SharePoint Connections Conference Amsterdam - Pitfalls and success factors of an office 365...

Rik Dekker

Cas van Iersel Pitfalls and Success Factors of an

Office 365 Implementation

Agenda

•  Our Office 365 experience – Project – Approach – Deployment

•  The development challenges – OOTB quick wins – Sandbox troubles – Power of the Client

What is Office 365?

Online Versions of Microsoft Software in the Cloud

Licenses

•  Office 365 for professionals and small businesses (Plan P)

•  Office 365 for midsize businesses and enterprises – Kiosk worker (Plan K family) –  Information worker (Plan E family)

The project

•  Large Office 365 implementation – 4500 users (of which 3000 kiosk users) – Social intranet

Personal landingspage Aggregated news Aggregated discussions

My colleagues per department

Workflows Forms

Collaboration portal

Personalised actions Last changed / important documents

Respond Support mobile devices View documents in browser

Why Office 365 for this project?

•  Different type of users – Single Sign On with AD sync

•  High availability •  No extra IT staffing needed •  Good cost overview •  Secure

Biggest succes factor

•  Microsoft takes care of IT – Updates

•  Hotfixes, Service Packs

– Upgrades •  New functionality like BCS

– Scaling •  Extra capacity

The approach

•  Agile (7 sprints) – Product backlog Per sprint – Stayed as close as possible to OOTB

•  Configuration •  Styling

–  If required then custom development

The team

•  Product owner •  Project manager customer

•  Developer – NL and India

•  Designer •  Architect/team lead •  Project manager

Tools

•  Visual Studio – Powerfull tool for developers – Only sandboxed solutions for Office365 Development takes more time

•  SharePoint Designer – Rapid development – Reusable workflows required for our project

DTAP environment

•  Local development machine •  Test in the cloud •  Acceptance/Production in the cloud

Risk for early adoptors (beta products) Sandbox solutions makes deployment easy Office365 environment is quickly available

Deployment

•  Same deliverables as ‘normal’ SP project – Web parts – Page layouts – Master pages – WSP’s – Documentation

Deployment challenges

•  How to deploy the site structure?

Normal way of deployment not possible: •  No PowerShell •  No console apps •  No content database copy

Deployment solution

Options: •  Site templates •  Migration tools

– Different tools available

 Tool together with Web templates

Deployment more difficult

Lessons learned

•  Some 3d party tools not usable •  Rapid development with the right tools •  Limitations of Sandbox asks for more

creativity •  Use web templates for deployment •  Environment quickly available •  New functionality added to Office365

Summary

With Office365 you can create powerfull solutions like on premise. You just need some more creativity

The development challenges

Development

First challenge: Aggregation (How may SiteCollections do I need?)

DEMO: How to extend the CQWP to fit your needs

Aggregation

•  OOTB aggregation •  Easy to configure •  Easy to brand

Aggregation

What to do with aggregation over multiple Site Collections?

DEMO: Configure Search to fetch cross-sitecollection data

Aggregation

Another cool way of getting data!

DEMO: Configure CQWP + RSS to fetch cross-sitecollection data

Sandboxed Solution

About Sandboxed Solutions..

Site Collection

Site

Farm

Webapplication

Sandboxed Solution

(#seats × 200) + 300

AbnormalProcessTerminationCount CPUExecutionTime

CriticalExceptionCount InvocationCount

PercentProcessorTime ProcessCPUCycles

ProcessHandleCount ProcessIOBytes

ProcessThreadCount ProcessVirtualBytes

SharePointDatabaseQueryCount SharePointDatabaseQueryTime

UnhandledExceptionCount UnresponsiveProcessCount

Sandboxed Solution

Sandboxed Solution

•  Deployment •  Limited but Powerful

•  Resource Points System •  SiteCollection context only

Client Object Model

Finding the Balance with COM (Client Object Model)

DEMO: Sandboxed WebPart with CSOM

Client Object Model

About COM …

Client Object Model

No Resource Points Possibilities same as sandboxed

•  More code •  Tools less mature then VS

DEMO: All put together, real world SP Online example

Summary

With Office365 you can create powerfull solutions like on premise. You just need some more creativity!

Questions? Resources •  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg615462.aspx •  http://community.office365.com/en-us/f/145/t/8959.aspx

•  @rikdekker •  @casvaniersel •  rik.dekker@rapidcircle.com •  cas.van.iersel@rapidcircle.com

Visit our booth!