My Top-10 Free SharePoint Store Apps - P2 - October 2013
This post is the October 2013 update to my previous post from June 2013. I would like to repeat this post every quarter or so especially as more and better apps will be available in het SharePoint Store. In this post some of the Apps I think deserve some attention are listed with a short recommendation and description.
The overall picture of SharePoint Apps that I am getting is that there are indeed a few excellent ones out there and, sadly, a lot of rubbish. Furthermore support on Apps is lacking even more as most Apps that I have tried do have a ‘App Website’ link in the store but information, let alone support, is tough to get a hold on.
The main reason for writing this post is for you to know what’s available out of the box and what is provided by some great ‘SharePoint community enthusiasts’ and how to use their stuff in the right way. By using these Apps you’ll find that you have more time on your hands for creating real SharePoint business value for your enterprise. Let get down it…
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Name Nintex Workflow for Office 365 Cloud Hosted (Provider Hosted / Auto Hosted) / SharePoint-hosted Cloud Hosted Release Date September 2013 Category Workflow + Process Management, Productivity Description Nintex has just released an update to the PREVIEW version which was released in July 2012. I mentioned this product as number one in my previous post as it was the App that would really add business value for the Enterprise.While the PREVIEW version had a lot of shortcomings like the number of available workflow actions compared to the on premise version where limited, this release has it all! Also the tight integration with Nintex Live and In-App purchases of User Defined Actions sounds very promising. For instance, there are actions for connecting other cloud services like Skydrive, Facebook, DropBox, Linked-In, Yammer and more.Overall this is an amazing App that lets a business user/process analyst lay out critical business processes in a visual manner and lets a SharePoint consultant automate processes efficiently.There are no large differences in what the ‘On Premise’ version of the product can do compared to the ‘Cloud’ version.An ‘On premise’ installation will require a farm solution install. App WebSite -
Name Adlib PDF Publisher Cloud Hosted (Provider Hosted / Auto Hosted) / SharePoint-hosted SharePoint-hosted Release Date July 2012 Category Productivity, Content Management, File Converters + Viewers Description This one slipped by me the last time, but is actually a very cool App! Once you install the App in a site that contains the receiving Document Library and you install it again in a site that contains the Document Library with the source file(s) you can select up to 25 documents and put them in a queue to be converted to a PDF document.You can set a watermark and add paging to the pdf output.I tried it with Word and PowerPoint documents and both Outputs were as expected.Great thing is you can select source files anywhere in your SharePoint environment and produce the output anywhere as well. You only need to add the App to each site that would contain source documents in their respective libraries and off course your account should have permissions to view the source library and write to the target library. App WebSite -
Name Newsfeed Notifier Cloud Hosted (Provider Hosted / Auto Hosted) / SharePoint-hosted SharePoint-hosted Release Date July 2013 Category Social, Communication, Productivity Description Please pay attention that this App is not free (€1,69 as of the publishing date of this article) it is very powerful and I think it’s a good investment for anyone.The App adds a Facebook notification in the SharePoint Suitebar for Newsfeed items. You will never miss out on a notification again!All that is needed is to add the App to upload a Javascript file to the Master Page gallery and add a ScriptLink control to the masterpage. Real easy, real powerful stuff. App WebSite -
Name AvePoint Meetings Cloud Hosted (Provider Hosted / Auto Hosted) / SharePoint-hosted Cloud Hosted Release Date Mei 2013 Category Productivity, Workflow + Process Management, Project Management Description The last time I tried this App I really could not get it to work, but this time all is good and snappy. New functionality has been added as well that:1) allows for attendees and organizers to add attachments to meetings, which I really don’t recommend as keeping documents safely in SharePoint and just linking to them in the meetings is Best Practice anytime;2) adds a Search bar to search through existing meetings;3) allows for organizers to add attendees based on previous meetings and adding information if he or she was actually present during that meeting.The really great thing about this app is the integration with the SharePoint 2013 Tasks Dashboard, because all tasks in the meetings are displayed in everyones Task Hub on the Mysite. You can Close a task from within SharePoint or from within the Avepoint Meeting App, this will all be synched!A few comments though:1) when creating a meeting you have to type in the hours and minutes of the meeting start and end time;2) after editing a meeting the time portion is somehow changed but this is only to reflect that by default a different timezone is displayed, this is somewhat confusing;3) There are several Meeting actions you can add, New Action, New Note, New Attachment, New Decision but it seems that user permissions are not taken into account, every attendee can type in everything… maybe it is meant to do this but I would like to have an ‘Minutes Secretary’ role for each meeting;4) The order of the four actions when placed in a meeting cannot be changed although the interface suggests you can drag and drop meeting actions;5) The creation dates of Meeting Actions that are inserted into the meeting are being messed up with these codes: ‘NaN/NaN/NaN’;6) When I change the status of a task in the Meeting App to In Progress, the status is not reflected in my Dutch SharePoint site ‘In uitvoering’, so there are some language bugs.You could use MeetSweet (6) to agree on a meeting date first and then use this App to actually add notes, tasks and decisions to the meeting App WebSite Support Website -
Name ShareIt Cloud Hosted (Provider Hosted / Auto Hosted) / SharePoint-hosted SharePoint-hosted Release Date June 2013 Category Social, Content Management Description As Yammer is, again, a really ‘hot’ subject in the SharePoint community, still there seems no true vision behind its integration with SharePoint. We all like our documents in SharePoint and not in Yammer and we all like the Yammer Social features better that the SharePoint 2013 native features.This App tries to create a bridge between both worlds and succeeds fairly well in doing so.You can select multiple documents at once for posting to Yammer ;-)It does not work with documents from the users Skydrive ;-(.Update: as of late we cannot get past the Yammer authorization for this App, it gives an error 401. App WebSite -
Name MeetSweet Cloud Hosted (Provider Hosted / Auto Hosted) / SharePoint-hosted Cloud Hosted Release Date May 2013 Category Productivity, Customer + Contact Management Description This is a really cool, intuitive and great looking Doodle like App (Datumprikker.nl for Dutch people). If you like Doodle, you will definitely like this one. You can create events (locations are matched by Google Maps), set multiple date and time possibilities for your meeting, select attendees (both inside and outside your organization!) and click ‘Save’!All attendees get an email invitation to choose their date/time preference and view the Google Map of the location. Also a Newsfeed is available and a Windows 8 App (more Apps to come).When the organizer sets the final date the Calendar is updated and will display all Final events. Also all attendees get an e-mail with the calendar appointment in ics format, which you can add to your Outlook calendar.Excellent work here and very useful for any organization.Once you have agreed on a meeting you can use AvePoint Meetings (4) to actually provide notes, tasks and decisions when the meeting is held. App WebSite -
Name Shreyan Poll App Cloud Hosted (Provider Hosted / Auto Hosted) / SharePoint-hosted SharePoint-hosted Release Date August 2013 Category Productivity, Content Management, Human Resources + Recruiting Description A very nice and simple to use ‘poll’ App. You can enter multiple questions but only one of them is active for the site the App is added to. If you need one poll on your Company Homepage and one for the HR department make sure these have separate sites and the App is added to both. Basic chart capability is offered to get an overview of responses.I have not detected any localization options for the App so you can use this only for English sites as there are some English texts visible in the user interface. App WebSite -
Name Bright Banner Cloud Hosted (Provider Hosted / Auto Hosted) / SharePoint-hosted SharePoint-hosted Release Date April 2013 Category Content Management, Public-facing Websites, News + Weather Description This App has an ‘App-part’ and an ‘iframe’ option are available to add a banner to every SharePoint page. Especially the ‘iframe’ option has the advantage thata) the size of the webpart/script part/embed section in which you load the iframe is adjustable, circumventing the inherent troubles App parts have with respecting width and height parameters of the (master) page (layout) that is loaded.b) you can use some basic theming capabilityc) you can use the same iframe embed code on pages of multiple sites without installing the App on each siteThere seems to be an issue with the height of the iframe which is set to 100%, this will not work correctly so you can easily change this to a fixed height. Really a great and very versatile App. App WebSite -
Name News Ticker Cloud Hosted (Provider Hosted / Auto Hosted) / SharePoint-hosted SharePoint-hosted Release Date July 2013 Category News + Weather, Look ＆ Feel, Content Management Description This marquee App does exactly what it says and gives a dynamic feeling to your site.All Announcements are kept within the App space of your SharePoint domain so you are fully in control of the content.It is really easy to configure the app and it has some basic theming capabilities for Blue, Red, Green, Gray and Black and it features several animation schemes.Also the width of the part is adjustable by setting the width property of the App Part and the contents will size with it. Sadly the SharePoint App Part width parameter cannot be set to 100% and App parts in general don’t respect width or height parameters of the (master) page (layout) they are placed on, this is something Microsoft will have to improve.There is an option to use your own custom list as input and I got the description on how to configure this from the App creator.1) Create a new announcement list.2) Add a new HyperLinkColumn with the name “Link” to the new announcement list3) Configure the Webpart with just the List Name App Support -
Name BPMN Quickguide Cloud Hosted (Provider Hosted / Auto Hosted) / SharePoint-hosted SharePoint-hosted Release Date September 2013 Category Workflow + Process Management, Reference Description The reason to add this App to the list is that I really like the idea of using SharePoint as a navigation framework for BPMN processes. For instance you can use Visio diagrams to navigate to sites and/or documentation. This App can set you on your way to give Visio a try and use it in your SharePoint. App WebSite