SharePoint for Proposal Management

Free Webinar - Top 10 reasons to Upgrade to SharePoint 2010

2010-02-22T08:45:00.000-08:00

March 04, 2010 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM (Eastern Time)

(Approximately 60 Minutes Long)

i3solutions is one of only two partners from the DC Metro Region selected for the Technology Acceleration Program (TAP) for SharePoint 2010. In June 2009 i3solutions was invited to send our developers to Microsoft Headquarters in Redmond to work with the SharePoint product team on an early release of the new version of SharePoint.

This advanced experience has given our consultants the opportunity to develop an intelligent understanding of the new SharePoint 2010 environment and more effective methods for designing solutions that capitalize on the benefits offered by this product. SharePoint 2010 builds on the successes of features in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 with innovative new advances in metadata management, faceted searching, and social networking that will enhance information sharing and collaboration in organizations across multiple sectors.

Join i3solutions as we explore the top 10 reasons to upgrade to SharePoint 2010!

Thursday, March 04, 2010 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM (Eastern Time)

Register Now!

New Blog series started on PMIS

2009-10-13T13:44:00.000-07:00

Just released the 1st part to a 6 part series on building a PMIS in SharePoint - Check it out

http://bit.ly/14cNjV

Free Webinar: Combating a Weak Economy With Strong Proposals

2009-08-03T09:27:00.000-07:00

Transform SharePoint into a Platform that Manages Performance and Increases your Win Rate

Is your proposal team agile and able to rapidly respond to the changing market? Are you winning all the opportunities you should be? Are you bidding the proposals you should be? Are you producing proposals at a fast enough pace and to a strong degree of quality?

If not, you might be facing tough issues like:
• Managers spending too much time coordinating assignments and chasing down documents
• Documents are stored in multiple locations everywhere • You do not know which is the latest version
• Content is duplicated and often rewritten each time
• Content is out of date, no longer relevant, and used over and over again

Ready to have the ability to organize, monitor and manage individual proposals and the proposal process?

i3solutions SharePoint Proposal Resource Center Solution provides individual sites for collaboration on each proposal, as well as the ability to build dashboards that present information across all your proposal efforts!
Ready to have a proposal process that coordinates and interfaces with you line of business applications? The i3solutions SharePoint Proposal Resource Center has helped organizations decrease their turnaround time for proposals, eliminate redundant work, and increase your win rates.

The solution is built on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 to provide a central repository for all proposal related documents and to establish a collaborative forum in which to create, track and modify proposals.

Join i3solutions as we explore how to utilize SharePoint to create a dynamic and robust Proposal Resource Center!

Where:
Online Web Seminar

When:
August 7th at 1 PM (EST)

Go here to Register

SharePoint 2010 Test Drive

2009-07-14T16:58:00.000-07:00

Today I got a chance to test drive the SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010. There are a ton of new features and functions. I wanted to take a few minutes and tell you about some of them

SharePoint 2010 http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/2010/Sneak_Peek/Pages/default.aspx A new SharePoint 2010 sneak peak…and the new Overview Video by Tom Rizzo.

“Value Pillars”
This is the central pitch around SP2010
Connect and Empower People
Heavily pushing on multiple devices: multiple Browers (IE, Safari, Firefox); mobile

Cut Costs with a Unified Infrastructure
One platform with multiple solutions

Rapidly Respond to Business Needs
Quickly skin SharePoint and “mash it up” business processes

Nicest new features in my opinion

After takeing it for a spin and playing with the features here are the ones that I liked and saw good potential in impacting a Project Managers world:

Live Editing of text on page in Office 2007
This is a critical factor in document creation and collaboration! Imagine that I am working on a Costing document in SharePoint. I open it up and start working. Meanwhile Steve the BA on my project opens it up and starts working. Each section of the document I work on is locked and Steve can see it visually (green bracket with my name associated with it). As Steve changes items those sections are locked to me. At anytime that is good for me I can sync this changes with a simple click of a button. It is cleaner – nicer and not forced (it does not interrupt me with prompts or other distractions!) I did it in Word and powerPoint
Content Controls
This allows me to go into a document and create SharePoint Tasks directly in the document. When they complete the task and attach the created document. SharePoint takes the task document and integrates it into my document. So imagine if you will that I am writing an Costing document that is sensitive in nature. I have section that requires a person outside my team to write a blurb. I can assign the task and not have to give them access to the document itself. This is very powerful! I can also kick off workflows with content controls.
Visio web integration
Now I create a process diagram and use it visually show the progress to the user on the diagram – without the need for the user to have Visio and it can pull data from LOB apps or SharePoint
Upload images as content is seamless
No more upload to a picture library then add to a webapart – do it all in one step
Browser Support for Firefox and Safari
I saw no difference
Office Ribbon everywhere!
All the apps including SharePoint now have the ribbon. Easy access to commands and functions that are relevant
Nicer BDC integration (now BCS business catalog service)
Read – Write Easier management
Clientless web version of Office
Acconding to the keynote speach at the partner conference all windows live accounts will have access to use the web version of Office 2010

More to come Later!
Linc

An introduction to the PRC Template

2009-06-19T15:12:00.001-07:00

This is my Proposal Resource Template for WSS 3.0

You can download the template by registering at HTTP://www.i3solutions.com/prc

This template is not meant to be the end all - be all PRC. My intention was to show some of the things that you can do with SharePoint and Proposal Management. This is a starting point The template is using the one site to manage multiple proposals style for several reasons.

It is a good starting point for most organizations that are just getting started

I wanted a template that was easy to install and use

Once again a Special thanks to EndUser SharePoint and Path to SharePoint Blogs for providing great material and concepts used in the template.

Some of the features added to this template are:

Expanding / Collapsing Left Navigation

Tabbed Navigation, Google Charts and Print Web Part Functions

A Series of Dashboard Pages for common KPIs (generated with google charts) based on the RFP Request and Task Lists

The RFP Workspace Tab
This Area is intended to be the main working area for managing all the Active Proposals. The area allows you to have a simple dashboard using HTML calculated columns to provide a quick overview of all the proposals.

The lists

RFP Requests

This list is used to enter in new RFPs that are being worked on. I have extended the columns to collect more information on the proposals

You can also relate the RFP to the Documents that are for the RFP using the RFP documents look up field

Tasks – A standard SharePoint Task List that has been extended with a look up to the RFP Request Lists - Used to create the tasks that are necessary to complete the RFPs – each is associated with a RFP

Vendors, Announcements, Links - standard SharePoint Lists

The Document Libraries

Request Documents – Extended to add a reference to the RFP Request List – this is where you put the RFP originals and addendums

Past Performance – Standard Document library for storing your past performance documents

Proposal Templates - Standard Document library for storing RFP templates, example sections, guidance and help files

Resumes - Standard Document library for storing employee and contractor resumes

Statements of Work – used to store SOW that you create for your subcontractors

Proposals - Extended to add a reference to the RFP Request List – This is the working and final Proposal storage area

Views – This stores all the custom and dashboard pages.

2009-06-11T13:34:00.000-07:00

Update from the National APMP Conference.
I have met some exciting people out here in Arizona and the topics are excellent.
We have released the Proposal Resource Center Template and it is being received well. There is lots of excitement about it.

Here are some preview images for people to look at. I will be posting a link for the general public to download the template next week.

The template was built for Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0. It uses Google Charts and Jquerry for the functions. Special thanks to EndUser SharePoint and Path to SharePoint Blogs for providing great material and concepts used in the template.

More to follow!

Linc

Off to the National APMP Conference today! In Phoenix AZ

2009-06-08T06:39:00.000-07:00

Off to the national APMP conference today! In Phoenix AZ

I will provide one or two updates on the conference while I am there and some full posts when I get back!

For those of you interested in a single site proposal mangement solution I am currently developing a single site template that will provide rich features to get you started.
Pictures will be posted at my blog later this week

I will be unveiling this at the National Association of Proposal Management Professionals (APMP) conference in Phoenix AZ this week. It will be available for download shortly thereafter!

One Site to Rule them ALL?

2009-06-04T23:22:00.000-07:00

As a SharePoint professional who has built many Proposal Resource Centers using the SharePoint platform I am often asked “Should we put all the proposal in one site or create a separate site for each proposal?” Like most questions I come across the answer is……… “That Depends”.

When making this decision consider the following:

How large is your proposal team?
For teams of 5 or more (be it proposal writers, technologists, or SMEs) there is generally more collaboration that is spread across longer periods of time. This lends itself to dedicated areas to work.

How many proposals does your team work on at once?
If it is more than one or two having separate sites can help eliminate task and deliverable confusion.

How dispersed is your team?
If they are all remote and not easily accessible having separated sites will also help eliminate task and deliverable confusion.

How long does it take to produce a proposal?
If they are small proposals that are created in a week or so, this works well in a single site. For larger proposals that may take a month or more separate sites are better.

How complex is your proposal process? How automated?
A single site does not lend itself to complex workflows such as the Bid-No Bid or Red Team reviews. These processes tend to have lots of output that is better suited to putting them in a self contained area. Often reviews and production process are contained in sub sites under the proposal sites.

So after reading this you might think…. Use Multiple sites!.... Hold on a second before you make that decision! There are challenges that Multiple sites bring. In a single site you can easily create views and charts that can allow you to see the status of all the activities across your company. with multiple sites there is no good out of the box way to do this. If you go the route of multiple sites make sure you plan for not just organization but for reporting.

How are you using SharePoint? Single or Multiple sites?

The good news is that there are many ways to solve the issues with multiple sites!

For those of you interested in a single site solution I am currently developing a single site template that will provide rich features to get you started.

I will be unveiling this at the National Association of Proposal Management Professionals (APMP) conference in Phoenix AZ the week of June 8th 2009.

It will be available for download shortly thereafter!.

More to come on this in a future post!

Moved Blog to Blogger.com!

2009-06-04T23:19:00.000-07:00

It took a while but I have moved my blog to Blogger.com... I am still in the proccess of migrating the old post over so all can benfit from them

Linc

Filtering SharePoint calendar by Start Time

2009-06-04T23:17:00.000-07:00

I had a problem when trying to filter WSS 3.0 calendar list by Start Time column. This column doesn't appear in filtered columns list. I found solution that smells like dirty hack to me, but at least it solved my problem. Oooh, this SharePoint is sometimes so pickey.... I'm almost sure there is better way to do that but if you are in hurry and need a working hack then here we go!

So, let's go step by step:

Open Calendar list settings.
Add new column called (by example) Begin.
Choose "Calculated" as a type of new column.
In the Formula field insert the following formula:
=[Start Time]
Select Date and Time as data type of new column.
Clear check from "Add to default view" checkbox.
Save the new column.
Now you should be able to use the column called Begin instead of Start Date when you need to filter calendar list.

How do I get anonymous access' to a specific list or libary?

2009-06-04T23:15:00.000-07:00

How do I get anonymous access' to a specific list or libary?

One of the most commonly asked questions I get is 'how do I get anonymous access to work'. Usually, a person has enabled anonymous access in Central Administration, but not in the site collection. Here, I will try to reduce the process to the bare minimum required to enable anonymous access for a single document library.

1. From Central Administration > Application Management > Application Security > Authentication Providers, select a Web application and the zone you want to modify. This is usually default.

2. In the middle of the page, check Enable Anonymous Access and choose Save

3. All site collections in that Web application can now have anonymous access enabled.

4. Go to a site collection in the Web application you just enabled anonymous access for

5. From Site Actions > Site Settings, open Advanced Permissions

6. From the Settings drop-down menu, select Anonymous Access

7. For this example, enable anonymous access for Lists and Libraries and click OK

8. Browse to any document library in this site collection

9. From the Settings drop-down menu, select Document Library Settings

10. In the Permissions and Management column, select Permissions for this document library

11. From the Actions menu, select Edit Permissions to break inheritance

12. From the newly appeared Settings drop-down menu, select Anonymous Access

13. Check View Items and click OK.

You should now be able to view items in this document library via anonymous access.

What elements make a good Proposal Resource Center in SharePoint?

2009-06-04T23:05:00.000-07:00

On a High level I would say that:

• Enables the sharing of proposal related documents through all stages
• Uses shared task assignments, calendars to support collaborative communications
• Enables real-time strategic and tactical decision making
• Uses workflow processes to monitor and discipline teams
• Makes data retrieval and related internal communications virtually instantaneous
• Reduces the cost of training proposal management staff
• Improves compliance by creating a comprehensive audit trail

What do you think on a detailed level this means in SharePoint?