List Rollups Web Part 

About Orion Technologies

• Since its inception in 1998 Orion has fast become an industry leader in creating state-of-the-art web-GIS solutions
• Orion's main focus is to help their clients "Think Spatially" by integrating GIS into all aspects of their business with their leading edge web-GIS Software solutions, Custom Application Development and GIS and IT Consulting Services

• The Orion team has been featured in Canada's CTV news (WebMania Program), 680 News Radio, the Ontario Municipal Information Systems Association (MISA) Journal, ESRI USA's ArcNews, "GIS on the Internet" video by ESRI USA, Shaw TV News, and in Canada's largest circulation daily newspaper, The Toronto Star (@BIZ section - a new series focusing on technology and innovation happening in Greater Toronto).

Challenges

• Orion needed to integrate SharePoint into their existing and new product lines
• A solid understanding of what SharePoint is and what it can do was required across a diverse set of empoyees
• A detailed development knowledge of SharePoint was needed for Orion's developers
• A sense of how to integrate SharePoint with real-world practical advice was required for Orion's Lead Architect.

Solution

• A corporate training plan was created to adress Orion's training needs
• An private introductory SharePoint training session was conducted on Orion's premises allowing the maximum exposure to all employees
• Several detailed and accelerated customized private training sessions were conducted on Orion's premises focusing on key SharePoint development topics including the fundamentals.

Benefits

• A solid and thorough understanding of SharePoint development
• A plan on how to approach integrating SharePoint into their business.

About Brampton Library

• Location: Brampton, Ontario, Canada
• Collection of over 500,000 print and digital media resources
• Staff of approximately 160 employees across 6 locations
• Industry: Municipal Government.

Challenges

• Brampton Library implemented Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007) as a collaboration, document management and document retention tool
• Record retention goals were not met due to SharePoint configuration and implementation issues
• Design and security policy issues, along with minimal end-user training, resulted in low user adoption of the SharePoint portal.

Solution

• SharePointHQ conducted an Installation and Adoption Audit on the Brampton Library SharePoint site and delivered a 50-page report of recommendations for the portal
• Identified key factors that needed to be addressed in order to improve the performance of the site
• Highlighted areas in the design and taxonomy of the site that should be modified to improve the end-user experience
• Recommended customized training schedules suitable for system administrators and end-users.

Benefits

• Brampton Library now has a detailed roadmap of the steps to be taken to recoup and maximize their initial investment in SharePoint
• Recommended configuration and design changes can be easily prioritized and implemented
• Going forward, Brampton Library has a better understanding of SharePoint best practices.

About Casco Development

• Developer of ShopVue 5.0, real-time shop floor data collection and reporting software
• Head Office located in Casco Bay in Portland, Maine, USA
• Customers include Fortune 500 firms
• Industry: Software Development

Challenges

• Casco Development wanted to move their existing HTML website to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007(MOSS 2007)
• After initially starting the transition of their existing site to SharePoint they required further SharePoint expertise
• Casco required a registration form to be created that anonymous visitors would be required to fill out when viewing website documents, including brochures and case studies
• Captured registration details needed to be written to a SharePoint list in order to help Casco better understand their website demographics.

Solution

• Casco chose SharePointHQ to deploy their SharePoint-based corporate Internet site
• Working with Casco, SharePointHQ delivered a custom master page, page layouts, and CSS that matched Casco’s brand “look and feel”
• Content from the old site was migrated to the new site by SharePointHQ and Casco’s content authors
• SharePointHQ developed a customized registration form that is launched when a link to a document file is selected by a user who has not already registered
• A custom SharePoint list captures all of the registration information when the form is submitted
• Casco content authors were given training on publishing site content.

Benefits

• Casco now has a SharePoint-based corporate Internet, that is extensible, scalable and easy to maintain and modify within the MOSS 2007 platform
• All registration information is captured directly in SharePoint and SharePoint out-of-the-box functionality is leveraged to sort and filter the data
• Casco is not required to maintain a separate database with this information given that SharePoint’s built-in functionality is used
• Casco Development website remains as an anonymous access website
• Casco’s content authors can concentrate on publishing their content and not coding.

About Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre

Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre is a leading healthcare facility located in Toronto, Ontario. Since opening in 1948 as Sunnybrook Veterans Hospital, Sunnybrook has grown over the years into a world class health centre known for its cancer, cardiovascular, musculoskeletal, trauma and critical care programs. Sunnybrook’s staff of over 10,000 physicians, nurses and medical support staff are dedicated to the treatment of the over one million visitors seeking medical care each year.

Challenges

In May 2007, Sunnybrook began to explore migrating their current Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 (WSS 2.0) -based portal to Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS 3.0) to provide its key stakeholders, primarily doctors, nurses and hospital management, with WSS 3.0’s enhanced collaborative features. After evaluating several vendors, Sunnybrook chose SharePointHQ to perform the migration of its current hospital portal to Windows SharePoint Services 3.0.

Solution

SharePointHQ’s consultants performed an audit of the existing Sunnybrook portal to determine whether an in-place upgrade, gradual upgrade or content database migration was required. Based on the results of the audit, SharePointHQ’s consultants performed a gradual upgrade from WSS 2.0 to WSS 3.0. Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, SharePoint Designer 2007 and SQL Server 2005 were the main technologies used in the migration of the Sunnybrook site.

Migration to Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

The pre-upgrade scan tool was used by SharePointHQ’s consultants to identify any possible migration issues related to the existing site. A temporary URL was then created to host the existing Sunnybrook portal. Sunnybrook’s portal site collections were then upgraded in sections. Once the migration of the Sunnybrook portal was completed all the old site collections were removed and the temporary URL was deleted. During the post-migration process the old Sunnybrook WSS 2.0 portal was uninstalled.

Custom WSS 3.0 Portal Interface

Using Master Pages, created in SharePoint Designer 2007, a custom SharePoint portal interface, branded with Sunnybrook’s logo and colours was developed. Since its inception, Sunnybrook’s existing WSS 2.0 portal had experienced significant site sprawl and had eventually grown to over 60 sites. A new WSS 3.0 portal taxonomy was developed from the input of the key user groups within Sunnybrook to prevent future site sprawl. This resulted in one central site with navigation built around key user groups’ navigation needs. Above all, to ensure end user adoption, a simple to use portal that provided “one version of the truth” for all hospital documents and content, where critical information was just one click away, was delivered to Sunnybrook.

Benefits

After migrating to Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, Sunnybrook’s hospital staff now have a single point of access to a centralized, scalable and extensible hospital portal. Cooperation between Sunnybrook’s departments, doctors, nurses and hospital management has increased through SharePoint’s new Web 2.0 capabilities including wikis, blogs, discussion boards, RSS feeds and personal messaging. Hospital reaction times to critical information have been further improved through SharePoint’s timely, audience targeted unified communications. Through SharePoint’s security trimming feature Sunnybrook’s confidential hospital records have an additional level of security with end user access determined by their role within the hospital.

In choosing SharePointHQ to migrate their WSS 2.0 portal to WSS 3.0, Sunnybrook now has access to the enhanced collaborative features of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 that will allow its healthcare teams to further connect and collaborate while continuing to provide world class healthcare to the residents of Ontario.

About Middlesex Hospital Alliance

Middlesex Hospital Alliance is a healthcare centre dedicated to providing primary and secondary healthcare services for over 60,000 residents in Southwestern Ontario. Middlesex Hospital Alliance (MHA) is comprised of two hospitals, Strathroy Middlesex General Hospital (SMGH), located in the city of Strathroy, and Four Counties Health Services (FCHS), located in the town of Newbury. In addition to providing primary and secondary healthcare services, the Middlesex Hospital Alliance provides emergency care, rehabilitation, diagnostic and ambulatory services.

Challenges

In March 2007, Middlesex Hospital Alliance began to search for a solution that would allow hospital management, doctors, nurses and support staff to seamlessly collaborate over the geographic distance between its two locations. The new intranet had to ensure that sensitive hospital documents and information remained secure while remaining accessible to end users according to their need and role within MHA. Critical documents, files and expertise had to be easy to find through intranet searches that could provide relevant, accurate and timely search results. After initially attempting an inhouse implementation of their intranet, Middlesex Hospital Alliance turned to SharePointHQ to implement Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007) as their hospital intranet.

Solution

Based on the SharePointHQ audit team’s findings, and input from MHA stakeholders on their business and technical needs, SharePointHQ delivered a branded, custom hospital intranet, for use by the staff of both hospitals. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, SharePoint Designer 2007 were the main technologies used in the customization and deployment of the MHA intranet site. The hospital portal was built upon SharePoint 2007’s Collaboration, Portal, Enterprise Content Management and Enterprise Search core feature groups.

Coming Together Through SharePoint

A centralized, branded hospital intranet site, with a unified “look and feel” and single sign-on functionality, configured to optimize SharePoint 2007’s Collaboration and Portal feature groups, was implemented by SharePointHQ’s consultants. The new site promoted collaboration between the two hospitals by breaking down MHA’s geographical, departmental, and information silo barriers, through SharePoint’s social networking capabilities including wikis, document workspaces, forums, personal messaging, and RSS feeds. Communication and collaboration between the two campuses was further enhanced by interactive, audience targeted announcements and SharePoint’s real-time communication functionality. To ensure rapid end user adoption, an easy-to-use global navigation bar, with multi-level fly outs for all sub-sites, based upon user input, where information was always one click away was delivered.

The new portal was designed to maintain and build upon MHA’s joint healthcare culture through community sub-sites. Central to this was the Culture and News sub-site that acted as an online community centre where end users could keep up-to-date on the latest hospital news, check out each hospital’s cafeteria menu, read the CEO’s blog and access the Buy, Tell and Sell community exchange site. Other sub-sites included an online help desk, job posting board, joint meeting sub-sites, including a Health and Safety meeting site, and a hospital training portal where users could access online internal hospital and government mandated video training.

Secure Hospital Document Management

MHA’s files and documents where spread over three file shares between the two hospitals. This led to lost documents, lost time and multiple versions of the truth within MHA. To prevent this in the future, SharePointHQ’s experts created a central documents subsite where each department would drive its own content and allow users to access needed information, ensuring one version of the truth for each document. All hospital documents contained in the site were enabled with check-in/check-out, versioning control, content authoring, and content approval functionality. Given the sensitive and confidential nature of MHA’s files, access to documents was granted according to each end users role within the hospital using permission levels. On top of permission levels, an optional additional level of document security is available to MHA through Information Rights Management (IRM) in SharePoint. IRM prevents the unauthorized use of documents in a SharePoint site including the copying, printing and emailing of files.

Relevant, Secure and User Friendly Intranet Searches

Whether it is inpatient records, outpatient records, lab results, x-rays or other medical records, hospitals create a tremendous amount of information on a day-to-day basis. As this information experiences exponential growth the ability to quickly find needed documents and expertise is diminished. Using the Office SharePoint Server Search feature, hospital end users are able to make quick and relevant searches of all hospital files and records and locate hospital subject matter experts. Confidentiality of hospital records is maintained as search results are shown according to each end users assigned permission level. End users are able to search hospital records, including document contents, through a complete site search, by text, keyword and through multiple scopes.

Based on SharePointHQ’s assessment of MHA’s search requirements, three search options, advanced search, document search, and people search, were delivered. The Advanced Search centre was configured to allow for search by word, exact phrases, negative keywords, multiple languages and a multitude of properties including hospital, location, department, author, content type, document description and policy procedure. End users were able to find subject matter experts within the hospital and their degrees of separation through the People Search sub-site. The Documents sub-site displayed the top 10 most requested hospital documents above document search fields modified from the advanced search page. End users were presented with a choice of four custom views of the documents including by policy, procedure, forms and templates.

Benefits

After using the new hospital portal, end users reported immediate improvements in their ability to find files, confusion over document versions was eliminated, and there was improved collaboration between the two hospitals and their departments, teams and employees. End users also reported that the overall sense of community between the two hospital campuses has been strengthened.

By choosing SharePointHQ to delivery their healthcare centre intranet, Middlesex Health Alliance now has a secure, scalable, and extensible SharePoint portal that will allow its medical staff to better communicate, collaborate and continue to deliver quality healthcare to its patients.

About The Town of Oakville

• Leading municipality located within the Greater Toronto Area
• Headquartered in Oakville, Ontario, Canada
• Achieved ~$3.593 million in revenue in 2006
• Industry: Municipal Government

Challenges

• Legacy ASP help desk solution lacked collaboration functionality and prolonged the data identification and analysis process
• Difficulty in tracking issues and support requests in the organization
• Low efficiency and higher costs due to the inflexibility of the ASP help desk solution.

Solution

• Deployed SharePointHQ HelpDesk solution across different departments throughout the organization
• Rapid implementation in less than 3 months
• Leveraged SharePoint 2007’s Collaboration and Document Management functionality to build help desk application
• Seamless integration of the solution through SharePoint Automated Workflows.

Benefits

• Automation through SharePoint workflows reduced costs and improved productivity
• Easy-to-use metrics and dashboards allow users to locate and resolve issues in a timely fashion
• Interactive and collaborative SharePoint alert functionality enhanced information flow within the organization
• Improved customer service quality and issue resolution.

About Entrac Technologies

Founded in 1989, Entrac Technologies, Inc. over the years has established itself as a leader in providing secure, easy-to-use card based access to common self-serve business equipment including printers, fax machines, photo printing kiosks and desktop computers. Headquartered in Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada, Entrac’s card-based access control solution ExpressPay is used in 2,000 locations throughout North America by clients such as OfficeDepot, FedEx Kinko’s, and Staples.

“It is often a challenge rolling out technology to a technology company. SharePointHQ was able to not only meet our requirements but exceed our expectations.” – Micah Kornberg, President of Entrac Technologies Inc.

Challenges

Entrac strives to be at the forefront of technology both within its vertical and in providing its employees with the latest productivity tools and technologies. That’s why when Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007(MOSS 2007) was released Entrac was one of the first companies to make the transition from Share- Point Portal Server 2003(SPS 2003). Entrac’s business challenge was determining how to best transition to SharePoint 2007 without disrupting day-to-day business operations. The new Intranet needed to optimize SharePoint 2007’s new features while maintaining continuity with the old site. Specific solution requirements were the need for robust document management, the ability to access and manipulate spreadsheets online, and advanced collaborative features.

Solution

After attempting to install SharePoint 2007 in-house, Entrac turned to SharepontHQ, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, to implement its new SharePoint 2007 -based Intranet. SharePointHQ met with Entrac’s stakeholders to audit the new portal’s specifications and whether to perform an upgrade, migration or a clean install of MOSS 2007. At the completion of the audit of Entrac’s requirements, SharePointHQ’s consultants recommended a clean install of SharePoint 2007. SharePointHQ’s consultants delivered Share- Point 2007 to Entrac implemented using best practices that mitigated Entrac’s implementation risks, costs and time. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, SharePoint Designer 2007 and SQL Server 2005 were the principle technologies used in the implementation. Entrac’s SharePoint portal was built upon MOSS 2007’s Collaboration, Portal, and Enterprise Content Management feature groups in addition to Excel Services.

Breaking Down Departmental Silos with SharePoint 2007

To provide end users with both continuity and consistency between the old SharePoint 2003 site and the new SharePoint 2007 -based intranet, SharePointHQ delivered a centralized, branded enterprise Intranet that had the same “look and feel” of the old Intranet. The SharePoint site’s home page interface contained lists of recently added documents and customers, RSS feeds of local weather and news, and an Advanced Search field. To ensure end user adoption, a simple to use Intranet, with intuitive navigation, designed from stakeholder input, where key information was just a click away was delivered to Entrac.

Entrac’s new Intranet portal provided its end users with collaborative tools and technology needed to break down Entrac’s information silos. Collaborative tools and technologies that allow for improved collaboration between its employees, teams and departments were deployed. These collaborative tools included documents workspaces, audience targeted announcements and alerts, wikis, blogs, forums and online meeting sites. Entrac’s corporate culture was promoted through a Culture and News sub-site where employees could learn about the latest company, client and industry news.

Analyzing Business Data using Excel Services

A management sub-site was created to provide Entrac’s management team with an interactive interface to Excel 2007 spreadsheets contained within trusted file locations. This was accomplished using SharePoint 2007’s Excel Services. Through Excel Services, access to both product and project information, contained within Excel workbooks, was made available concurrently to Entrac’s decision makers.

Document Management in SharePoint 2007

A document repository site for all of Entrac’s key documents and files, with sub-folders for customers, departments, resources, images and a dedicated ExpressPay folder, was deployed. The document repository replicated the look and feel of the original SharePoint 2003 document library as it was easy-to-use and familiar to Entrac’s employees. In addition, having the documents located in a central, secure site where access to each document was determined by the end user’s role, ensured that one version of the truth was maintained throughout the company. All documents within the Intranet were enabled with SharePoint’s document management features including major and minor versioning, check-in/check-out, content authoring, and basic content approval workflows. Adobe PDF iFilter was installed and configured to allow for Adobe Acrobat PDFs within the site to be located by SharePoint 2007’s enterprise search feature.

Results

Providing a consistent end user experience, in terms of look and feel, between the old and new Intranets led to a seamless transition to SharePoint 2007 by Entrac’s end users without tying up Entrac’s internal IT resources. This meant that Entrac was able to immediately profit from SharePoint 2007’s tangible benefits such as reduced document printing, filing and storage costs. As important, are the intangible benefits that are realized when employees connect, communicate and collaborate through SharePoint 2007. Through Excel Services and the project management sub-site, Entrac’s key decision makers now have access to enhanced online tools that will allow for better informed, timely business decisions and ensure that ongoing and future projects are delivered on scope, on time and on budget.

In transitioning to SharePoint 2007, Entrac has chosen a secure, scalable, and extensible collaborative Intranet solution that can be customized with business forms, business reports and advanced workflows as Entrac continues to grow.

About Ecclesiastical Insurance

• Founded in the United Kingdom in 1887 with the Canadian branch opening in 1972
• Canadian offices are located in Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver and Halifax
• Industry: Insurance

Challenges

• Ecclesiastical Insurance needed a solution that would foster communication and collaboration between multiple, disperse departments while retaining its unique company culture
• Incoming leads to Ecclesiastical needed to be captured in the portal
• Company files were located on a file share, leading to multiple versions of the truth.

Solution

• A centralized, branded WSS 3.0 based Intranet, that echoed the “look and feel” of Ecclesiastical’s website, was implemented
• A Contact Management template was installed and configured
• Team sites, document workspaces and a company News and Announcements sub-site were implemented to foster communication and collaboration
• File shares were replaced with SharePoint document libraries.

Benefits

• Improved collaboration between departments, teams and employees
• Incoming leads were captured , tracked and expedited more efficiently
• Documents within the portal were enabled with SharePoint’s document management features including versioning, check-in/check-out and support for diverse content types
• A secure, scalable and collaborative Intranet solution that can be upgraded to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server in the future.

About Maple Leaf Sports + Entertainment

• Owns and operates 4 teams in Toronto: Toronto Maple Leafs, Toronto Raptors, Toronto Marlies, and Toronto FC
• Founded in 1927 when Conn Smythe started the Toronto Maple Leafs
• Canada's preeminent leader in delivering top quality sports and entertainment experiences to their fans
• Owns and operates the Air Canada Center in Toronto
• Privately held

Challenges

• Increase the lines of communication inside the organization to all participants
• Break down the 'walls' and barriers to free flowing information across departments, facilities, units and teams
• Quickly and efficiently deploy a new Portal platform to build awareness and increase adoption in the organization.

Solution

• Implement a SharePoint Portal with a custom brand
• Several custom brands were designed and created that reflect the image of the organization. Extreme care was given to the branding details to ensure a very high quality solution
• Special Web Part created to help more effectively communicate the content including: chalkboards, slideshows, calendars and more
• An extensive system to allow users to easily subscribe to content sources wtih one-click, easing the administrative overhead and eliminating confusion for the user.

Benefits

• A very engaging and effective Portal where all employees can effectively communicate with each other with existing barriers broken down
• Exacting focus on high-quality solutions for every day tasks and processes end users require
• Efficiently organized and targeted content for end users.

About Ontario Medical Association

• The Ontario Medical Association (OMA) represents the political, clinical and economic interests of the province's medical profession. 
• Practicing physicians, residents, and students enrolled in any of the five Ontario faculties of medicine are eligible for OMA membership.
• OMA is governed by a Council composed of over 250 delegates, representing 77 territorial divisions, and by the Association`s Board of Directors.

Challenges

• The OMA had decided to re-implement their members-only website utilizing SharePoint 2007
• All business units in the organization were asked to contribute to the new solution. Few knew SharePoint.
• To achieve their implementation deadlines the key staff from across all business units needed to get up-to-speed quickly.

Solution

• A detailed corporate training plan was developed to satisfy their needs
• Several introductory SharePoint training sessions were conducted at SharePoint's training facilities
• Follow-on and focused private training sessions were conducted on advanced SharePoint topics.

Benefits

• Rapid training of staff utilizing SharePoint's field proven courseware
• A common mindshare across the organization on the 'SharePoint project' as a result of the intense focused offsite training and diverse student mix.

About County of Dufferin

• Located northwest of Toronto
• Municipality covers1,450 square kms with a populaton of 55,000
• Industry: Municipal Government

Challenges

• A file share was used to store and share documents leading to lost documents, time and multiple versions of the truth
• Thousands of doucments needed to be populated into the portal, annotated and made readily accessible and searchable while ensuring no lost documents or lenghtly search times for documents
• Needed a solution that would foster communication and collaboration between multiple, dispersed departments while retaining the organizational culture.

Solution

• SharePointHQ delivered a branded site, with a unified look and feel, and single sign-on functionality, configured to optimize SharePoint's Collaboration, Portal, Search and Enterprise Content Mangement feature groups
• Enhanced search cusomization allowed for faceted searches to be performed
• Custom workflows allowed departments to choose when to schedule announcements.

Benefits

• Improved collaboration between departments, teams and employees
• Secure, scalable, and extensible SharePoint portal that allows staff to communicate, collaborate, and continue to serve the people of the County of Dufferin
• One version of the truth for each document, versioning, check-in, check-out, permissions.  content authoring, confusion over document versions was eliminated
• Relevant, secure and user friendly intranet searches that improved the ability to find files and subject matter experts (SMEs).

About Halton Regional Police Service

• The Halton Regional Police Service contributes to the safety and wellbeing of the Region's close to 470,000 residents.
• Halton Region, consisting of the City of Burlington, the Town of Halton Hills, the Town of Milton, and the Town of Oakville, is the safest place to live in the GTA, and one of the top five safest places to live in Canada, according to a Maclean’s Magazine report ranking the most dangerous cities in our country.
• Land Area: 972.83 sq km

Challenges

• Website content stale and out of date
• Little appeal for end users
• No reason to come back to site
• Not effective at communicating information
• Could not quickly communicate emergency information: amber alert, shooter, etc. 

Solution

• MOSS website that was over 300 pages
• Key features:
• multiple picture slideshows to engage user
• News room for press releases and media releases including archives.
• Rollups on main page of key information: News, Most Wanted, Events
• Dedicated templates (lists & cotnent type) for Most Wanted, Unsolved Homicides, Missing Persons.

Benefits

• Self maintained website with no IT involvement
• More engaging for users (see press release for wording)
• More accurate & timely information (news, PSB board meeting minutes)