LightSwitch... Or Not.

As Microsoft often does, it took a great tool in LightSwitch, which had gained a pretty hard-core following of power users, citizen developers, business analysts, and even some seasoned developers, and completely threw it into the ditch, without any further, substantive explanation, just like it did for Silverlight.

How do we know this change is permanent?

1) They made no (I repeat, NO!) improvements to LightSwitch in the Visual Studio 2015 release candidate. It's a small wonder they included it at all.

2) Andy Kung left Microsoft.

3) Beth Massi (or whatever her married name is now) is also no longer doing LightSwitch content.

4) Jay Schmelzer so eloquently danced around the topic better than any Democrat politician could ever do when it was brought up during a podcast. Pertinent comments start around the 5:00 mark in the podcast.

So... what's next? I wrote previously that learning skills like JavaScript, JQuery, and CSS would be vital for survival in the SharePoint world. This assertion still resounds true today.  Another stack that I have just recently started learning is asp.net MVC, used in conjunction with Entity Framework. This development toolset, like LightSwitch (though in a much different way than LightSwitch), handles much of the data source connectivity for you and it JUST... WORKS. You can still work with fully relational datasets, created either by code-first or by scaffolding via Entity Framework. Code can be generated for you while still customizing the business logic, but you will still need to know HTML. HTML helpers and RAZOR syntax help shorten the code required to render the output.

Microsoft Virtual Academy has some great resources on MVC and Entity Framework featuring Christopher Harrison. Just search for MVC and Entity Framework.

The biggest disadvantage is the difficulty of implementing file / database relationships, which was very easy in LightSwitch, though "Mike" shows how to do both database and file system storage and relationships here. Interaction with SharePoint lists and libraries is exclusively through javascript and is still tedious enough that I wouldn't recommend it in good conscience to non-developers.

Takeaway for today - LightSwitch isn't dead, but it's future looks grim at best and appears to be marked for deletion. I suspect the same will occur with Access 2013 Web Apps. If you're trying to do anything with some Microsoft tool that isn't part of the .net core stack, don't count on it being there in two years.

Today's Worst Mis-Titled Job Description Award Goes To...

The Pew Charitable Trusts!

https://www.linkedin.com/jobs2/view/17632795?trk=job_view_similar_jobs

From their "SharePoint Administrator" job post...

"Position Overview:
The SharePoint Administrator will be responsible maintaining the organization’s SharePoint platform and several custom applications developed on the platform. In addition the Administrator will manage changes and enhancements to a handful of other custom .Net applications. "

"Design, implement, test and deploy  Share Point custom features  and packages, 2007/2010/2013 solutions programmed in ASP.NET/C# with particular attention to user interface design."

"Demonstrated experience  in Microsoft .NET development technologies, including Visual Studio 2012, C#, ASP.NET,  HTML, CSS, JavaScript,  LINQ, WCF, Silverlight, AJAX,CAML,XML,  XSLT, REST, and DOM "

DEVELOPER!  Not Administrator.

Sorry, but this is unacceptable for the recruiter or the hiring manager who labeled this as a SharePoint Administrator position when it is clearly a SharePoint Developer position.

Don't let this happen to you.
 

Recent Announcement from Microsoft Could Affect Your Skillset Recruitment Efforts

So, Microsoft has officially announced that InfoPath 2013 will be the final version of InfoPath, but will support its use in its existing forms until 2023. Okay... so now what?

At SPCON2014, Microsoft has stated, in more detail, that it will shift its forms development platform from InfoPath back to Access 2013 and Excel, and that future versions of Microsoft Word will be enhanced to include additional forms capability to replace InfoPath.

In fact, Microsoft has made HEAVY investments into Access 2013 and subsequent releases as the new SharePoint 2013 Web Apps are also SharePoint Apps that can be packaged and monetized in the Office 365 SharePoint Store and in an enterprise's corporate App Catalog. Microsoft is actively polling for insights on how to beef up / improve future releases of Access even more.

As a recruiter, it will probably be in your best interest to, for now, still consider candidates that have expertise in InfoPath. However, you should probably give equal consideration to those users who have past experience in Microsoft Access for SharePoint Business Analyst / Power User openings.

As I have recommended before, obtaining an E3 subscription of Office 365 ensures that you will have access to the LATEST that Microsoft has to offer in terms of power user / citizen developer tools. Give Office 365 a free trial today!

You Don't Have to Be a Weatherman To Know Which Way the Wind Blows.

Which direction is the wind blowing in terms of SharePoint?

Answer: JavaScript/JQuery (read "function") and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets, read "look and feel"), if you want to do anything above and beyond out-of-the-box with SharePoint 2010 and 2013.

With every new release of SharePoint, Microsoft is allowing SharePoint to be more flexible, but at the cost of becoming less user-friendly for non-developers. The newest release of SharePoint, SharePoint 2013, makes heavier use of "apps" that can be customized through script.

SharePoint Designer 2013 has taken away its Design view, and thrown the form customizations over the fence to InfoPath 2013.  InfoPath 2013 has some limitations, and so the most effective way to change the function of your SharePoint sites is to use JavaScript and JQuery. This means that even a Site Collection Administrator would be well-served to have knowledge of JavaScript, JQuery, and CSS.

Fortunately, there are many good books available on both subjects, and even books focused on using JavaScript, JQuery, and CSS within the context of SharePoint 2013. I would highly recommend also getting a book on the use of InfoPath 2013 and even Office 365, Microsoft's cloud-hosted SharePoint solution.

For an all-in-one book, I recommend "Pro SharePoint 2013 Branding and Responsive Web Development". "JavaScript and JQuery: The Missing Manual" is also a good read if you're starting anew with any type of development/programming and has good cross-references within.

Best of luck, and happy coding!

Do You Have SharePoint Telecommute Positions Available?

If you have SharePoint Telecommuter positions available, you can post them here. Gain an edge on your competition by posting your jobs through a targeted website and audience. Except where an organization's network is not accessible through Internet / VPN connectivity, most SharePoint positions can be supported remotely, from home. Get qualified candidates now!

If you have any other telecommute / telecommute / Work-from-Home positions (anything not related to SharePoint), you can post them here.

If you post your positions through one of the two links in this post, your position will appear prominently at the top of the page.

Happy Recruiting

A Word on Office 365 / SharePoint Online

Office 365 and SharePoint Online are very valuable tools that Microsoft offers to both large and small businesses but is affordable enough for a stand-alone IT professionals to utilize to hone their skills or gain a new skillset.

Depending on which level of service you subscribe to, you can take advantage of just basic features, or go into full Enterprise SharePoint, chocked full of features like Managed Metadata, syndicated content types, pretty much everything but Project Server 2010... All without needing your own server hardware or network infrastructure. All you need is a PC with an Internet Explorer browser.

One of the biggest limitations of SharePoint Online in its current form (SharePoint 2010) is the restriction from being able to use true SharePoint functionality on the public-facing site collection offered with the E-level Office 365 subscriptions. Many people would love to use those features on public facing content and are not advised of these limitations before they buy the subscription, so, needless to say, Microsoft has had to deal with a great deal of backlash. But those days will be over soon... Supposedly.

Microsoft has issued news stating that the new 2013 public facing SharePoint sites offered as part of Office 365 will indeed provide the full functionality of SharePoint.

Even though the current SharePoint online fell short of expectations on the public facing website, someone trying to learn SharePoint 2010 can still use it as a learning and test lab for prototyping solutions using the popular collaboration platform, up to the site collection level. I believe it to still be a bargain for this use, all without having to set up your own hardware, hosting, and configuration.

Key Recruiter Takeaway: Learn SharePoint with Office 365 or with your company's existing enterprise SharePoint portal!

Definitions #3: Site Collection Administrator

The role of the SharePoint Site Collection Administrator (and equivalents listed below in the resume search terms section of this article) is to control all aspects of a Site Collection and all subsites, lists, and libraries contained therein. This person can control branding of a site collection, as well as layouts, master pages, style sheets, content types, site structure, content management, publishing of InfoPath forms (we'll cover InfoPath forms authors in another article), approval of submitted content, management of site columns, permissions, site collection search scopes, and creation of document libraries, lists, and associated workflows, both custom and out-of-the-box.

This role is one of the hardest to pinpoint and recruit. While no programming or previous administration skills are required, this skillset requires an immense amount of training, due to the massive number of features present in SharePoint. The Site Collection Administrator, of all the roles in SharePoint, is the one person who becomes intimately familiar with the out-of-the-box capabilities of SharePoint. This person is the power-user, and will usually also play the role of the business analyst within the scope of SharePoint.

Due to this familiarity with the application, the Site Collection Administrator also tends to become the first line of technical support and business analysis to the end users in the enterprise.  Sometimes this person is part of a small group that supports an entire enterprise, or this person is a point person for a particular business unit, with each business unit having one or two individuals responsible for administration of a SharePoint site collection. This person will build some of the closest connections / relationships possible in an entire enterprise and should also be very skilled at developing positive business relationships. A person who is good with both the technical and relational aspects is always worth their weight in gold.

The Site Collection Administrator is also responsible for learning how to use SharePoint Designer. SPD is used to edit style sheets, javascript, master pages, page layouts, (some) custom webparts, and custom rule-based workflows for automating business processes.

While not often recruited specifically, finding a person with a complete, robust skillset in Site Collection Administration can be very difficult to find. 

WARNING: the Site Collection Adminsitrator has the power to perform some devastating actions (most often times very inadvertently) that can take hours, days, and in rare cases, even WEEKS to overcome and restore. SENDING THIS PERSON TO TRAINING IS WORTH THE PRICE if they don't have previous experience.  A Site Collection Administrator can delete a list, library, subsite, and even their entire site collection. They can also put a custom workflow into an infinite loop. And, as I stated before, these actions usually happen completely by accident. Restoring deleted sites and site collections requires the intervention of the SharePoint Farm Administrator.

A note about Office 365 (O365, SharePoint Online, offered by Microsoft): Someone with Site Collection Admin experience is all you need to get started with using the SharePoint Online offerings through Microsoft. The highest level you will be allowed to administer is at the site collection level and provisioning site collections.

If a person is looking to become a full-time SharePoint professional, this is the place they should start, unless they are already .net programmer, in which case the person should look into becoming a SharePoint Developer.

Certainly, a SharePoint Administrator or SharePoint Developer could be very well-versed on Site Collection Administrator skills, but many times the SharePoint Admins are Windows Systems Engineers and SharePoint Developers are .net cross-trainees, and neither of these ever really get experience solving business problems with out-of-the-box SharePoint solutions like the true Site Collection Administrator does. Please keep this in mind when evaluating the value (read "salary") of an experienced Site Collection Administrator.

Key Recruiter Take-Aways: An experienced SharePoint Site Collection Administrator is worth their weight in gold to the customer you place them with... be prepared to pay the piper. The experience that an experienced SCA has takes YEARS to accumulate and is constantly evolving. While a degree in Computer Science isn't necessary, a solid understanding of prepositional (boolean) logic is necessary to properly leverage things like custom views and filtering, and make modifications to pages that leverage javascript and other function calls. And finally, as mentioned in a previous post, an experienced Site Collection Administrator can and should strive to learn the back-end of SharePoint Administration. It is the next step in the natural career progression in the SharePoint ranks. If you are confident that a person can make the transition and they REALLY want to make the transition, you may be able to hire a trainable SharePoint Administrator at a discount if they have the necessary Site Collection Administrator experience.

Resume Search Terms: SharePoint Site Collection Administrator, SharePoint Analyst, SharePoint Business Analyst, SharePoint Specialist, SharePoint Designer (the tool, not the job title... we will cover the job title of SharePoint Designer later), SharePoint Knowledge Manager, SharePoint Content Administrator, SharePoint Content Manager, SharePoint Permissions, SharePoint Administrator (optional), SharePoint Application Administrator (optional).

Definitions #2: SharePoint Administrator

The SharePoint Administrator position, the role I currently fill, is quite possibly the most vague of them all, and this fact alone becomes even more true (or distorted, however you want to look at it) with the newer versions of SharePoint (2010, 2013) and cloud-hosted, multi-tenant SharePoint instances. However, the most common definition of this position is responsibility for any infrastructure components that make up a SharePoint farm (however, this usually excludes responsibility for the overall network/LAN/domain it is attached to). This includes standing up a new SharePoint farm, supporting existing farms, and migrating data from an old farm to a new one.

Farms can be hosted entirely on a single server (they all start out as a single server, or with the only component separated being the SQL back-end), or they can be expanded to include the following: 1-to-many SharePoint Web Front End (WFE) servers, typically an application server (which can include a search function), an indexing server for search, and the SQL Server back-end.

The SharePoint admin is also responsible for databases that store configuration, content, and access lists/user profiles, though the databases typically reside on a larger, shared database server that is under the control and responsibility of a SQL Server database administrator, who usually administers backups of the SharePoint-dependent databases.

The SharePoint admin sees to it that the servers and databases are backed up on a frequent basis, and will be responsible for disaster recovery (DR) should the SharePoint farm crash.

The admin is also responsible for configuring URL's through SharePoint Web Apps and through alternate access mappings, if necessary. Each Web App can be configured for consuming different services, such as search, Excel services, etc. and ensures that those who need access to these services have them.

The admin is responsible for configuring and monitoring search crawls, a key component of SharePoint that users rely upon heavily.

Another admin responsibility is creating new site collections. The newly-created site collections are usually handed over to site collection administrators, who are who are often mis-recruited for SharePoint administrator positions. However, it should be noted that in some cases, the SharePoint admin will also serve as a SharePoint Site Collection Administrator as I do in my current position. But please, please do not confuse these two roles, as they are often separate within the enterprise. If a position you are recruiting for is not a farm admin and is at the Site Collection level only (no server responsibility), please make sure your position is appropriately titled as a Site Collection Administrator and not as a SharePoint Administrator or Developer.  Many candidates will use this in their search criteria when seeking new positions. I will more clearly define the Site Collection Administrator role in a different article.

Another dimension to add is the fact that cloud tenant hosting providers are now coming to the forefront. This adds another middleware layer to the picture. The SharePoint Administrator could be the infrastructure person at the cloud hosting provider, or they could be the tenant company's person who runs the Web Apps. The person will oversee user licenses, Site Collections, storage quotas and usage, as well as resource quotas and usage. This person could be generically (and appropriately) titled as a SharePoint Administrator, though a hiring manager needs to be VERY SPECIFIC about the nature of the environment and which layer(s) the hired candidate will be responsible for when brought on-board.

What the candidate needs to have:

1. Ideally, the candidate should have a solid background (read "degree") in computer sciences, and be Microsoft Certified (MCTS or higher) in the technology he or she is being hired for if they do not have much on-the-job experience prior to the position you are hiring them for. Certifications aren't 100% necessary, but they do demonstrate at least a good portion of the working knowledge necessary for the position.

2. The candidate should be knowledgable on Windows Server operating systems and experience examining server logs for troubleshooting purposes.

3. The candidate needs some working knowledge of SQL server and associated roles. This is necessary for properly securing the SharePoint farm.

4. The candidate should have a solid, working understanding of SharePoint architecture, service architecture, and network concepts.

And, pay close attention to this one...

5. The candidate should have some knowledge of how SharePoint is utilized by the end users. Here is where a unique opportunity may present itself to you in the form of an experienced Site Collection Administrator. An experienced Site Collection Administrator can be up-trained to become a SharePoint farm admin, and you, as the recruiter can use the person's lack of farm admin experience as a bargaining chip to discount their salary in exchange for giving the person valuable experience as a farm admin. That said, the salary will still need to be greater than what they were making as a Site Collection Admin, and the person will need to be sent to a week of training for SharePoint Administration and possibly Windows Server Administration.

6. Experience in programming isn't necessary and is only minimally helpful for a pure SharePoint Admin position... that is why you have developers, though, a developer can be of assistance in administration tasks at times.

7. While not necessary at first, a solid understanding of command-line tools STSADM (for SharePoint 2007) and PowerShell 2.0 (for SharePoint 2010 and beyond) should be learned and maintained.

Your Recruiting Take-Away: Even though SharePoint Administators and SharePoint Developers may have overlapping skills, please make sure that a) the two roles are NOT CONFUSED with each other, b) the job descriptions are accurate about what the position actually entails, and c) that the resumes are actually read prior to matching the resumes to the positions.

Recommended Resume Search Criteria: "SharePoint Administrator" + farm + WFE + "SQL Server" (optional) + "MCTS: SharePoint" (optional) + stsadm + PowerShell

Definitions #1: SharePoint Developer

Today, I would like to define for you what a SharePoint Developer does. Simply stated, a SharePoint developer performs actions that involve writing code to meet custom needs of the enterprise. These actions extend the capabilities of SharePoint above and beyond what can be done out-of-the-box, with InfoPath, or with SharePoint Designer. Within the realm of browser-based applications, there are two ways to present interactivity between the user and the web in which he or she is interacting: Client-Side and Server-Side.

Some developers specialize in one or the other, but can do both. This is dependent upon several variables, such as business requirements, developer skillset, and access levels.

Client-Side development is handled at the browser level, meaning that most of this kind of work is done with HTML or javascript, and can involve technologies like JQuery, JCarousel, etc. For the most part, this can be done with only Site Owner or Site Collection Administrator permissions, or in some limited cases, contributor. Some of the tools required for this include SharePoint Designer, though some of the work can be done in a simple Content Editor Web Part and a library to store any resource files, such as JQuery. A client-side developer may also opt to take advantage of tools present in Microsoft InfoPath.

Server-Side development is handled, as the name suggests, at the server level. For these scenarios, the developer will need a solid foundation of .Net experience, as well as a solid understanding of SharePoint architecture, queries, workflows, and the SharePoint Object Model. Tools that the Server-Side developer requires include a development SharePoint environment (read farm, even if only a single server instance) for which he or she has administrative access to, as well as Microsoft Visual Studio, to develop, package, and deploy what are known as features. These individuals can have some experience (or at least some know-how) as a SharePoint administrator, but it isn't necessarily required.

Other duties that are typically required by developers include knowledge of version management, configuration management, and most importantly, the ability to compile quality documentation of their work.

The Important Recruiting Take-away: Many developers are knowledgable on both, but you, as the recruiter, need to know what you're hiring for and what that person will have access to at their job place. You do NOT want to place a candidate that only has client side experience for a job requiring Server-Side skills, or, on the other side of the coin, a person who has and wants to utilize server-side skills but will only have access to implement client-side methods when they arrive at their new job site. 

1. Make sure that the hiring manager has given you, the recruiter, an accurate job description for any development positions.

2. Take a close look at the resumes of your candidates. Do they possess use of Visual Studio in the context of a SharePoint environment? In my case, I did a brief stint as a .net developer long before I gained any experience with SharePoint. If a recruiter examines my resume, they will see that I have no .net experience during the jobs that I have used SharePoint. I also have in bold letters towards the top of my resume that I am only interested in SharePoint Administrator positions only... but somehow I still get reqs for SharePoint developer positions... to which I immediately delete, knowing that my current resume wasn't even opened by the recruiter.

3. An extra five minutes of looking at your resumes will yield you 5-10 times better candidate proposals to your hiring managers. The hiring managers employ you to present qualified candidates and to separate out the wheat from the chaffe so they don't have to. Read the resumes!

 

Welcome to SharePoint Recruiter Central!

First order of business... Welcome to a blog dedicated to the competitive, lucrative, and highly misunderstood art of recruiting SharePoint professionals.

As a frequently-recruited MCTS in SharePoint technologies, I am perplexed at some of the recruiting I receive... Jobs I am qualified for (best case), jobs I am qualified for but don't pay market value, jobs I am not qualified for but the recruiter still tries like hell to submit me for an interview with the hiring managers, and most interestingly, jobs that I wasn't qualified for but accepted because I wanted to upgrade my skillset (this one is key if you find the right candidate to take a chance on at a discounted rate).

I have created this site to help all of the IT, and more specifically, SharePoint recruiters out there get the best bang for their buck and get the most out of their time spent recruiting professionals that are well-matched for the positions they are being recruited to fill.

In the beginning, I will differentiate between admins, power-users, developers, authors, designers, solutions architects, as well as other misunderstood analyst types. I will show you what to look for on their résumés, and, most importantly, WHICH QUESTIONS to ask your hiring managers in regards to the roles and responsibilities of the position being filled to ensure that you a) have an accurate position description so you can b) find the right candidate for the position.

I will also cover some nasty truths that none of you want to hear but need to hear. I will also try to give you the best guidance on how to turn these truths into advantages, give you hope (and maybe an edge over the competition!).
My goal is to stay on top of the technology trends, give you, the recruiter, overviews of emerging SharePoint-related trends and how to tailor your recruiting efforts toward them. Part of recruiting is using proper search criteria to identify the resumes that match the jobs.

I hope to publish useful material to help you earn more recruiting commissions with less hassle and less time spent! This includes providing you with websites specifically targeted to SharePoint professionals for optimum job board recruiting, at a fraction of the cost of LinkedIn, which many of you undoubtedly use in your efforts.

Your participation is very much welcome here. Share both your successes and your difficulties, as all who come to this site can benefit. Thanks for stopping by, and happy recruiting!