Webinar: Busting myths about Office 365 and your small business

Is Office 365 Small Business just an online version of Office? Why do I want to store stuff in the cloud? Can I share docs with those outside the business? Guest host Tom Werner will lay out how Office 365 can help small businesses like yours and answer your questions.

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SharePoint Business Connectivity Services - Part 5

Business Data List Web Part

Now that you have learned how to setup Business Connectivity Services, you will learn how to use Business Data list web part to show external data on any SharePoint page  you want.

Uninterrupted communication with Office 365 helps keep information flowing at the Center for American Progress

Today’s post was written by George Estrada, Vice President for Technology, Online Communications at Center for American Progress

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Microsoft’s unified technology event for enterprises

Over the past few months, it has been awesome to connect with our technical communities, customers, and partners at the SharePoint Conference, Lync Conference, Exchange Conference, Project Conference, and most recently, at TechEd North America. While the world is increasingly digital, there is still no replacement for time together, in person, to talk tech and business, and simply get to know each other better. Hands down, my favorite weeks of the past year have been those spent at these conferences, meeting with many, many of you!

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Montgomery County, PA—How government can become more dynamic, responsive, and cost-effective through Office 365

Today’s post was written by Anthony Olivieri, Chief Technology Officer at Montgomery County, Pennsylvania.

One of the best things about working in technology is that there’s always something new, some way to “build a better mousetrap.” But mousetraps are only worthwhile if they truly address the business needs that you’ve identified within your organization.

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SharePoint Business Connectivity Services - Part 4

Modifying External Content Type

You can modify external content type if you want to make changes. For example, in the above figure you may have noticed that you only see three records where the country is US. What if you want to show all records? You can remove the filter from the content type.

Playing to win—GameStop ups customer service with Office 365

Today’s post was written by Jason Cochran, vice president of Store Operations at GameStop

At GameStop, we’re all about giving players the video games and devices that they need to have fun. Walk into any GameStop store and you’ll see equally enthusiastic customers and employees comparing scores, evaluating devices, and discussing new virtual worlds. Despite that focus on fun, it’s important to remember that we run a serious business. We’re a rapidly growing Fortune 500 and S&P 500 company with more than 6,000 stores, and we need all our stores to reflect our brand and uphold our high level of service.

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SharePoint Business Connectivity Services - Part 3

BCS Login failed for user NT Authority

If you have created an external content type and are trying to access it in a list and get Access Denied that is because you have not given permissions to the logged in user to use that external content type. You can easily give permissions to that user or to all users in your site by going to central administration site and configuring business connectivity service.

Publishing My Book: SharePoint 2013 WCM Advanced Cookbook

On January 23rd, 2014, Packt Publishing published my first book, SharePoint 2013 WCM Advanced Cookbook. It is available at Amazon.com and other online retailers. A sample chapter is also available for download from the Packt website.
I’ve been working for Sitrion (formerly NewsGator), the best place to work on the planet, for almost two years now. I’ve learned a lot during my time at Sitrion and when I learn new, exciting things, I like to blog about them. The folks over at Packt Publishing found me through my blog and asked me to write a book about web content management with SharePoint 2013.

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SharePoint Business Connectivity Services - Part 2

1. Click Next.

2. Click Add Filter Parameters button.  In the Properties pane, select Country in the Data Source Element drop down. Click Click to Add link in the Filter field.

Dakota Financial: Direct funder reduces the cost of expansion, boosts productivity with Office 365

Dakota Financial filmed their own Office 365 story on a Nokia Lumia 1020.

Dakota Financial provides funding for equipment leasing to small businesses that cannot obtain traditional financing. It replaced an expensive scanning solution with Microsoft Office 365, SideKick 365 DCM (a SharePoint App from SkyLite Systems), and a scanner from Kodak. Today, the company is saving more than US$14,400 a year in document storage costs. Employees are working more productively by using Office 365 and the SideKick 365 DCM app to automate document uploads to online storage.

DeSantis Landscapes: Firm stays nimble, saves 30 to 50 hours a week with Office 365

DeSantis Landscapes filmed their own Office 365 story on a Nokia Lumia 1020.

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New interactive training for hybrid computing now available

Bill Baer is a technical product manager on the SharePoint team.

Hybrid computing is the intersection between traditional on-premises and cloud computing models. Deploying a hybrid scenario is useful when you need to realize ROI on existing on-premises investments, when you require a bridge between on-premises and cloud to support migration, or if you’re not ready to move to the cloud all at once. We are committed to continued innovation and guidance for those of you who are deploying hybrid scenarios. To demonstrate our commitment, we recently launched new interactive hybrid computing training and introduced new changes to SharePoint that make it easier to work in hybrid environments.

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SharePoint Business Connectivity Services - Part 1

Business Connectivity Services is a centralized infrastructure in SharePoint 2013 and Office 2013 that supports integrated data solutions. SharePoint 2013 acts as an interface that you can use to surface data from external data sources. Enterprises do not store their data in one location. Enterprises use myriad of data sources and applications with each application connected to a separate data source. Before Business Connectivity Services, surfacing data from different sources was not easy and required lot of effort and custom programming.

Cross-post from the SharePoint blog: Options to create forms in SharePoint 2013

Last week, Keenan Newton published a blog post on the SharePoint blog. In his post, Keenan explains the different options for creating forms in SharePoint 2013. To summarize, you can choose from several different tools for building forms in SharePoint. Depending on what your specific needs are, you will find a wide range of tools that provide flexibility for both business users and developers.

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