itgroove's Colin Phillips shares the top ten awesome features that itgroove has customized SharePoint to do. Look forward to a few “ooh and ahh’s” and a “SharePoint can do that?!” or two. Who is Colin Phillips? Colin is a SharePoint MVP and Consultant with itgroove. He is a graduate of the University of Victoria and has over 14 years’ experience in both software development and IT infrastructure. His background working at both small and large companies (including 5 years working with BI at Cognos - now IBM) has given him a wealth of knowledge. Among Colin’s areas of experience include SharePoint, business intelligence, workflow, VMware, JavaScript, and many more. Check out Colin's blog at mmman.itgroove.net

1. 10 Awesome Things
We’ve Done With
SharePoint
Colin Phillips :: SharePoint MVP ::
itgroove

2. Who I am: Colin Phillips
My Background
 15+ Years in Technology
 Today: SharePoint Consultant and MVP (with itgroove)
 Previously:
11 Years Developing Software, IT Infrastructure Projects, Workflows, and Many Other
Related Topics
 B.Sc. in Computer Science from UVic
My Blog
mmman.itgroove.net
Where to learn more
cphillips@itgroove.net

3. Research…
• Quickly 10 things became 25 / 30 / 35+
- Ok, we had the odd less than stellar project too
• Started with just internal projects and then
remembered we make stuff for customers too. 
• Decided to focus on internal projects for this
presentation, and get our customers (those in the
audience) to show off their own sites at a future
vSharePoint themselves

4. SharePoint Awesome Thing #1 (in no particular order)
You’ve probably seen this one before, but guess what, it’s still awesome. 
SharePoint Home Page Search Rotator
• Eliminates the whole
“what’s the most
important stuff to put
on the home page”
problem
• Most people probably
don’t look at your home
page anyways, it may as
well be gorgeous
• Combined with Mega
Menus, this is killer

5. • Powerful navigation that follows you
everywhere (same experience, with
slightly different look and feel)
And their cousin… the Mini Menu, which
hangs off the Quick Link Anchors (below)
SharePoint Awesome Thing #2 (in no particular order)
Mega Menus
Above – Normal view (in lists and
libraries)
Above Right – Search Home Page
Right – On Dashboard Pages

6. • A combination of 4 of our favourite
Nintexisms – Including:
• Orb (and baby orb)
• URL Shortener
• Report Cards
• Cheque Deposits
SharePoint Awesome Thing #3 (in no particular order)
Our Nintex “IT Superhero Utility Belt”

7. • Helped solve a major business
problem for us:
How do we successfully track “project
based” work (large or small) for a given
customer – especially one who has
numerous ongoing projects
simultaneously
• Still being refined further as we use it
and come up with additional ideas, but
it becomes more valuable everyday
SharePoint Awesome Thing #4 (in no particular order)
SOW (Statement Of Work) Tracking System

8. • Helps guide everyone by tracking what’s
on their plate, and what individualized
priorities each task has
• Additionally allows consultants to break
down items in a SOW into individual
issues and track each separately
• Ties together with the Orb and issues are
“auto” generated from customer
submitted requests
SharePoint Awesome Thing #5 (in no particular order)
Issues Tracking System

9. • Dashboard / Report data includes the
following (plus much more)
• Client Hour Breakdown (by month
(default) / any other date metric)
• Consultant Hour Breakdown (weekly
by billable and total time logged)
• Combined Client / Consultant
breakdown (by month / year / other)
• Historical Time (for all billable work)
• Monthly Service Contract Progress
• Time broken down by SOW
• And it all gets ported into QuickBooks
via a custom utility we wrote
SharePoint Awesome Thing #6 (in no particular order)
Time Tracking System & Associated BI (with *BONUS* QB Integration)

10. • It mostly speaks for itself – we slice and dice
tasks, time, issues, risks, SOWs, client details,
etc. in so many different ways, even our own
staff don’t seem to know about half of them
(I’m not kidding – right Keith?)
SharePoint Awesome Thing #7 (in no particular order)
All Our Amazing BI

11. • Simple & straightforward - makes requesting time off painless
• Everyone who needs to, gets their say
• Nintex workflow logic fits perfectly, & lazy approval makes the
process easy for those who don’t even want to touch SharePoint
SharePoint Awesome Thing #8 (in no particular order)
Holiday Request System

12. • Allows individuals to request the
company to pay for items
• Items can be ordered for personal use
as well ($ comes out of your wallet)
• Workflows run in the backend to notify
purchaser of new request(s)
• When items arrive, the purchaser can
mark the order as processed, and the
originator is notified (and asked for $ if
it’s for personal use)
SharePoint Awesome Thing #9 (in no particular order)
Purchase Request System

13. • Simple, but very useful system to keep
track of upcoming items which will be
expiring in the coming days, weeks, months
• Used to track customer products with a
regular renewals (anti-virus, etc.) or items
coming to end of life (server warranty)
• Also used to track our own internal
expiring products – license renewals, SSL
certs, warranty’s, support
subscriptions, domain registrations, etc.
SharePoint Awesome Thing #10 (in no particular order)
Product Expiry Tracker

14. Honorable Mentions
• Dashboards Galore
Document Dashboard
Presidents Dashboard
Client Dashboard …
• Mileage Tracker
• Storing All Documents in SharePoint
• Blog Knowledge System
• Suite Tracker
• Expense System
• “While You Were Out” (Phone Messages)
• Client Remote Access
• Lunch & Learn Topic Manager
• Change Control Manager
• Scheduled Tasks Tracker
• Go Social
• Sales Pipeline
• The Matrix
Portfolio
Bulk Document Storage
• Best Practices Wiki (Living Document)

15. Oh Yeah, And Sampling of Awesome Stuff We’ve
Made For Clients Too!
Projects Sites – Numerous Government Agencies
Many Branding Projects
• Including Royal Roads SharePoint
Customer "Kiosk" Sites
• Such as for board members
Complex Project (End-to-End) System
• Project Initiation Request System
• Project Cycle (including Charter, with tracking BI)
Custom Nintex solutions
Custom Windows applications (that integrate with
SharePoint)
Employee Evaluation Systems
Cash Report System
Daily Deposit System
Large Scale Document Approval System
And much, much more!

16. Questions?
Contact Info
Colin Phillips
cphillips@itgroove.net
www.itgroove.net
blog: mmman.itgroove.net