Gregg Eldred

Microsoft's SharePoint 2010 may be one of the industry's most under-rated products, largely because it means so many different things to different people so no one group or demographic claims it over another. However, Microsoft has been adding more and more features to enable developers to better leverage SharePoint 2010. And as such, developers have responded, prompting SharePoint's popularity to rise among developers, according to Microsoft. SharePoint Server is one of the fastest-growing products in Microsoft's history, with over $1.3 billion in revenue, representing more than a 20 percent growth over the past year. Microsoft attained a significant share of the collaborative content workspace market in 2008 and had the highest growth rate among top vendors with its Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, according to IDC. Here are 20 reasons why Microsoft SharePoint 2010 appeals to developers.

Comment posted by Mike08/18/2010 10:23:41 AM

"..users can model the workflow in Visio and have the developer build it out further in Sharepoint.."

Am I missing something? Users can spec things in Visio and hand it to a Domino developer to "build it out"

Comment posted by Sean Cull08/18/2010 10:39:00 AM
Homepage: http://www.seancull.co.uk

I wondered the same, shame you cannot add comments.
It would have been interesting to ask for some examples

Comment posted by Gregg Eldred08/18/2010 10:50:19 AM
Homepage: http://www.ns-tech.com/blog/geldred.nsf

@Mike @Sean: LOL! First, I picked that particular slide to show because it talks directly of Lotus' basic functionality (workflow). Second, I loved the idea that a user could use Visio to map out the flow, hand it over to a developer, to do . . . what? As you both point out, a user can draw out the process, even on a napkin, but it is left to the developer to determine how this is to be coded. And since we are specifically talking about Sharepoint, how easy or difficult is that? Some resources should have been provided at the end of this presentation.

Comment posted by Mike08/18/2010 10:53:29 AM

Guys - I'm glad I'm not the wally in the room!!

It does raise a slightly more serious (for us Domino developers) point though - good marketing. A lot of people will assume the Visio stuff "pre-builds" a lot of it and the SP developer is just putting the finishing touches on it. By the time they realise this is not the case, it's too late

I've been in lots of demos where the sales guy has had a beautiful looking graphical tool to map out/set system preferences. Once you got past the sharp suit and smile to speak to the techie guys, you found out it was merely a tool for the salesman and doesn;t work. The phrase "smoke and mirrors" doesn;t even do it justice!

Comment posted by Benoit Dubuc08/18/2010 12:01:54 PM
Homepage: http://benoitdubuc.wordpress.com

From what I have seen and heard at a Microsoft presentation, the developer will be able to use the Visio file and that will be it! If there are no Visio, the dev will be able to create the workflow with a Visio like interface.

This is all nice, but as with many Microsoft bells and wistles, will it work nicely? I have seen a few Sharepoint applications that had developers, admins and end users scream as things were not working as expected. Yes this is new technology but I feel Microsoft is always putting out new technologies without fixing things before moving on (except for Office that is)!

There are a lot of promises for developers with Sharepoint 2010 and I can't wait to see how things turn out!!!

Comment posted by Darren Duke08/19/2010 02:49:40 AM
Homepage: http://blog.darrenduke.net

Devils advocate time......

Where in Domino do we have workflow? Is there an @Workflow command? A LSX? No. Domino does not do workflow out of the box. Never has. Sure, you can "create" workflow but there is no built in ability (other than @Send) that can be even considered "baked-in".

Do we have an XPages API for workflow? No.

QuickrD kind of has workflow, but none that is really useful right now.

IBM should have made Lotus Workflow a decent product and integrated it into Notes/Domino AND Quickr and then extended it XPages. They haven't. Microsoft are integrating. It may not work well, or it may, but they are promising to make a developers (and users) life simpler.