Tag Archives: exchange

SharePoint 2013 – An Overview

Social computing, ECM, Search, Business Intelligence, Data Visualization, Integration of multiple cross-functional platforms have become a must for every organization.

SharePoint provides the scalability, agility and capability required for providing a comprehensive solution to address these needs of an organization by providing a robust framework to quickly build, manage and deploy Enterprise Portal Applications that leverage content management, collaboration, search, composites and business insights to connect and empower people, cut costs with a unified infrastructure, rapidly respond to business needs and work with external partners and customers. It has been widely adopted across verticals and across geographies (with more than 17000 customers and 100 million users)

SharePoint started its journey as a portal in 2001 which enabled web based collaboration and rudimentary document management. The next version released in 2003 included enhancements in collaboration, UI and a re – architecture of the product. MOSS 2007 was released with a lot of enhancements in areas of focus which included Document Management, Collaboration, User Information and Search. MOSS had Windows SP Services 3.0 as foundation which provided the core functionality. SP 2010 was released with a lot of enhancements along various themes: Sites, Communities, Search, Insights and Components.

Microsoft recommends usage of more out of the box features than building large-scale or complex customizations which is where the enhancements to SP 2013 make a huge impact. There have been significant improvements at platform level and major architectural changes in SP 2013 which include enhancements in areas like Security with support for OAuth, standards compliant Data Exchange with support for OData, support for Windows Workflow Foundation 4.5, eDiscovery features to assist in integrated case management, support for viewing in multiple mobile devices, improved web content management, Search, ECM and Social computing. The new app model gives architects and developers lot more design options.

Enhancements at a glance:

Development – Easier development of workflows and a new, simplified application model, called the Cloud App Model, allows more customization of SP Online and easier customization of SP 2013 on-premises applications.

Document sharing and collaboration – SP 2013 offers an out-of-the-box option for synchronizing user content. Where consumers will use SkyDrive to synchronize Office 2013 content. This service can synchronize a user’s own content as well as SP document libraries and is managed directly through Windows Explorer as SP Libraries, in the same manner as SkyDrive integration.

Content Management – features for managing content retention have been extended to manage content across sources (such as Exchange mailboxes and Lync) without requiring copying of content

Social Features – features social networking functionality comes integrated directly from Microsoft’s recently acquired Yammer technology, aggregated outside feeds including Facebook and LinkedIn

Search and discovery – FAST Search is now directly integrated, providing search of documents, sites, users, and multimedia content through an extensible query framework

Mobile devices – The ability to render a single SP published site in multiple formats for different devices. This gives developers ability to enable a push notification service on a SP site to send device updates to a Windows Phone device.

Authentication – Authentication enhancements include enabling easier claims-based authentication and enables new scenarios and functionality for Exchange Server 2013, Lync Server 2013, and apps

BCS – Includes support for apps internal, external list improvements to provide functional parity with other lists, and support for OData Business Data Connectivity (BDC) connections

Business Intelligence – provides comprehensive BI tools that integrate across Microsoft Office applications and other Microsoft technology solutions and services

eDiscovery – Improvements include the ability to perform eDiscovery queries across multiple farms and Exchange servers, to preserve and export discovered content

Records Management and Compliance – Site based retention has been introduced allowing compliance features to be applied to sites

Branding – The new features in a publishing site minimize the amount of knowledge that is required to successfully design and brand a site.

Need A Traffic Shortcut??

On the Internet, traffic has always been valued at a premium. For good reason too. Without traffic ecommerce sites would fail to turn a profit and PPC sites would just be a waste of cyberspace.

Traffic is what powers sellers and provides hope for burgeoning marketers. With a reliable source of traffic, anyone can make a profit.

It’s obvious why traffic is placed at such a premium. Without customers, any business wouldn’t succeed, and on the Internet, customers come in the form for traffic. With statistics playing such an important role in the productivity of a website, if you can maintain a consistent conversion rate, more traffic directly results in more sales which means more money.

With such an importance placed on traffic, driving traffic has become an obsession for Internet marketers. Those marketers who can drive more traffic wield more power and those who can’t are continuously seeking traffic shortcuts.

There are many different kinds of traffic shortcuts that exist, mostly in the form of a traffic exchanges. A traffic exchange is a website that will guarantee any website traffic in exchange for the owner flipping through a list of websites himself. The exchange is fair, usually tying the amount of traffic guaranteed to the number of pages the website owner surfs. For example, if I want traffic to my website, I’d be given a list of websites to visit. In a simple scenario, if I visit 100 sites, I’m promised 100 users to my site.

Traffic exchanges can be effective, but most marketers find the traffic garnered from such exchanges fairly useless. Shortcuts are usually shortcuts for a reason. If they worked well, everyone would be using them and they would become the standard way to drive traffic.

A more effective way to shortcut your way to driving traffic is with an ad exchange. An ad exchange is an agreement made with two or more websites where each party agrees to exchange ads on each other’s site. It’s generally a straight forward agreement and in a simple exchange, every website should be receiving as many visitors as it is giving.

Unfortunately, not all ad exchanges are simple and most marketers feel cheated by these types of exchanges. The general feeling with such exchanges is why trade a customer before you know his worth. If you hope a user clicks on a banner, why not make that banner profitable instead.

There is one kind of traffic shortcut that is receiving a lot of notoriety lately. It’s called an exit ad exchange and it’s based on the ad exchange concept, though with one major difference. Exit ad exchanges work the same exact way that a normal ad exchange works, except that it is shown only after a customer leaves your site.

The beauty behind such an idea is that if a customer has already left your site, then you know exactly what his value is to you. If a user isn’t going to click on anything on your site, he’s a perfect candidate to trade to another site where he might click on something that is more to his liking. So each visitor is given the option of continuing his surf of the Internet on a related site and in exchange, the forwarding website will receive a customer in return.

Since exit ad exchanges are very new and require specialized software, only a few exchanges currently exist. If you want to see how well an exit ad will work on your site, I recommend to see ExitPollAds.

ExitPollAds is a free membership site that not only will provide you with an easy way to increase your traffic, but it has an integrated exit poll built in so you can find out as much information as possible about your customers.

If traffic is the lifeblood of your business, then you should always be looking for effective shortcuts. If more people start using exit ad exchanges, though, then sooner or later, they won’t be considered a shortcut anymore.

Need A Traffic Shortcut??

On the Internet, traffic has always been valued at a premium. For good reason too. Without traffic ecommerce sites would fail to turn a profit and PPC sites would just be a waste of cyberspace.

Traffic is what powers sellers and provides hope for burgeoning marketers. With a reliable source of traffic, anyone can make a profit.

It’s obvious why traffic is placed at such a premium. Without customers, any business wouldn’t succeed, and on the Internet, customers come in the form for traffic. With statistics playing such an important role in the productivity of a website, if you can maintain a consistent conversion rate, more traffic directly results in more sales which means more money.

With such an importance placed on traffic, driving traffic has become an obsession for Internet marketers. Those marketers who can drive more traffic wield more power and those who can’t are continuously seeking traffic shortcuts.

There are many different kinds of traffic shortcuts that exist, mostly in the form of a traffic exchanges. A traffic exchange is a website that will guarantee any website traffic in exchange for the owner flipping through a list of websites himself. The exchange is fair, usually tying the amount of traffic guaranteed to the number of pages the website owner surfs. For example, if I want traffic to my website, I’d be given a list of websites to visit. In a simple scenario, if I visit 100 sites, I’m promised 100 users to my site.

Traffic exchanges can be effective, but most marketers find the traffic garnered from such exchanges fairly useless. Shortcuts are usually shortcuts for a reason. If they worked well, everyone would be using them and they would become the standard way to drive traffic.

A more effective way to shortcut your way to driving traffic is with an ad exchange. An ad exchange is an agreement made with two or more websites where each party agrees to exchange ads on each other’s site. It’s generally a straight forward agreement and in a simple exchange, every website should be receiving as many visitors as it is giving.

Unfortunately, not all ad exchanges are simple and most marketers feel cheated by these types of exchanges. The general feeling with such exchanges is why trade a customer before you know his worth. If you hope a user clicks on a banner, why not make that banner profitable instead.

There is one kind of traffic shortcut that is receiving a lot of notoriety lately. It’s called an exit ad exchange and it’s based on the ad exchange concept, though with one major difference. Exit ad exchanges work the same exact way that a normal ad exchange works, except that it is shown only after a customer leaves your site.

The beauty behind such an idea is that if a customer has already left your site, then you know exactly what his value is to you. If a user isn’t going to click on anything on your site, he’s a perfect candidate to trade to another site where he might click on something that is more to his liking. So each visitor is given the option of continuing his surf of the Internet on a related site and in exchange, the forwarding website will receive a customer in return.

Since exit ad exchanges are very new and require specialized software, only a few exchanges currently exist. If you want to see how well an exit ad will work on your site, I recommend to see ExitPollAds.

ExitPollAds is a free membership site that not only will provide you with an easy way to increase your traffic, but it has an integrated exit poll built in so you can find out as much information as possible about your customers.

If traffic is the lifeblood of your business, then you should always be looking for effective shortcuts. If more people start using exit ad exchanges, though, then sooner or later, they won’t be considered a shortcut anymore.