Ever since I published a Visio template for SharePoint 2003 solutions two years ago, one question in particular kept coming back: “Do you also have a Visio template for designing SharePoint (MOSS) 2007 sites?” Truth is, I hadn’t, because (a) I stopped designing SharePoint portals and (b) I switched to Axure for prototyping. But thanks to Casey, Dan, Michelle and everyone else asking, I spent some time updating the template and stencil to accommodate SharePoint 2007. And here it is. (more…)

Al enige tijd valt het me op dat nog zo weinig mensen RSS kennen en gebruiken, terwijl het al jaren bestaat en het stadium van de internetprofessionals en de early adopters dus allang gepasseerd had kunnen zijn. Vooral de grote onbekendheid van RSS onder kenniswerkers valt me op. Als geen ander zijn zij gebaat bij een efficiëntere informatievergaring. De afgelopen weken heb ik diverse interviews gehouden met juristen, communicatiemedewerkers, wetenschappelijk onderzoekers en studenten. Twee daarvan kennen RSS en slechts één gebruikt het. Hoe komt het dan dat een tijdbesparende technologie als RSS nog zo weinig bekend is en gebruikt wordt? (more…)

By special request, here is a quick instruction on how to embed a clickable diagram on a SharePoint site. It’s applicable to SPS 2003, WSS and MOSS 2007.

For the tutorial, we will create a simple flow diagram with 3 phases. Phase 2 consists of three processes. We want to be able to zoom in on these processes. (more…)

Last January I put up a beta of my Visio template for SharePoint 2003 solutions (including a webparts stencil library) for everyone to use freely. Today I post the final version of this Visio template.

Changes in this version:

• The drawing scale corresponds better with a 1024×768 resolution than the beta version. All webpart and font sizes have been updated as well.
• Each page has metadata directly below the wireframe: Page title (tab name), application name and version (both from document properties).

UPDATE (Oct. 2008): I also have a Visio template and stencil for SharePoint (MOSS) 2007.

(more…)

Over the past week, we have had some interesting and enthousiastic reactions on Mart’s and my article on the Knowledge Browser, our new knowledge management solution for SharePoint 2003.

So we decided to dedicate a website to it. As from today, www.knowledgebrowser.net will be the home of the Tam Tam Knowledge Browser.

I am proud to announce that today the first version (1.00) of the Knowledge Browser for SharePoint has been released to one of Tam Tam’s clients. The development team (Mart, Raymond, Robin, Stef and Wouter) has put much time, hard work and pondering in it to complete this first implementation in time. Cheers guys!

The Knowledge Browser is a customized knowledge base for SharePoint Portal Server 2003 that accommodates high-level navigating through a large collection of information by means of metadata. (more…)

These days, I’m surrounded by ’search’.

Last week, Judith, Annelies and I attended another IA Cocktail Hour in Amsterdam, which was adorned by two presentations on ’search’. The first presentation was about Elsevier’s Scopus, an extensive search interface for academic research. The topic was rather similar to Eefke Smit’s presentation on the SIGCHI.nl conference. Next was MediaLab, who presented their AquaBrowser, a search interface enriched by a visual map of associated words. What rested was a fine discussion and a nice dinner. (more…)

It has been a week since I published my Visio template for designing SharePoint sites for everyone to use freely. Judging on the many positive referrals to the article, the many Google search queries for ‘visio + template + sharepoint’ and the massive increase of traffic to my weblog, people seem to appreciate this design aid. And I’m glad for that.

But of course there are enough SharePoint architects who don’t have the need for modeling tools (or at least mine), and that’s fine. But today I stumbled upon an article by Lois & Clark called “Should we model?”, questioning the need for modeling SharePoint sites in detail. (more…)

This is no longer the most up-to-date version of this article. Please refer to the new article: Visio template and stencil for designing SharePoint 2003 portals and sites (update).

I also have a Visio template and stencil for SharePoint (MOSS) 2007.

I am sharing my Visio template (with stencil) for designing SharePoint sites. They are designed to assist interaction designers in prototyping wireframes, together with all the other Visio stencils you can find online.

The template and stencil are free to use, just don’t re-sell them or distribute them under your own name. Because this is the first time that I publish these tools, I release them as ‘beta’. I will be adding more shapes in the nearby future. If you have any suggestions for improvements, please drop me a note. (more…)

Continued from The first European IA Summit (day 1).

As of this month, Europe has the EuroIA Summit. Yesterday, I posted my personal highlights of the first summit day, today my highlights of the second and last day of this year’s summit. (more…)