Rating 5 out of 5 stars, Reviewed by Ron Charity

SharePoint Summit (mid-may 2013) is the second technology conference I’ve attended in my native town of Toronto. Most, if not all, conferences I’ve attended have been in the US in places such as Los Angeles, Anaheim, Seattle, Orlando, Boston and, most recently, Vegas in 2012. Toronto is a great venue for a conference, especially if your able to rent a car and explore the area outside the city such as Muskoka for its rugged beauty and Niagara for its wineries and the falls.

The corporate workplace has become a diverse mobile device environment mainly driven by the growing number of mobile professionals and demand for newer devices with improved user interface, applications, speed and cool factor. Core to this demand is employee mobility and the expectation for anywhere and anytime access to information, people, applications and communications to support increased demand for productivity and customer responsiveness.

SharePoint Column/View Permission, an add-on from BoostSolutions (formerly SharePointBoost), provides functionality that many SharePoint Admins sorely miss:  hidden/read-only columns in lists, hidden/read-only views, setting default views per user or group, etc.

The installation installs a "SharePointBoost Software" section in Central Administration which contains a "License Management Center" and a Site Collection level feature that adds two items to the list and document library settings pages:

Companies are mobilizing their workforce to better serve clients. As a result, the corporate office space is being adjusted for touchdown type work activities, which include quick meetings, planning the day and doing paperwork such as expenses. While on the road, airports, hotels and the local coffee shops have become regular work and meeting locations. To be successful in this new work style, mobile professionals must have access to key applications, information and contacts.

In this article, Ron Charity explains key considerations and options, and how to build a roadmap for mobilizing your workforce from a cultural, office and technology perspective.

When enabling your mobile workforce, the right applications will ensure user productivity. Consider off the shelf applications for usage scenarios where your staff requires access to SharePoint content.  

A variety of options are available for accessing Microsoft SharePoint on the iPad. Using the native iPad browser provides a surprisingly decent, though not perfect (e.g. can’t upload documents), SharePoint browsing experience. However, this solution is not tested by Microsoft and the Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog explains the cause for incompatibility.

Microsoft did not provide a connection between its Business Connectivity Services and the SharePoint 2010 Managed Metadata feature, so SharePoint Solutions created one. Recently, the company released new SharePoint software add-on - Managed Metadata Term Store Sync for SharePoint 2010 (Term Sync) - which provides the missing link between a business’s data and its SharePoint taxonomy.