Additions to Your SharePoint Video Library
At the end of January, some of you may remember that I took a ride up to the hinterlands of Montreal to hang out with Benjamin Niaulin (@bniaulin) and the Sharegate team – in part to talk to their digital marketing team, in part to work with Ben on some video content, the results of which you’ve seen coming from their company blog. I thought I’d compile it all here and share a few thoughts on each topic, as well. That trip will also be memorable because of the taxi ride where I almost died. But that’s another story.
Linked below are the videos, as well as the blog posts and video transcripts that Ben put together for each:
10 Things to Think about When Moving to Office 365
This video and blog post have been getting some steady traffic, and there are definitely some great nuggets in there as Ben and I go back and forth on the whiteboard sharing some broad (and specific) insights into considerations for a move to the cloud via Office 365. We talk about big bucket items like understanding admin roles and responsibilities, and being clear on your support model – topics that we tend to believe are “covered” by our organizations, but which are the source of many problems down the road if we gloss over the details. If you are thinking about making the transition and are developing your plan, you’ll definitely want to watch this one.
Is Security a Big Concern When Moving to Office 365?
In this video and related blog post, Ben and I sat down to talk about an important topic as more and more companies begin to make the transition to the cloud: security. Out on the road, we hear a lot of the same questions from customers, and a lot of FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) from some, and so we wanted to share some of our thoughts around the security of moving to Office 365.
Developing for the User Experience
In this video and blog post, I dive into a topic that is a core aspect of my company’s value proposition (check out Beezy here) – the importance of building out SharePoint around the user experience. If the UX is not yet a priority, then you may want to pay attention to what Microsoft is doing with SharePoint 2016, because UX is coming to the forefront of their messaging. Simply put, if end users are not adopting your platform, it doesn’t matter how much time and money you spend – it will be a failure. Worse yet, your end users will go outside of your approved systems and start using (or expand their use of) external and unsupported tools and platforms, spreading your intellectual property across environments for which you have no control or visibility. Not good.
Setting Goals to Measure the Value of SharePoint
Finally, I went back to the whiteboard to discuss one of those background topics that most IT-focused teams seem to skip: measurement and key performance indicators. We all inherently understand the value of collaboration, and yet most organizations fail to adequately measure, and therefore cannot articulate the benefits of what they’ve built….which makes it all the more difficult to make the case for upgrading or expanding upon what you’ve built when the next version rolls around.
Of course, there was one more video created, and its time to share:
Just Darn Social
Thank you again to Ben and the amazing team at Sharegate for hosting me, for sharing your poutine insights, and for allowing me to help you generate some great content. Let’s do it again sometime 
