R.I.P. SharePoint Site Content and Structure (In Office 365)

Microsoft has deprecated the not-so-beloved Site Content and Structure in SharePoint (for Office 365 users).  What does this mean to your organization?

How to Easily Lower Opacity In Visio Shapes

As a SharePoint solution architect, when I’m not creating site columns and configuring SharePoint server databases, I'm meeting and talking to clients about their business requirements for collaboration technology like SharePoint.  On a project basis like assessing a clients desire to upgrade their SharePoint environment, this involves documenting a SharePoint environment or a lot of times just business processes.  There are many tools available for these types of drawings, and one I typically use for drawing SharePoint farms and topologies is Visio. 

What Makes Good SharePoint Documentation?

When it comes to writing documentation, it is unfortunately one of those things that you will get to tomorrow, gets pushed because this server was down, or Bob needs his password reset.  But I believe it’s important to at least have some form of documentation.  This is important because:

1. It can prove to be very helpful when planning upgrades to the next version of SharePoint. 
2. It can be useful if you have to rebuild your farm so you can easily replicate the environment.

Opening PDFs in SharePoint 2010

In SharePoint 2010, you may have noticed a bit of interesting behavior when trying to open a PDF file; we certainly did.  In fact, I’m surprised more people have not come across this in their 2010 environments, or perhaps the users simply thought this was the appropriate behavior and didn’t want to inform IT.