The Benefits of Updating Your Web Application
The Face of Your Company Nowadays, almost every business has launched an application or app of some sort. Customers log in for a number of reasons, like purchasing products or checking on the status of projects. Either way, these are still the face of your company and give people a feel for how professional and […]
Agile Methodology: User Stories
In the past few weeks we’ve been discussing Agile methodology to iteratively develop custom software that better meets the need of our customers. Probably more important than this concept, however, is to to define the business need before we ever begin a project. The way we accomplish this is by creating user stories.
SharePoint 2013 Yammer Integration and Enabling Internal Social Networks
I’ve been reading “Exploring Microsoft SharePoint 2013” these past few weeks to get an idea of the many new features in SharePoint. One thing that caught my interest today is how to get more social within your company. The author of the book states that making social behavior work with SharePoint isn’t about any one technology. […]
Knowledge Management a Pressing Concern for the Oil and Gas Industry
I recently attended the 6th Annual Marketing Symposium at the Rice Jones Graduate School of Business, and while I was there to sharpen my marketing skills, one of the panel sessions covering how oil and gas companies are incorporating marketing into their organizations featured a very interesting discussion around the challenges the panelists saw for […]
Happy April Fool’s Day: Mixed Up Web Portals
Here are Entrance,we’re not quite as clever as Google with their new “Google Nose.” But we do like to have a little fun in the spirit of the day. One of our developers colluded with a manager at the office of a client to change up one employee’s view of their web portal.
Oil and Gas Software Isn’t Keeping Up with Industry Technology
In a recent feature in the Independent Petroleum Association of America’s (IPAA) Winter 2013 magazine covering oil technology, one of the key points highlighted is that although oil and gas companies are successfully searching for and implementing technology that will make hydraulic fracturing profitable in the long run, there is a significant gap between that and the oil and […]
Engineering Software Development Saves Time and Money
When it comes to complicated engineering problems, such as determining the ideal pressure for an oil well or analyzing structures, having the right tools can make all the difference. For one Entrance client, their business involves selling joints of pipe to other companies, in addition to services, to determine what product is the right fit for the […]
Custom Software Techniques: Agile Methodology
Last week, I covered what Waterfall Development is. Before we made a big push to implement Agile Methodology, we used this more traditional method, which can work well for projects that have very stable, documented requirements. This week, I’d like to explain Agile Development in a bit more detail than we’ve previously explained here on the blog.
Entrance Sponsors Contract Management Conference
As organizations go back to the Gulf for exploration and allocation of liability in E&P projects become more vast, the oil and gas industry needs to pay more attention to the quality of their contracts. Entrance attended Marcus Evans’ Upstream Oil and Gas Contract Management conference on conquering the risks and liabilites in the upstream […]
SharePoint Upgrade Planning
“Plans are nothing; planning is everything.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower. During a recent upgrade of SharePoint 2007 to 2010 for a national organization with thousands of users, planning paid dividends when it came time to execute. While we weren’t storming the beaches of Normandy, the task at hand certainly required methodical planning and communication to […]
SharePoint Planning and Governance – An exercise in exploration and dialogue
Every custom SharePoint environment requires and a lot of thought and planning before actual coding or implementation ever takes place. Without taking this vital first step, unnecessary complexity and confusion can quickly creep up on you and your users.
Windows 8: A Transformational Change
Last week, our consultant Josh, discussed some of the reasons why Windows 8 has been slow to launch. I’d like to take the topic a step further and cover some of the challenges any company faces when they are truly engaged in transformational change.
Understanding Data, Information and Knowledge for Better Data Management
A few weeks ago, I shared a statistic from Gartner stating 30% of businesses will monetize their information assets by 2016. But many data management projects are unsuccessful because the stakeholders don’t understand their goals or even what data is and how it should be used.
Custom Software Techniques: Waterfall Development
For the uninitiated, Waterfall and Agile Development probably sound unimportant, and you probably don’t care what the difference is. In one recent survey, only 2% of the respondents said management knew what Agile was.
National SharePoint Migration Goes Off Without a Hitch
Entrance recently completed a national SharePoint migration for a national non-profit. The client had been using SharePoint 2007, and they decided it was time to upgrade to SharePoint 2010. Across the whole process we tested the migration a number of times before actually completely it. This helped to ensure that any bugs or problems with […]
Quick Edits to the SharePoint 2013 List Schema.xml File
One of the difficult aspects of working with SharePoint solutions in Visual Studio is the dastardly list Schema.xml file. This file maintains the structure and views of lists and libraries and is a necessary evil to deploying lists via SharePoint solutions and/or apps. Not only is the xml difficult to modify, but one simple character […]
Windows 8 is Slow to Launch, But It’s Too Early to Declare Failure
We mentioned a few weeks ago that Windows 8 has taken its time ramping up compared to other Microsoft launches in the past. I ran into a provocative article this past week saying that Windows 8 has failed.
Visual Studio 2012 now supports code reviews via TFS 2012: Software Consulting Tip
Software consulting and custom software development requires that we keep up with new technology. As such, I wanted to share a best practice related to Visual Studio and Code Review.
SharePoint 2013 Offers Safer Development
As a SharePoint consultant, I work with code in the back-end on a daily basis to customize our client’s user experience. Now that SharePoint 2013 is out, we have been experimenting a lot with what’s new and how we can leverage these features. Particularly as we move forward with our first SharePoint 2013 implementation, one thing I […]
New Videos Posted: SharePoint Consultant Knowledge and Software Modernization
We recently posted two new videos that I wanted to highlight for our readers: First off, SharePoint consultant Kyle shared some best practices in an internal webinar called, “SQL Server Performance and SharePoint Server: A Loosely Tied Together Love Story.” Find out how Entrance manages database administration for our clients, in addition to a discussion […]
