AISblog | Applied Information Sciences Blog

Good question. And we’ve got the answer.

Here at AIS, we’ve spent hundreds of thousands of hours envisioning, designing and constructing SharePoint-based solutions for our clients. With each new version of SharePoint, we make additional investments to deeply understand the new release’s capabilities.

We’ve taken a look at all the changes and enhancements in the latest version — and you just have to look at our blog archives to realize that a LOT has changed in 2013 — and put together a short, easy-to-read whitepaper that highlights the top new features that make SharePoint 2013 a must-have for your business, including:

Smarter Search
Simpler and Mobile-Ready UI
The game-changing SharePoint App Store Model
Better Workflow
Social SharePoint
Easy Migration Tools
Lower Costs
And much more!

Please CLICK HERE to download your free copy.

Not familiar with SharePoint as a business solution? Take a look at our SharePoint solutions on our website and contact us to learn more about how SharePoint can transform your organization.

AISblog

We’re honored to announce that AIS’ own Media Center app won an Appy award for “Coolest App” at the SharePoint MVP Summit 2013. Media Center is a SharePoint app that allows you to integrate your Windows Azure Media Services (WAMS) assets in SharePoint. And we agree that it’s pretty darn cool.

You can download the award-winning Media Center app for free from the Office store.

And here’s a brief video demo of the app’s capabilities:

Congratulations and special thanks to AIS team members Jason McNutt, Harin Sandhoo, and Sam Larko for their contributions to Media Center!

AISblog

Have you taken a look at the new SharePoint yet?

If you’ve spent any time reading our blog, you know by now that SharePoint 2013 introduces extraordinary new features to change the way you work, share, discover, organize and build sites. And now we’ve put together a quick guide highlighting the top features that may inpact your business.

Download The Top Reasons Why Your Business Will Love the New SharePoint now! (No form required,)

The Top Reasons Why Your Business Will Love the New SharePoint guide provides you with an overview of the latest and greatest that comes with SharePoint 2013, including:

Smarter Search
Simpler and Mobile-Ready UI
SharePoint App Store Model
Better Workflow
Social SharePoint…and more, including easy migration tools and lower costs.

Download your copy today!

And if you’re in the DC area, AIS is hosting an “Introduction to SharePoint 2013″ event at the Microsoft office in Chevy Chase, MD on March 20th. Click here to learn more and register.

AISblog

Happy Friday! Here are some great posts from AIS team members‘ personal blogs…

Securing a Windows Azure endpoint…the VALID way…: “Many cool new services are being rolled out in the Windows Azure platform, but there is one feature that has been in place since Azure went live that is still very valuable to me: the ability to quickly roll-out locally developed functionality to the web using Web or Worker roles.” (bwodicka.wordpress.com)

Enable Automatic Code First Migrations On SQL Database in Azure Web Sites: “Azure is becoming increasingly easier to use – especially with features like Azure Web Sites. Being able to use Entity Framework Migrations in Azure makes deployment easier than ever.” (Steve Michelotti)

Creating an Offline Web Platform Installer for Service Bus 1.0: “Service Bus 1.0 is available only through Web Platform Installer at this time and it’s not readily apparent how you might use WPI for a network isolated environment. Hopefully this will help…” (cromwellhaus)

Netizen – Windows 8 app that makes it easy to follow congressional votes: A little extra background on our free Netizen app and why we created it. (Fleeting Thoughts)

Resources for How to Raise A Geek: “A list of tools, books, and ideas to help parents raise a geek. Raising a geek will bring you closer to your children, give them tools for the future, and you might learn something along the way.” (Steven Suing’s Blog)

AIS is hiring! Come join our team of smart, passionate innovators. View all current job openings here.

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We’re super excited over here — AIS’ own Vishwas Lele has published an eBook about the next generation of productivity possibilities with Office and SharePoint 2013, entitled The App Economy: Coming to an Office™ Near You.

In the eBook, Vishwas presents app solutions for different scenarios, with perspectives from a cast of characters which includes a power user, a developer, an administrator and an industry analyst. In these scenarios, the following questions will be answered:

• Why are apps needed?
• What nagging problems are they designed to solve?
• What kinds of apps can we expect to see in the marketplace?
• How will SharePoint apps be secured?
• What are the various revenue models supported?
• Would in-app purchases be allowed? What about ads?
• What is the difference between a public app store and a corporate app catalog?

“I decided to write a story about friends and co-workers and their day-to-day productivity challenges,” said Vishwas, “and how Office and SharePoint 2013 —combined with the cloud —will change the way they all do business.”

The eBook is available at Amazon.com, and is FREE during the SharePoint 2012 conference.

AISblog

Some end-of-the-week reads from AIS employees’ personal blogs:

Windows Azure Planning: A Post-Decision Guide to Integrate Windows Azure in Your Environment: AIS’ CTO Vishwas Lele posted a complete planning guide on how to best adopt and integrate Windows Azure into your organization. (Fleeting Thoughts)

SharePoint Saturday Cincinnati Session: Clint Richardson (who wrote the excellent three-part series on The Best New Features of SQL Server 2012) presented a Voluntold admin session at last week’s SharePoint Saturday Cincinnati. His presentation, relevant links and PowerShell code are all available at his blog. (pointblankadmin)

Understanding and Using System.Transactions: Ash Tewari has compiled an excellent library of resources to help you understand and effectively use System.Transactions functionality in your .NET projects. (tewari.info)

Adaptive Problems Require Responding to Change Over Following a Plan: More deep thoughts on the Scrum framework and Agile values from Ryan Cromwell. (cromwellhaus)

Aliasing Multiple Properties in Knockout JS Bindings: David Benson figured out another handy use for Knockout JS’s “with” statement: you can emulate c# style “using” directives. (dben codes)

Teach Your Kid to Code: Steve Michelotti (and his 5th grade son!) will be co-presenting a great, fun session called Teach Your Kid to Code at the CMAP meeting next Tuesday evening in Columbia, MD. (Don’t forget to get out and vote early, too.) (Steve Michelotti)

AISblog

Happy Friday! Here are some of the latest posts by AIS employees from around the web and their personal blogs:

Using Git-Tf: Suppress the TFS Warning When Loading a Solution: Using Git-TF? Getting annoying TFS warnings in Visual Studio? Senior Software Engineer Kip Streithorst can help. (It’s Null?)

Fight Clutter and Confusion in the Workplace. The Importance of Process Streamlining and How to Do It: Developer Terra Gilbert has discovered a natural knack for process streamlining and improving documentation. Here are her tips. (codeterra)

Recent Items in Windows 8: Oskar Austegard plays around with a new Windows 8 install and solves the case of the missing (or at least hard-to-find) Recent Items folder. (mo.notono.us)

KnockoutJS & ASP.NET Mvc Partial View Loading: How to dynamically load “partial views” bound to KnockoutJS view models. (Null != Steve)

Scrum Fundamentals Recording Available: In case you missed Ryan Cromwell‘s Scrum Fundamentals webinar, the presentation is available on his blog. (And be sure to check our Events page — we add new events every week!) (cromwellhaus)

AISblog

Hot on the heels of our new corporate blog, AIS is proud to announce that we’ve also redesigned and relaunched our corporate website at www.appliedis.com. From now on, our blog, events calendar and corporate site will be better integrated and together will fully showcase AIS’ work, ideas and innovations.

Our new website will detail the extensive federal and commercial projects we’ve worked on and our firm’s full range of service offerings. It will also highlight premium content that discuss our ideas and innovative technology solutions, in the form of white papers, presentations, video demos and other content produced by our passionate team of technology experts. We believe our work can bring transformative change to organizations of all types, and now we’re making it easier than ever for our clients and website visitors to see exactly how we do it.

Please visit appliedis.com today and check out all the changes we’ve made and the content we now offer.

AISblog

Another Friday, another great round of links and blogs from the AIS team:

The Case of the Case-Sensitive CustomFilter Refiner: If you’re setting up FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint and need a custom date refiner, you’ll want to read about Tim Larson’s experience before you run into trouble. (Code Thug)

My Favorite Visual Studio 2012 Extensions: In honor of the recent launch of Visual Studio 2012, Ryan Cromwell shares six of his can’t-live-without extensions. (cromwellhaus)

Protecting Your API Keys: How to hide your API keys in your Windows 8 app source code. (And what to do if you’ve already accidentally exposed them!) (tewari)

BizTalk 2012 R2 and REST Example Walkthrough: A nice simple walkthrough on how to configure BizTalk to expose an Orchestration as REST service and consume a REST service. (madhukar gilla)

Code Samples from TechGate Conference: In case you attended Steve Michelotti’s Azure presentation at the TechGate conference in Reston last weekend, code samples can be found via his blog. (Steve Michelotti)

AISblog

For the second year in a row, AIS is proud to announce our ranking on the Inc. 5000 List of America’s Fastest-Growing Companies. We’ve grown 47% over the past three years and hired 80 new employees in our quest to best serve our clients. We’re honored to be ranked shoulder-to-shoulder with other great companies and entrepreneurs.

As always, though, we’re looking forward. Just this week, AIS attained our fourth AND fifth gold competencies in the Microsoft partner program, in the areas of Business Intelligence and Application Integration.

This achievement is an important benchmark in the competitive world of Microsoft technology partners. Each gold competency requires five customer references, numerous developer exams and other objectives. Joining our other areas of competencies — Software Development, Web Development, Portals and Collaboration (and the sub-category of Cloud Accelerate) — BI and Application Integration give AIS a well-rounded portfolio of expertise and opens new opportunities in the partner channel, including advisory councils and boards within Microsoft.

According to AIS President Tom O’Connell, “This is a testament to the depth and breadth of our experiences. Even though Microsoft dramatically expanded the type and number of certifications and client references, we have quickly reached five gold competencies with our personnel and projects. We applaud Microsoft setting a higher bar so that we can differentiate ourselves.”

Congratulations to the entire AIS team and everyone who helped make these achievements and recognition possible!