dig deeply into some of the great new features of the product.

So, it is here that I’d like to raise the flag and ask you all to join in and help prime the pump in ratcheting up efforts to leverage the tasty morsels now available in SP 2010. Rather than leave it to chance, I’d like to highlight some great new SP 2010 features.

With this said, I’d say…”You know you’re sucking wind with SP 2010 if you have”

1. Not dug into the Term Store | The introduction of the Term Store or Managed Metadata is one of the most powerful aspects of SharePoint 2010. In a nutshell, the Term Store allows you to maintain a hierarchical taxonomy that can be employed for the tagging of content. This is a rich feature and deserving of investigation. Do not get discouraged if it doesn’t come naturally, just forge ahead.
2. Not kicked the tires on SharePoint Designer (SPD) Workflow | Let’s face it, SPD 2007 and workflow were and are just painful. There is still goodness there; however, with SPD 2010, things have gotten much better. Workflows are no longer constrained to only one list or library. They can be copied, they can be associated with content types and they can be packaged. In that same nutshell, much improved!
3. No idea about Sandbox Solutions | When deploying code in SharePoint, it typically has to be deployed via Windows Solution Packages (WSPs) and then enabled as appropriate at the Site Collection level. Using the Sandbox component, you can “scope” these WSPs so they do not get deployed at the Farm level but instead, they get deployed for a designated Site Collection. Great way to test code before deploying into a much bigger environment.
4. Avoided dabbling with the Content Organizer | The Content Organizer is much needed feature. The premise of the Content Organizer is that you can load all content into one (or more) library. The Content Organizer is then configured (and not developed) to automatically place the files into the appropriate locations.
5. Run From Enterprise Content Types | It’s not perfect, but it is so much further ahead of SP 2007. The scoop behind Enterprise Content Types is that you can define one common set of content types (the hub) in a Site Collection. You then establish the other Site Collections and point them to the Hub – these are the subscribers. With some auto-magical configuration work, you’ll be defining content types once and then relaxing back as you see them replicated across other sites.

I’ll keep it to five for now; however, there is just so much more in the new and improved category… (e.g., the Document Set, Records Management, Social Networking, Digital Asset Management, Web Content Management and more) And also, if you don’t understand content types…stop what you are doing and dig in as quickly as possible!!

Please report back and spread the word on your experiences with these new capabilities and how you have fared.