Consolidation and collaboration

There's been lots of news about SharePoint expanding and integrating with other tools since my last update. SharePoint is being merged with CMS and MS have acquired Groove. Content Management Server's strength is managing website pages. Groove is a tool to allow offline syncronisation and collaboration. It even enables restricted access to people who don't have a SharePoint user account. Even Bill Gates has been talking up SharePoint

Both make SharePoint more powerful. But I think it still has way more potential to take on roles that other tools don't do that well in my opinion. I'd love to see Outlook disappear into SharePoint. SharePoint's already got tasks, calendar and contacts, once it does email, My Site could be a rich-featured web-based email client. Another tool who's function I'd like to see performed by SharePoint is Project Server/Client. I know Project and Outlook can be accessed through SharePoint, but I think they belong as part of SharePoint.

Other tools that I see as companions are: InfoPath is like the client for SharePoint, Biztalk a powerful add-on, as well as Live Communications Server and LiveMeeting. And let's not forget the rest of Office! Excel is already an excellent companion application for SharePoint. And K2 is a great Workflow tool.

SharePoint has the potential to be to Windows what Google is to the Internet. I don't just mean a Search tool, it is a way to bring order to information chaos. Google wants to provide tools that index and manage the internet. Even your email. They've even ventured into organising your PC with Google Desktop. SharePoint can do the same for information within organisations, not just public web pages. Time will tell, but SharePoint's position in Microsoft is only going to get more and more important. The key thing is can Microsoft do all of this before Google, Yahoo! or someone else does?

Newsgator

Newsgator allows me to publish publicly my Clippings, these are posts from the 60 or so sites I subscribe to, it's here if you're interested. It'll be empty now, but it'll grow up untill my next update.
Newsgator is just another tool on the cutting edge of information management, it's the main tool I use everyday, I can even subscribe to my gmail via an RSS feed that Newsgator picks up for me. Flickr is another tool I love, and it make SharePoint "Picture Libraries" look very weak. Pity Yahoo! just bought them, I don't think it'll do them any good. But like Blogger and Google, for a lot of people the end goal of business development is just to be bought by a bigger company, then go off and do something else.

Recycle Bin options

There was a good article on MSDN in February (click the February 2005 link) about creating a Recycle bin for SharePoint, I think it's main strength is it shows the possibilities for extending SharePoint in creative ways. A recycle bin could be better deployed by changing what happens when users select "Delete" from the context menu. So no delete takes place at all. This gets around the limitation in the event model of not being able to catch a delete event. I'd include a Document libray on every site as part of the template called "Recycle bin" that only certain people could access to get around sensitive documents ending up being accessible to too wide an audience if they end up in here. Then when the user selects "Delete" the document is copied to there and the originating URL is kept too as well as the properties. Then have another piece of code to restore the file if necessary and finally some code to empty the recylce bin.

Then take the right to delete away from almost everyone so that they don't delete the file in Web Folder view. Another option would be to send a "Delete request email" when someone clicks "Request Delete" so an Administrator, or memeber of a Site group that can delete can choose to delete the document. Even in that case, I'd just move the file manually to an Archive and store metadata to say where it came from, who deleted it, for whom and why.

Finally, the simplest option, remove the delete right from users, but have a property on all documents dalled delete with yes and no as options, then use views to hide or group these items. Sometimes the simplest ideas are best...

Other Updates

Here are my other updates, arranged by section.
General
SPSFAQ010445 - What should a good SharePoint expert know?
SPSFAQ010444 - How would I migrate eRooms, Windows File Services and Exchange Public folders to SharePoint?

Customisation
SPSFAQ0305155 - How can I customise SharePoint List forms?
SPSFAQ0302154 - How do I write custom site definitions?
SPSFAQ0302153 - How do I use the Smartpart tool?
SPSFAQ0302152 - Tool for executing CAML queries against SharePoint
SPSFAQ0302151 - How can I hide a property from users?
SPSFAQ0302150 - How can I build search queries in SharePoint?
SPSFAQ0302149 - How can I bypass the 'Add a listing' page when uploading a document to the portal?

Extranet
SPSFAQ040209 - Deploying on an Extranet by Using ISA Server 2000 and ISA Server 2004

Backup/Antivirus
SPSFAQ050221 - How can I create SPS backups with a date included?
SPSFAQ050220 - How to Write a Back Up and Restore Application for SharePoint Portal Server 2003

Managing
SPSFAQ0602145 - How can I generate RSS feed from SharePoint lists?
SPSFAQ0602144 - Tool to help you build customer Sharepoint Portal Server demos very quickly
SPSFAQ0602143 - Can I do cross-site searches in SharePoint?
SPSFAQ0602142 - How can I recover deleted inaccessible documents from SharePoint?

There are also new books on the books page and a new blogger on the blogs page, welcome Ed!