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Jul
15
Published: July 15, 2009 13:07 PM by
Dave Pileggi
Powered by: Mindsharp and Summit 7
The first few minutes of my presentation, I will be doing at the Best Practice Conference. Trust me, it gets even better, but you have to attend to get the rest! 
Back in the day, a literary Labyrinth was called a Choose your Own Adventure Book. I actually have somewhere in my parents house the very same book that is pictured above. Reading these was an adventure. Did you choose the right path? Putting your finger(s) in multiple pages, just in case you did not choose the right path. Planning your SharePoint environment is very much the same way, there can be multiple out comes, with lots of twists and turns along the way, and depending on the choices you made earlier, could force the outcome later. Page 1 & 2 |  Your company hears about this SharePoint “thing.” It sounds like a good idea. You and a bunch of co-workers are standing around the water cooler talking about it. “Hey Sarcastic Sally, how is the paper your working on?” “As good as an ulcer,” Sally retorted. | “Did you hear about that program called SharePoint?”
”Stop smiling, the light shinning off your teeth is going to blind me. Yeah, it sounds cool.”
”Maybe we should look at the business problems it could solve before we move forward with it?” you ask yourself out loud.
Sarcastic Sally Scoffs. “It’s a cool application, let’s just move forward. You are such a worry wart.”
Go to page 21 if you agree with Sally
Go to page 37 if you want to follow your own idea | Sally scares me, I think we better listen to her. However, I am not sure if this is the right way, so lets put our finger in here JUST IN CASE. Page 21 & 22 | 
| Your SharePoint environment is installed and takes a life of its own, causing chaos and mayhem everywhere in your company. You are blamed for the IT nightmare and sent to a small town in Idaho to flip burgers.
THE END | Oh no! I like burgers, but not that much. What happened! In reality, this is a very common mistake. More companies than not introduce a application into their environment without understanding the problems they are targeting to solve. This can be fatal to the success of releasing the application, especially if it is SharePoint. You have to understand the new workforce you are dealing with is Generation X, Generation Y, and the Lost Generations who have had Internet for the better part of their lives. They are the My Space, Facebook, iGoogle, My Yahoo, My MSN, instant messaging, tweeting generations. They know how to use we based applications very well. SharePoint being a web based application will be instantly second nature to them to use. That being said, if you do not know what business problems SharePoint is going to solve for your company, they will make those choices for you. There is a LOT of power with just out of the box features and web parts that they can take advantage of. At first glance this may sound like a good thing, however, there is one caveat. If you have legacy applications or applications that are not as intuitive to use, user friendly or “cool” to look at this new workforce can and will use SharePoint to replace those applications. This will then spread your information over multiple systems causing search ability issues and segmented data. This is not the desired effects SharePoint should have. SharePoint is extremely powerful, and I will dare say more powerful then Microsoft even realizes. This is a good thing, but has to be managed properly. In time those legacy applications may very well be absorbed by SharePoint based applications, but you want to keep it under control. Spotting the business problems SharePoint is designated to solve is the first step in a healthy deployment. Good thing we put our finger in the page. Lets go back and try the other path… That's, page… 37. Lets go! Page 37 & 38 | 
You shoot back, “No, I think it will be a good idea to figure out the business problems we want to solve for the company.” “Like what?” asks Jeff from accounting. Sally and you watch him drain half the water cooler bottle of its contents into his water bottle. “Well, Sally already gave us one. She is having trouble collaborating with her team. The paper they are working on isn’t as easy as it should be. So collaboration is a big one I would think.” “Oh, sorry to hear that Sally, but we have our own problems,” Jeff informed us. “How so?” Sally inquired. | “Well, we have all of these reports we are forced to do, but they are so time consuming, I don’t have time to do what I am supposed to do.” Jeff wrinkled his nose. “The enterprise version of SharePoint has Excel Services and BI capabilities,” I offered. “That could be another business problem we could solve initially.” “Do you have an executive sponsor?” Jeff wondered. “We are IT, why would we need that?” Sarcastic Sally snapped. “To get funding and support.” Jeff said defending himself. Go to Page 13 if you want to get an executive sponsor.
Go to Page 25 if you agree with Sally | I say we go with Sally, she still scares me. Lets go to page 25, but I am going to put my finger here again, JUST IN CASE! Page 25 & 26 | 
| Oh no, SharePoint has been considered a rogue project. Lack of funding has landed us in trouble. We are forced to use an old Commodore 64 and two TRS 80’s to try and build the environment. The project and idea has died before it could even go forward. A walk to the water cooler for you and Sally is now known as the Walk of Shame. THE END | Sally did it to us again! What happened?! Find out at the SharePoint Best Practices conference. If you want more information about the Best Practices Conference click on the banner below. Hope to see you there, as the line up of speakers is UNBELIEVABLE! Two of which are the authors of the book that inspired this entire event. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007: Best Practices published by Microsoft Press. 
Jul
15
Published: July 15, 2009 09:07 AM by
Dave Pileggi
Powered by: Mindsharp and Summit 7
The first few minutes of my presentation, I will be doing at the Best Practice Conference. Trust me, it gets even better, but you have to attend to get the rest!
The Cast
Active Directory (AD): Cheshire Cat. AD is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. To the end users AD is absolutely no where. They know they signed onto their computer to get to their applications, but if you ask them what AD was, they would look at you with the wide eyed bewilderment Alice had upon entering the looking glass or wonderland for that matter. This is the power of being nowhere as the Cheshire Cat. If you switch to the internal IT personnel’s point of view AD is everywhere. Its security permeates throughout all of the network environment. Applications, computers, file shares all utilize AD for permissions for starters. AD when it comes to SharePoint can be looked at in two parts. The user and the security group. Just like the Cheshire Cat can detach its head from its body. These two parts indeed make up the one.
SharePoint Security Groups: White Rabbit. Zoom! Did you see that white streak? Apparently the white rabbit is late for a very important date… Again. SharePoint Security groups can be a fast answer. But… Zoom! if you try and control these fast moving targets you could be coming up with empty arms.
SharePoint Permission Levels: Mad Hatter. Approximately 10/6 of the time you will be using the out of box permission sets. Yes, now you know why that card in the Mad Hatters Brim means. There will be times where you will be absolutely mad not to use a custom designed permissions set.
Zones: Caterpillar. Yes, as completely mind boggling and mysterious as the hookah smoking caterpillar is, Zones seem to have the same effect on people. Most people don’t realize the power of Zones and what can be accomplished. The question is Who… Are… U?
The Good
AD (Cheshire Cat): Most companies have well defined security groups in their Active Directory. Please note, email distribution groups are NOT security groups and cannot be used as such in SharePoint. AD groups must be security groups in order to be used as security within the SharePoint environment. Did I reiterate? Yes. Did I need to? From experience? Yes. The reason using AD security groups are such a good tool in helping to lock down security is because of the familiarity with them. Many users know which groups they belong to. They see them when they use the infamous file servers. They know they can only see the finance department folder on the file server because they are part of the “finance team” (read Finance AD Security group). They also know about security groups when it comes to applications. Sally from HR can edit information in Our Persons HR application. The reason why she has read/write access is because she is part of the HR Our Persons security group with only one other from the HR department to be sure the information is locked down.
Another bonus about AD is the fact its a controlled environment. There is probably only a handful of people that are allowed to make any kind of changes to your AD. This is very good. The control will allow you to keep a consistency that might not otherwise be as achievable if opened to the masses. Lets face it, when it comes to security, the less hands that can touch the security environment, the more secure it would indeed be. The individuals who are in control of AD are well aware of the potential pitfalls and hazards that come with the adding of users into security groups, or better yet embedded security groups. (Read: Security groups that are held in security groups.) The assurance of a safe and accurate security groups certainly is a good thing. Warms the heart like a Cheshire Cat’s smile.
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Using AD security groups to grant sweeping permissions to large numbers of people is a very good point to bring up. I think of the concentric rings in an archery target when I talk about granting permissions. Lets use a company portal, its pages and sub-sites as an example. One site collection with all the company wide information. Lets say that the bull's-eye in center is the the company portal. The first ring that circles the bull’s-eye is the read only permission set. This is pretty much everyone in the corporation. The portal is a place for your employees get information to help them with their jobs and be “on the know”. This is not really a place where you want anyone and everyone to be able to add, change or delete content. Using the power of SharePoint inheritance of security, you can very easily add AD security groups to the out of box SharePoint group Portal Visitors. This will grant view permissions to all your employees with ease.
Lets take that a step further. Lets move out to the next ring. This would be your contributors. Very few are desired. The executive AD security group is selected. We could place the security group in the out of box SharePoint Group Portal Members. This will enable your CXX’s be able to post information that is targeted to the company as a whole. A way to replace the never read email blasts your company currently uses
Moving to the next circle out we are going to create a AD security group called Portal Designers. This group could be placed in the SharePoint group Portal Designers. This is to allow a limited number of individuals who have extensive web design background to be able to add, change and delete content, look and feel and style of the Portal.
Lastly, one more step out in our concentric rings we come to the circle that encompasses the entire environment. This is our administrators. For our fictitious company we will say the AD security group Internal IT is used. This group could be placed inside the out of box SharePoint group called Portal Owners. |
And the coup-de-grace, using AD security groups as well as individual accounts is a Best Practice! Granted there are trade-offs. These are covered in depth in the book that inspired the whole reason to hold the SharePoint Best Practice Conference. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007: Best Practices published by Microsoft Press. You will find in depth analysis of the pros and cons of using groups versus individual accounts on pages 152 – 156.
I hope this teaser whets your appetite for more. I would love to see you all at the Best Practice conference. If you want more information on the conference, just click the banner below and know the information you will receive there is worth more than … 1 MILLION DOLLARS… Ok… so I like Austin Powers Movies a little too much, but the value of this conference is unbelievable. The caliber of the speakers is top notch, not to mention includes the two gentlemen who wrote the book! See you there!
Jun
09
Published: June 09, 2009 17:06 PM by
Dave Pileggi
Powered by: Mindsharp and Summit 7
| The first day of summer is coming on June 21st. People from the northern part of the United States and Canada are now able to strip off a few layers of clothing thanks to the cool spring we have had. It also beings the most exciting count down toward the arrival of the third SharePoint Best Practices Conference. This is going to prove to be even bigger, better, faster, stronger… (oh wait no, that is the 1970’s show the Bionic Man) then again, it may just be a close match! Not only SharePoint Best Practices but SQL experts are being brought in as well. If you either have never heard of the Best Practice Conference or never have attended the conference this is the place you want to be. There are a lot of books out there on how to do configuration and administrations of SharePoint and SQL, but only one book about SharePoint Best Practices. This one book has spawned the SharePoint Best Practices conference as the popularity of the book quickly climbed up the charts at the same time trigger numerous other questions, what if scenarios and requested additional information. The question that we seem to learn to ask at a very early age, WHY?! This is the reason for the conference, why do you need to do certain things in your environment. These are the Best Practices to make your SharePoint environment not be just another application in your company, but a solution that your company could not be with out. A solution that will help your company become more streamlined, more productive, and more organized. All these thing turns out to become money saved, which in these economic times is a welcome benefit. |  | 
Whether you are looking to bring SharePoint into your environment or have been using SharePoint for the last five years this conference is a must attend. The wealth of knowledge that you will gain from the conference will more than make up for the nominal investment to attend. The caliber of speakers is unbelievable. I have attended the first two, and will be at this one as well. The two authors of the book that launched this conference, Ben Curry and Bill English will be there, but that is far from being it. So many of the leaders in the SharePoint community will be there and it is going to absolutely rock! If I had the voice I would do a sound bite like the guy who does monster truck announcements on T.V. Ok enough gushing, I think you have gotten the idea. And now for a shameless plug. I have received an invitation to rub elbows and be a speaker at this great event. I am both humbled and honored at this invitation and look forward to meeting all of you who do attend. I will be doing two different presentations. Here is a couple of tasty morsels to help you to decide to come. SharePoint Planning: A Labyrinth of Choices SharePoint is easy to get up and running, BUT the choices made before the install, during the install, after the install, and after its been in use for time What if you make this choice, what ramifications will happen due to that choice? SharePoint is indeed a collaboration environment, but becomes so much more to many companies. Choices made throughout the life of your SharePoint environment will affect things down the road that may not even be thought of when the original choice was being made. I will look at multiple permutations of the various paths a company could follow. SharePoint Security: Through the Looking Glass Journey with myself and Alice as we go into the world of SharePoint security. What to do with the AD Queen of Hearts and the SharePoint Groups Cheshire cat. There is the good, the bad and the ugly in this world. You have to be careful with the solutions of security you use. What makes sense, how to tackle different scenarios, how to combat security schema deterioration. This could be a chance to actually win back and know what your people are allowed to see and not see. Sometimes files servers become so complex, there are possibilities of accidents happening where an end user is given permissions to documents that may not be desired. Not to mention the government is starting to get involved with legislation of what we are supposed to hold on to, what needs to be audited etc. A lot of times, security seems to be a lot of smoke and mirrors, this talk is going to help bring a solid understanding to security within a SharePoint environment. David J. Pileggi Jr. Insight
Apr
03
Published: April 03, 2009 14:04 PM by
Dave Pileggi
Powered by: Mindsharp and Summit 7
| Another post about a governance document? Absolutely. I have worked with many clients and this has seemed to boil to the surface more often than not. Well over 90% of the companies that I consult who are planning a SharePoint environment or already have a SharePoint environment do not have a governance document. There are a lot of reasons as to why there is a lack of these documents. I will try to cover a few of these reasons during this post. One of the things as the economic times are a bit more trying then usual, IT departments are being whittled down to skeleton crews at best. Their budgets are being slashed and yet they are expected to continue to run the company infrastructure and applications as well as continue to work on projects adding to their environment. If something happens in the SharePoint environment the possibility for a knee jerk reaction from upper management is a high possibility. A reaction that could be detrimental to the environment. This calls for a bulletproof shield. This calls for a governance document. A document, when created had buy in from the higher ups as well as all the stakeholders. A document that has the steps documented on how to handle situations in a logical manner, leaving the knee jerk reactions to the way side. A governance document is more than a bulletproof shield (protect) it is also to server. It is to serve as a map, a blueprint, a guideline for your SharePoint environment. A document to help mold and guide this unbelievable application into a well oiled, viable tool that solves specific business problems brought to the IT Department from multiple areas in the company. The governance document is also there to server your user community to facilitate in direction and focus. |  | Assorted Reasons - One of the biggest, if not THE biggest reasons companies do not create governance documents is because of the price tag attached to SharePoint. It’s cheap! It is very cheap compared to other collaboration and document management systems. Your Documentum’s and your P8 (Filenet’s) out there have massive price tags. (Please understand, I am not bashing these systems. They are very good at what they do. They have also seen the value of SharePoint as they both have created web parts to tie into SharePoint) A good example of price tag is WSS 3.0. Its free, yet it has a lot of functionality and versatility. Having a tool that has little or no cost usually flies under the radar as something that would have a large business impact, or for that matter, become a mission critical application.
- The second reason that comes to mind, is the ease of deployment. SharePoint easy one button install makes it very appealing to install as well. Chose the stand alone radio button and let the installer do everything for you. Even get SQL Lite thrown in. Most companies use this deployment because it is easy and works quite well.
- Another reason is SharePoint is tenacious. Pieces of SharePoint can be miss configured or even out right non functional, yet the end users don’t even realize it as they are still able to use the environment to upload documents etc.
- The fly under the radar has been something I have encountered quite a bit as of recent. This is where a employee, usually a new employee has used SharePoint in their past place of employment and know the benefits and features of SharePoint. They usually ask for SharePoint from their IT, who more often than not, don’t really understand what SharePoint is. They throw SharePoint out of box install onto a server and let the user at it due to the #1 reason in this list. Well he tells his friends who tell their friends, and so on and so on. The next thing IT knows is when it goes down this application turns out to be mission critical.
Fuego Fuego! Very likely, one or more of the reasons I listed may have affected you one way or another. If you are of the 10% who do have a governance document well done. There are numerous symptoms that come with an environment that does not have a governance document or any formal planning what-so-ever. These symptoms may include: | 
| - No clear owners of the application as a whole
- No site structure or hierarchy
- No information architecture
- Only one content database
- No (or) 1 service account running the entire application
- Security is completely ad hoc
- No Disaster Recovery Plan (DR)
- No Business Continuity Plan (BCP)
- Search “doesn’t work”
- Navigation is atrocious
| There is a lot more that can fall into the list, but for the sake of you not getting carpal tunnel syndrome from all the scrolling you would have to do, I will behave and keep the list to 10. The problems that come with lack of planning point to the fact that SharePoint is a “legitimate” application. Not some free piece of shareware, that is nice to have. SharePoint is indeed a contender in the content management arena. SharePoint also has a very strong end user adoption rate due to its ease of use. This is why I chuckle when I hear a company tell me, we have this SharePoint proof of concept up for the last 2 months, I have to laugh. I tell them, you mean its been in production for the last seven weeks then. SharePoint is viral…. highly infectious and will spread through out a company like a fire in a gasoline and match factory. Protect Yourself It never is too late to put a governance document together. If you don’t have a governance document, you want to start planning on creating one. If your SharePoint environment is in planning or it has been deployed since 2003 you want to build one. You may very well find that you will need to remediate your current environment or even build a second farm under the guidance of our governance document then migrate (Carefully!) the content and data from the first SharePoint environment to the new one. There are many companies out there that can help facilitate you in the building of the governance document as well as the remediation of your current environments if you find your IT staff spread thin already. I go through the paces with each client I work with to help facilitate them in this regard. When I first started in the consulting end of SharePoint, I tired to tell them of all the pitfalls and things to avoid, but never actually defined a document. I go back to the client a few months later and heard things like I know you said “not to Blah” but I did, or I don’t remember you telling me that. SharePoint has been a growing process for everyone it has touched. It will touch millions of other lives in time as well as it continues to grow more popular. One thing you must be sure of is that all the stakeholders have a say, even at a token level as to what is in the governance document that pertains to them and their role. This will ensure a solid document that is backed up by the company as a whole. This will also give the IT team or whomever is designated as the owners of the SharePoint application/environment a bulletproof shield during those high energy knee jerk reactions. The bullets may fly, but the protection will be there. The ability to say, “We understand your pain point, we have a document that will help us get through this without causing other problems. Please remain calm.” – PRICELESS I could go into what needs to be in a governance document but that is another blog post all together. There is a lot of good information out there of what needs to be in it. I wanted to give you the reasons behind why you need it. I love to talk as you probably well figured, and tend to be long winded at that so I best quit here before this turns into something that rivals War and Peace. David J Pileggi Jr. Insight
Mar
26
Published: March 26, 2009 15:03 PM by
Dave Pileggi
Powered by: Mindsharp and Summit 7
I was working on a proof of concept with a client. They used SharePoint 2003 and were looking at a new farm for 2007. There was one catch however. They had a complex change control workflow they wanted to implement. Out of box functionality was out of the question, and as you know from my post on developing in SharePoint and if it is necessary, I like to try to use out of box functionality, or at most SharePoint designer to design solutions. This keeps a SharePoint environment as close as one can to an out of box install which in the future will save the company both time and money when a new version of SharePoint is released and the desire and time to upgrade is present. I have heard a lot… ok, a LOT! of bashing SharePoint Designer workflows. Some of the arguments are indeed valid, however, it should not devalue the ability of workflow creation for SharePoint lists and libraries. There are also simple workarounds for some of the complaints. Yes, workarounds are not always fun or start to make one feel sketchy, as if we just ran through the exit door of a movie theater to crash a movie. (No I am not condoning this behavior) When you see the true power of it all, that feeling will go away pretty quickly. I am digressing… as usual. You will find I love bunny trails. I will try and stay focused on my blog topics. Or I may actually put it in a side bars. I will change names to protect the innocent. The client, Recksalot Cars has a change request workflow. After talking with the Lead I was working with, we were able to understand the workflow. Being a large car company with lots of computers, they had a large IT staff. They were split into many teams, networking and DBA’s are an example. To create a change on one of the server would require several people to sign off and accept the change, or accept being put onto duty the day that the change was to take place. The size of the IT department was roughly 150 users. What made this workflow extremely complex was the fact that there was clear cut path between the people. One time could have four people part of the workflow, the next two and the following seven. Pile on to that fact, different people could be called on through each workflow, trying to map out every permutation would be painful at best. Mapping a beginning to end workflow was not feasible. Trying different ways with SharePoint designer it seemed that I would have to go against my out of box soapbox and break out Visual Studio’s .NET. When I was sitting in my other office (don’t ask) I had an epiphany. Less is more. Think of the workflow in sections like a caterpillar. Instead of a complex workflow with multiple steps, break it down into one step workflows. Tie that along with the ability to cascade workflows you have the power of a full solution. To define cascade workflows, one workflow can trigger a second workflow which must be completed, before the first workflow can complete. 
First you have the head. You need a place to begin. In this case Recksalot Cars started the workflow in a customized Calendar out of box template on the creation OR modification of a list item. The workflow creates a task in the task list. This triggers the second workflow that is a part the task list. So now our little caterpillar looks like: 
The task not only asks for approval, but information about who is next in line for the particular process the change order is trying to accomplish. The email is sent out to the task owner and the second workflow waits for resolution. Once the end user enters in the necessary information it finishes the Task Workflow and goes back to the Custom List Workflow. The Custom List Workflow process the information makes the necessary changes to the item that initially began the workflow then completes. The change of course triggers the Custom List Workflow to fire again. It sees, the item is still on route, so it creates another task. Our little caterpillar friend grows yet again. 
The creation of the task fires off the Workflow Task requesting information from the next in line indicated by the previous ‘approver’. The workflow then waits for the information from that person. This brings our growing buddy to look like this. 
When the Task Workflow completes, the Custom List Workflow picks back up and process the information. This cycle will continue until one of the directors specified in the workflow give their approval. When this happens the next time the Custom List Workflow triggers, it knows to stop immediately, stopping the cascading effect. And our happy little caterpillar has created a very complex, multiple permutation possible workflow, into a manageable workflow. 
When working with workflows, understanding your workflows is a big part of it. Many times, companies don’t realize that their processes and workflows can be inefficient (causes wasted company resources), riddled with exceptions (degrades the integrity of the process), or incomplete (a layoff took out a middle man in the workflow causing the process to be broken, not allowing thing that enter to finish the process at all). SharePoint is a very powerful tool, as is SharePoint Designer, but if the proper planning is not a part of deploying the solution it will just become part of the problem you are trying to solve. David J. Pileggi Jr. Insight
Dec
16
Published: December 16, 2008 16:12 PM by
Dave Pileggi
Powered by: Mindsharp and Summit 7
This blog entry may raise some blood pressures if I do not give some of my history. I have been around computers since the early 80's. I self taught how to program on a C64. (Love that computer) I dabbled in programming for quite some time until I figured out it was actually a career. In the late 90's I finished college with a degree from the University of Central Florida. (Bachelors of Computer Science) During my classes, they talked about this code reusability concept at this time; libraries of code that would make programming easier. Java was to be the amazing step in that direction. It certainly pushed the programming community in the right direction. I, however, was a developer after all. Any time a problem came up, the solution was charge into development. I want to program! Must code, will code for food, and every other cliché you can think of here. I ended up getting laid off twice due to that mentality. Maybe the professors were right, maybe I shouldn’t blow five days to create a program that adds 2+2 when calculator programs out there were available. After my last programming job with Kaegan Corporation in Orlando, I was pretty much ready to torch the "develop it!" standard I carried so proudly after graduation. There indeed was something that was said for code reusability. Enter SharePoint.
I have said and will continue to say that about 90% of the development that is being done for "SharePoint" is unnecessary. (Now you understand why I had to start with a history lesson to show where I have come from) I have been using SharePoint for over four years now, and it continues to amaze me. The power of out of box functionality is absolutely amazing and grossly underestimated. Microsoft doesn't even know what it has its hands on, and that is proven when you go to the SharePoint pages on their web site. SharePoint is so much more than just a collaboration tool now. Even so with SharePoint Portal server 2003 with the right amount of understanding and Office 2003 Pivot Table web parts.  As a former developer (I still code in an online game just because I do enjoy to code) I am constantly amazed at the ability and flexibility of SharePoint's out of box functionality. The ability to create some solid solutions to business problems I have come across at clients in different verticals. This out of box ability if pursues is more robust then many give SharePoint credit for. I have come across several scenarios, where I have seen custom development work that almost mirrored the out of box functionality. It reminds me of myself when I came out of college. The depth of SharePoint is much deeper than one would think at first glance. The thing is you need to spend time working with SharePoint, playing around with it, and sometimes twisting it until it breaks. Before you gasp, breaking it is very rare when you are just using out of box functionality and twisting it to what you need.
As versitile as the out of box functionality is, there are situations where it does not have the ability to do what is needed. Time to develop... right? NO! It’s time to do some research. There are some excellent Microsoft Partners who create web parts, templates, web solutions and SharePoint plug in's that may do what you’re looking for. Some of these companies that I have used or suggested are AvePoint, Syntergy, Bamboo Solutions and Quest. No I am not getting paid for plugging them, nor would I want to be. This blog is for the sole purpose of helping SharePoint users and potential users to become more equipped with knowledge. The fact I am trying to point out in this post is, Development in a SharePoint environment is happening much too often considering the tools and resources out there.
I also left our SharePoint Designer. I am impressed with this new generation revamp of the old and not too loved FrontPage. Not only can you build workflows with a sharp though not always intuitive GUI, but there are other goodies that come with it as well. One of which is the very powerful data grid and other webparts that can allow someone with development abilities create some unique out of box solutions. Going with office applications, InfoPath is another area where solutions could really become possible with out of box functionality. May still need to make a custom SQL database now and then for back end repositories for your information, but that is database administration, not developing in the SharePoint environment.
Is there room for development in the world of SharePoint? Absolutely. However, go through the paces and know SharePoint before you jump onto the development bandwagon. There are a lot of nasty side effects that can stem from development. Functionality of SharePoint may not work as it should, the inability to upgrade easily to newer versions of SharePoint to be released later, introduction of memory leaks into a stable environement are just some of the possible side effects that comes with development. Again, I love programming, but it's amazing: I think I have all possible scenarios covered and one flies under the radar and I write over the kernal.  I am going to use this platform of communication to give examples of how to use out of box functionality in SharePoint to solve business problems. If you have an idea, please feel free to sent me an email and ask, or just post a note on one of my blog entries.
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