There are about 10,000 attendees this year, making it the biggest SharePoint Conference ever. The expo hall is buzzing with activity and packed with vendors, as well as a very big Microsoft presence. This year Microsoft has put together a large area in the center of the expo hall, with small kiosks representing several different Office products, as well as an SP Express session area. The SP Express sessions will be small, 15-minute sessions which highlight and demonstrate SharePoint and Office 365. Microsoft has also put together a “Community Lounge,” which has some fun things going on. There is a community wall and a timeline that you can write on, as well as kiosks representing Microsoft User Groups, MVPs, Women in SharePoint and much more.

Rackspace has an awesome booth at the SharePoint Conference this year, with some swag that has been a big hit. Hundreds of people have visited the booth already, and we have just begun. It’s going to be an exciting week! Here is a picture of some of our team working in the booth:

Sunday evening, I got a chance to work at a kiosk in the Microsoft Community Lounge, representing SharePoint User Groups. Since I run the Birmingham, Ala. SPUG, I took a turn representing user groups around the world. There is a large map of the world, and we were placing pushpins on each city as people came to the kiosk and let me know where they live. This is a great way to see how widespread the community is. Here’s a picture of the map as it stands now. I imagine that by the end of the week, it will be pretty filled up.

Be sure to swing by the Rackspace booth and stop by our sessions at SharePoint Conference 2012.

Activity Stream: Much like the Facebook Newsfeed, the Activity Stream in SharePoint aggregates status updates for colleagues or content users have chosen to follow. This gives workers more exposure to projects and activities at all levels of the organization and an opportunity to offer feedback or suggestions where appropriate. Content from external social media sites can even be pulled in to create a centralized location to manage all social media.

Social tags: SharePoint includes an enterprise keyword set for high-level data organization and social tags for user-generated categorization. Social tags are akin to tagging a friend’s photo or post to create an instant connection between your friend and the content. SharePoint does the same by allowing users to apply their own tags to content and sites to, for example, pull all elements related to a project or all documents associated with a specific real estate transaction. Social tagging also includes other features like ratings and a “Like it” button to assess how valuable a site or piece of content has been to other users.

Rich Profile Page: Most email or contact database entries focus on metrics like phone number, email address and other surface characteristics that give no indication of the user’s work or background. The profile page in SharePoint gives users an area to share their contact stats and expand their visibility by listing recently touched content, social activity and group memberships. The profile page also lists users’ self-reported areas of expertise. With the “Ask Me About” feature, users can ping co-workers for help in their areas of expertise.

Just like popular networking sites, the data that comes from these social features are re-purposed to improve search results. Expertise analysis uses keywords in emails, with noun phrase extraction for six languages and tags associated with a user to determine and share areas of expertise. Custom application development on the social features of SharePoint is seeing massive growth. The extensibility of these features opens up endless possibilities for organizations to quickly plan and execute new social applications.

IT departments that currently have SharePoint are struggling to determine how to leverage the social capabilities of SharePoint while other companies are turning to SharePoint specifically to launch their own social initiatives. Our team of SharePoint pros can help you determine the best way to integrate the social aspects of SharePoint into an organization. Bring your SharePoint questions to the SharePoint in the Cloud LinkedIn group for feedback from our team of SharePoint experts and a community of other SharePoint pros.

•Video 1: SharePoint Site Level Permissions
•Video 2: SharePoint List and Library Level Permissions
•Video 3: SharePoint Item (and Folder) Level Permissions

After watching these videos, you will understand at a more detailed level how permissions are set at the site, list, and item level in SharePoint.

And don’t forget to check out our previous videos, which take a high level view of how permissions are managed within SharePoint Online; a more detailed look at SharePoint permissions; and understanding permissions inheritance and limited access.

• Video 1:   Create a new permission level in SharePoint Online
• Video 2:   Selective Permission Granting
• Video 3:  Office 365 Security Groups versus SharePoint Groups

After watching these videos, you will understand at a more detailed level how permissions are managed within SharePoint Online sites.

And don’t forget to check out our previous videos, which take a high level view of how permissions are managed within SharePoint Online.

Anyone can buy a SharePoint server. Many companies dive into buying and deploying SharePoint only to find that they lack the expertise, time or resources to properly implement and support it.  This leaves many with buyer’s remorse and unable to justify their investment. We know this because we talk to SharePoint customers every day. Many are at their wits’ end with onsite deployments installed with inadequate resources, vague business requirements, several disparate team sites and other symptoms of SharePoint run amok. Most of those pitfalls and missteps can be avoided with a support team to help you navigate the complexities and realize the full potential of SharePoint.

Our SharePoint support structure is based on Rackspace Core Values. Two of those Core Values rise above the rest as primary drivers of our philosophy on supporting SharePoint customers:

Fanatical Support in all we do. When SharePoint911 and Rackspace teamed up, the cornerstone of our partnership was based on a shared dedication to helping customers leverage SharePoint for maximum business value. Our team isn’t just friendly and available around the clock, but we are also seasoned SharePoint professionals holding a variety of SharePoint certifications, including six SharePoint MVPs and an MCM. That means we’ll answer the phone at 3 a.m. and know how to answer your questions or address your issues. Our eagerness to serve combined with the knowledge to back it up is probably why our Net Promoter Score (NPS), a measure of customer satisfaction, is consistently in the 90s.

Passion for our work. We love helping customers find success with SharePoint. We know 1,001 ways to use SharePoint, maybe even more than that, but our goal isn’t to throw a bunch of use cases and benefits at you. Our goal is to work with you to determine the most effective use for SharePoint in your business. Even beyond provisioning servers and installing software, we also offer end user training, SharePoint adoption strategies and workflow optimization. Our passion is further evidenced in the 10 SharePoint manuals we’ve authored, the dozens of SharePoint-related articles we’ve written and in our presence at major SharePoint conferences and events.

Get to know us and taste our fanatical spirit on our LinkedIn group. It’s a great opportunity to join the conversation, ask us your questions directly, learn from other SharePoint users and find links to more SharePoint tools and resources. And check out more SharePoint articles, videos and news.