Adventures in home working

Graham points to a pretty good article on the SharePoint team blog about when to use SharePoint and when to use a file server.  Whilst I think the article is largely technically correct, it doesn’t address many of the points I raised in this post.  The key ones being:

• pretty much every application supports storing it’s file based data that way
• everyone knows how to save files
• everyone knows how to navigate a file system
• its easy to tell people where things are,  or send them a UNC path
• its easy to move stuff around, copy it, rename it
• its easy to send files stored in a file system via email (drag and drop)
• search tools work well
• performance is great
• solutions are available for off-line working
• fairly easy to replicate
• well integrated with backup
• integrated with all sorts of applications
• very cheap

With Vista things seem to be going even better for the local file system and promise to get better for the file server with Longhorn server.  In my old post I listed a lot of problems with the file server, and update them now for vista:

• no general purpose way to add meta data – no longer true with Vista’s support for tags
• forces you onto one view of structure, ie only directory hierarchy – tags fix this as well, although you can also sort, group, search and filter on meta-data as well
• not easy to share outside the enterprise, in a controlled way,  although tools like foldershare and groove do it peer to peer through firewalls - this is still true, of course the fact that Several office versions include Groove make it easier and its also possible to get at file system data via OWA in Exchange 2007
• no workflow, or other automation I think this is still true
• no easy way to add comments I think this is still true
• no standard way to version I think this is still true
• only one way to group stuff – directories – tags fix this as well, although you can also sort, group, search and filter on meta-data as well

Vista adds some additional goodies like thumbnails, previews, and property handlers as well as much improved replication, offline working, search and really great support for grouping, filters, sorting etc.

In addition everything works in the file system,  once you move to something else you have to keep asking yourself the question “where should I put this”.

Overall I think the file system is doing pretty well, its certainly my preferred place to work, with the web being my preferred place to publish, although I also like Notes databases (if only doclinks worked more reliably).

Soon though I expect that my favorite place to publish will be a future version of Lotus Quickplace, I saw it’s file system integration today and I was very impressed!

Over the holidays I decided to give my ageing Treo 650 a tune up.  I wanted to develop a more efficient workflow.  Here’s what I came up with:

1. I have my Treo on my desk all through the day, its a waste of space, so I decided that it would make a great clock.  To achieve that I needed to configure it to keep the display illuminated when it was docked during normal working hours.  CradleCare does this well and Big Time is a great clock with a large display giving date and time and two additional time zones (I normally work with Australia and the East Coast of the USA).
2. Mobile reception in my house is dreadful and I get quite a few mobile calls, which is a real drag.  I wanted my Treo to automatically forward all calls to my business line when its docked and unforward when its undocked.  CradleCare does this as well.
3. I have wireless email but I find I don’t use it that much, as most of the time I am out I don’t want emails intruding into my quiet time. What I need more is a copy of my Inbox, all my Sent emails and a few key folders like my Admin folder (that has all my licence keys, order numbers, procedures etc in it) my Wireless email doesn’t do this so as an experiment I have switched back to using mNotes again.  mNotes is very slick!  If I really need emails on the move I can get them on my Tablet PC.
4. I find it annoying that after a restart the phone doesn’t get turned on and the SD card doesn’t mount.  PowerUp and CradleCare again do this just great
5. I always forget to sync up, so I need a way to automate it, CradleCare to the rescue again!
6. To make sure that the clock gets displayed after each hourly synch I need a way to restart it automatically,  AfterSync (freeware) does this.
7. I love podcasts and need a quick and easy way to get them onto the phone,  I have a 2GB SD card and I used to pop it into an external reader.  I tried card export but it Wasn’t reliable.  Then I found the less flashy Card Reader and it works perfectly,  I have never had an issue with it even copying over 1GB of files at a time!

All in all I think the software cost about