2012 is bringing changes!

Since BPOS is changing its name to Office 365 it was about to time to update the BPOSTUTOR.com blog...and that involves a URL change and a few new authors!

This blog will be moving to http://www.365tutor.org.

Be on the look out for cross-posts.

Happy 2012, good luck with Office 365.

Understanding how to approach your SharePoint 2010 ECM project is really key your success in execution.  Some companies start by engaging with a vendor for SharePoint ECM and import a model or approach that is product-focused instead of process focused. This will work out some of your challenges / issues but not all of them.  I really believe you need to start from a process and requirements foucs and then apply the right solution and technologies.  Think about defining your end game and your actual use case(s) and current challenge(s) and potential future wins (such as retention, lifecycle, workflow, etc).  This is an absolute requirement for a few reasons.  I'll name a few.  

First, SQL Server (the back end file store for SharePoint) is several orders of magnitude more expensive than typical file shares, and the general level of effort required to support SharePoint is much higher.  You need the perspective of a real set of fully vetted business requirements along with a well business case to justify this expense.  

Second, it seems that SharePoint is sold and marketed with a set of expectations that leaves a really important point off the table > SharePoint is enterprise software just like your ERP system (SAP for example).  If you've heard of SharePoint you've heard of SharePoint sprawl and the Wild Wild West.  There's a tremendous investment in governance, management and service delivery that needs a well thought out approach which only someone with enterprise software expertise has a chance of getting right the first time around.  

Third, dealing with "unstructured content" is all about providing structure and tools to leverage the value of metadata.  You need to spend a huge amount of time investing in your information architecture (taxonomy, metadata, lifecycle, etc) which will form the backbone and plumbing of your system.  SharePoint has tremendous capability to impart deep and usable document structure > getting there is a time consuming and highly critical element to your future success.

Here's a high-level approach for your use to help guide your thinking and process on SharePoint 2010 ECM! 

You try and update publishing for a content type in your SharePoint 2010 content type hub.  You receive an error message that "No valid proxy can be found to do this operation".  This means that either you don't have your content type hub URL properly specified in the managed metadata service application in SharePoint Central Administration or the URL that you are using an AAM of the web application and your MMD proxy is configured on an internal name (example http://sharepoint instead of http://sharepoint.net).  You need to change the URL of the proxy by using powershell (you can't do it from the MMD service app once created).  If you want to get past the error you can also switch context (ie use http://sharepoint/hub) instead of http://sharepoint.net/hub.  Good luck