Information Technology moves to two new JMU SharePoint Services
Many of you have told us how SharePoint improves collaboration, facilitates document management
and enables users to build intranets. A number of our new customers are moving from Blackboard Org
sites and find SharePoint to be an ideal solution.
Upgrading our SharePoint 2010 site collections to SharePoint 2013 will dramatically improve your user
experience. We can help you do your work more efficiently from anywhere by providing you with both
a cloud-based version of SharePoint, as well as our current JMU hosted SharePoint service.
Summary JMU SharePoint Services will provide customers with two services offerings of SharePoint 2013:
1) JMU SharePoint OnPrem (running servers owned by JMU and located in JMU data centers)
 SharePoint 2010 site collections will upgrade to SharePoint 2013 in April 2014 and be referred to
as JMU SharePoint OnPrem.
2) JMU SharePoint OnLine (hosted by Microsoft and managed by JMU Information Technology)
 A new JMU SharePoint Service, JMU SharePoint OnLine, will be available starting late April.
 New site collections requests will be accepted, and a guidance document will be provided.
 Requests to move existing JMU SharePoint OnPrem site collections to JMU SharePoint OnLine
will be approved based on analysis by Information Technology.
Upgrade to SharePoint 2013
In November 2013, JMU IT upgraded JMU SharePoint Services to a dramatically improved SharePoint
2013 server architecture. The server upgrade improved SharePoint performance and backend services
but, didn’t change the design or functionality of site collections. This upgrade was the first step towards
offering you a much improved SharePoint 2013 user experience.
We are now positioned to upgrade all SharePoint 2010 site collections to SharePoint 2013. Upgraded
SharePoint 2013 site collections will remain as close as possible to out-of-the-box SharePoint. For
example, we will no longer brand each site with JMU purple and gold, or restrict owners from modifying
site collection themes or navigation. Additionally, the training materials provided by Microsoft and
Lynda.com will match our new SharePoint 2013 site collections. There are far too many new features
and improvements in SharePoint 2013 to list in our communication today. If you are interested in the
details and comparison, Microsoft provides information comparing SharePoint 2010 to SharePoint
2013.
So what does all this mean to you?
All new SharePoint site requests will be setup as SharePoint 2013 site collections. Beginning in April
2014, we will also upgrade 2010 site collections to 2013. Most non-customized SharePoint 2010 sites
such as Committee, Task Force, College, Department, Project, and MySites will upgrade automatically
and without analysis.
The timetable for the automatic site collection upgrades is as follows:
April 4, 2014
MySite Landing
Site
April 8, 2014
College Sites
Committee Sites
April 15, 2014
Department Sites
April 17, 2014
JMU Campus
Wide and
Departmental
Project Sites
April 21, 2014
Testing for Sites
Requiring Test
Upgrades and
Review
All Individual
MySites
Your site collection may be identified as one to be reviewed prior to the upgrade. If so, we will contact
you.
Introducing JMU SharePoint OnLine
Over the last year, customers have expressed the need to access JMU SharePoint Services off-campus
without using SSLVPN Network Connect. We also learned of a need to share documents or SharePoint
sites with colleagues at other institutions without assigning them JMU Affiliate e-IDs.
To address the above issues, JMU SharePoint Services has partnered with Microsoft to build a new
service offering. We are excited to introduce JMU SharePoint OnLine. This service offering will be
available to new and existing customers starting on April 21st 2014. Microsoft will host this service but it
will be managed by JMU Information Technology.
JMU SharePoint OnLine will provide customer access to SharePoint on- and off-campus using your JMU
e-ID and password. Off-campus access will not require SSLVPN Network Connect. In addition, JMU
SharePoint OnLine will allow customers to share documents or sites with colleagues from different
institutions. JMU SharePoint OnLine and JMU SharePoint OnPrem share the same user interface and
functionality so that customers are able to transition between both environments without the need for
additional training.
”You’re thinking... this is terrific news, I'm moving everything to the Cloud.” Not so fast . . .
Not everything is appropriate for the Cloud, it depends on the information your materials contain.
When a new site is requested, Information Technology will provide a guidance document to the
requestor asking that it be reviewed in light of their document storage objectives. The requestor will
then indicate to IT which service is most appropriate for their needs. Additionally, the guidance
document will be provided to existing customers as we analyze the best location for their site. The
document will be made available on the web for on-going reference as a FAQ.
SharePoint 2013 Training, FAQs, and support from the Computing HelpDesk will be available later in
April. Additional communications will be sent out as resources become available.
Hundreds of customers are now running SharePoint 2010 in various departments and colleges. Our
customers tell us SharePoint: improves collaboration, facilitates document management and enables
users to build intranets. We are listening to your feedback to continuously improve our service
offerings. Our goal is to provide an excellent collaboration, document management, and intranet
platform for our campus community. We can accomplish these goals by upgrading to SharePoint 2013
and providing a second service offering - JMU SharePoint OnLine.
For additional email [email protected].