Comments for SharePoint Business Analyst

Comment on SharePoint and SAP Integration – Easy ? Surely? ;-) by Matthew D

Matthew D — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 15:37:50 +0000

Hi Lee- I would be interested in hearing more about your progress and the reactions/lessons learned from this project. I am beginning the investigation stage of a similar endeavor to integrate SAP and SharePoint 2010, and to determine where the business can gain value from our investment in SharePoint.

Feel free to send me a message if you would be interested in sharing your experience.

Comment on SharePoint 2010 – How to ‘drive’ user adoption by Scrum with SharePoint – How not to do it! « SharePoint Business Analyst

Scrum with SharePoint – How not to do it! « SharePoint Business Analyst — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 18:11:20 +0000

[...] to make sure this doesn’t happen and that you get to the business early on in the process. My previous post covers this [...]

Comment on SharePoint and SAP Integration – Easy ? Surely? ;-) by Nizaam Karjieker

Nizaam Karjieker — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 08:57:17 +0000

With MOSS 2007, there are a few ways of doing this. Easiest and simplest way is for the SAP ABAP Developer to create a web service for each service type required. SharePoint is great at connecting to web services as we know. The web service will also be able to trunk data via internet, acrosss firewalls and also locally within its own network. Depending on sensitivity of data, you can use web services for 2 way data transmission. Although best practice would be to use SharePoint as the presentation layer and leave the transactional duties with SAP. The other method is the BDC feature in MOSS 2007. Requires a little bit more configuration skill, but really is no rocket science once you get to grips with it. I have not done this myself but have seen intermediate developers tackle similar tasks in MOSS 2007 and SP 2010. WIth SP2010 its a little easier with the BCS, the Wizard makes data from desperate sources discoverable, allowing you to re-use alot of SharePoint’s own templates, layouts, reporting and presentation layers for the data you have discovered. However, be very weary of trying to manipulate workflows in proprietary systems like SAP, Oracle, etc. as most of these system workflows do not conform to the same standards as SharePoint and this may be asking for trouble. You can also use SQL Reporting services to query and data dump. Data dumping is duplicating the same data in SQL to enable more functionality in SharePoint that would not have been possible with direct integration. In any event, whether its MOSS 2007 BDC, SP2010 BCS or SQL Reporting Services, the underlying database is always SQL for all 3. SQL is the data store for SharePoint across the board so with SQL Reporting Services you can achieve alot more. We used the SQL Reporting Service Option combined with Web Services at a client recently in order to authenticate SAP Business Partners (this is the term SAP uses for its clients) so that we could display accounts. The main challenges are infrastructure and environment configuration. These had to changed to accommodate the solution but more and more people do not realise this until they get started. Microsoft suggests IPD (Infrastructure Planning & Design) but too few customers are prepared to change environment config in order to accommodate solution. They end up changing it anyways. There are no work-arounds. Environment must be configured according to best practice. The actual solution becomes easier to deploy then

Comment on SharePoint and SAP Integration – Easy ? Surely? ;-) by Mike Sorokin

Mike Sorokin — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 21:31:51 +0000

Intersting topic, acually inspired me to learn more about SAP

Comment on SharePoint User Group – 31st March 2011 by London SharePoint User Group (Thursday 31st March 2011) « iThink SharePoint

London SharePoint User Group (Thursday 31st March 2011) « iThink SharePoint — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 21:06:45 +0000

[...] Lee Stevens – http://sharepointbusinessanalyst.com/2011/04/01/sharepoint-user-group-%e2%80%93-31st-march-2011/ [...]

Comment on About by SharePoint-BA

SharePoint-BA — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 13:51:44 +0000

Hello,

I too am interesting in this area. I have worked as an IT Consultant for many years. I have recently moved into the enterprise space with experience at Microsoft and Compucom. I have found that the blend of my IT cerfications and experience along with my MBA/Business experience provide a lot of useful insights. I am however torn as to how to best capitalize on these skills without going back into the self-employed consultants area again. Project managers seem to do most of what I did as a consultant. I will go as far as to say that a PM role is simply a formal title for Corporate Consultant in many cases. I feel at this point that the Business Analyst skillset is of great value to a SharePoint Consultant, especially in the enterprise market. This gives the IT Pro or Pro Dev the ability to work with a more formalized structure to problem solving. It puts the problem definition in business terms and lets the business issue drive the solution rather than the other way around.

Comment on I’m now “Lee Stevens – SharePoint 2010 MCTS” by MCTS Training

MCTS Training — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 19:15:08 +0000

nice post keep posting

Comment on SharePoint and SAP Integration – Easy ? Surely? ;-) by Kristian Kalsing

Kristian Kalsing — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 05:31:48 +0000

Part of the problem is the way teams are structured in most large organisations. There are little or no collaboration between SAP and Microsoft practices and often there are even strong resistance to change that.

Drop me a line. I’d be keen to share experiences with you.

Comment on Contact me by sharepointbusinessanalyst

sharepointbusinessanalyst — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 19:16:50 +0000

I would start with the SharePoint 2010 Configeration exams.

Comment on SharePoint 2010 New Features explained for ‘the business’ by Lyn

Lyn — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 08:49:04 +0000

I am a BA and have just completed a MOSS 2007 Deployment. SharePoint 2010 is a far cry from 2007. You have provided a great view of 2010 enough to wet the appetite to want one to FAST venture in to use all the new features and capabilities. So thank you.