SharePoint 2010 portals are great platforms to facilitate communication and productivity. They can be used for business intelligence reporting, performance monitoring, record tracking, data entry, and so much more. As SharePoint grows in popularity, pressure on the people responsible for creating data-powered portals increases. While SharePoint includes many convenient tools, developers often need to get involved to create complex data views or create tools where none exist.

ComponentOne Studio for SharePoint gives you Web Parts that make the SharePoint 2010 experience better. Their point-and-click On-Board Designers make it possible for users of any level to create data views quickly, making SharePoint workers more productive. Non-technical people can create their own data views and developers save days of time. Also, their Silverlight technology makes them fast, impressive looking, and full featured.

Studio for SharePoint includes five Web Parts: DataGrid, Chart, Maps, CoverFlow, and ImageViewer. Here is how they make the SharePoint experience better for those who need to create and/or manage portals (administrators, developers, and business managers).

Administrators

A SharePoint site administrator varies from a professional SharePoint Administrator, to a Network Administrator, to a random person who knows SharePoint. Whoever they are, the person tasked with SharePoint administration is concerned with serving needs quickly, protecting the servers, and following security protocol. Installing Studio for SharePoint is safe and hassle-free.

How We Make Their Experience Better

• Our Web Parts have a small footprint:
  One very small install makes Studio for SharePoint’s Web Parts available to all site collections.
• Installation takes minutes:
  One setup program installs all Web Parts on all farm servers. There are no complex solution deployments to do.
• Studio for SharePoint is a good citizen:
  Our Web Parts follow SharePoint security rules. No need to worry about making exceptions.

Portal Builders

For our discussion, portal builders are anybody who needs to create SharePoint portals. They could be seasoned coders or a novice SharePoint user. They do not have to de developers. We developed Studio for SharePoint to help portal developers of any level.

How We Make Their Experience Better

• The On-Board Designer makes everything easy (and code-free): Each Web Part has a dialog, called the On-Board Designer, that opens right on the Web Part surface. The On-Board Designer gives you a point-and-click interface for connecting to data and configuring views. There is no code and no technical expertise required. By removing the need to code, we have brought the ability to create data views to users of all levels. Even if the portal developer is a seasoned coder, he can save days of work.

  

• Changes are headache-free: Revisions are a simple matter of opening the On-Board Designer, changing properties, and saving changes.
• Make it look great: The On-Board Designer has all the formatting options you need. Design is as simple as setting preferences. Don’t worry about style sheets and other tedious formatting tasks. Our Silverlight-based Web Parts will make your pages shine.
• Give end-users a great experience:
  Allow end-users to scroll, filter, sort, and group the Grid, zoom and pan the Chart, and interact with the Map – all without page refreshes. Even allow them access to the On-Board Designer. These features are built-in.

• Provide an interface to your database:
  You can allow users to add, edit, and delete data using the DataGrid. Just insert the Web Part and connect it to your data source.

  

• Customize with Microsoft’s Managed Extension Framework (MEF):
  Developers can use Visual Studio to create their own features.

Business Managers and End-Users

Data portals are created as a place for people to get the information they need and Studio for SharePoint makes sure end-users, who are often business managers, can get what they need, how they need it.

How We Make Their Experience Better

• DataGrid provides a useful data view:
  The DataGrid gives a scrollable view of all the data in a list (SharePoint list or BCS). The user can view, group, filter, and sort data quickly, without a page refresh.

• Print Reports:
  Each Web Part has context menu with a print button. This is a great way to produce ad-hoc reports, especially when working with the DataGrid.

  

• Full screen view: The Web Parts’ context menu also allows users to expand the view to full screen.
• Zoom and Pan:
  Users can zoom and pan Chart and Maps to focus on the data they want to see.

In Closing…

We developed Studio for SharePoint because there is a growing need for people of all technical levels to produce robust data portals. Our Web Parts not only help make the SharePoint Experience better (easier, faster, more impressive), but they let you do a great job in short amount of time. In fact, they will pay for themselves after the first few uses.
I invite you to learn more about Studio for SharePoint:

• Studio for SharePoint website: Read all about it.
• Download a free trial: Install and use the Web Parts for free for 30 days.