Recent News

I got this email from Tommy (President and Co-Founder of ThreeWill) this morning and wanted to share...we feel very fortunate to work under his leadership.  Danny.

Team, 

I wanted to take the time to express my gratitude for this past year and my excitement for the upcoming year.  I will do my best to make this brief, so I will condense this down to 3 bullets each ... 

I am grateful for...

• Our Integrity:  Working with a group of people that have a high level of INTEGRITY and really care about servicing clients along with co-workers is a true blessing.  This is a big part of why I wanted to start a company with Danny and I feel fortunate that this is a reality today at ThreeWill.
• The Desire to Work:  Being in an environment that people really do CHOOSE TO SUCCEED.  There are not many companies that everyone at the company, through their own free will, are choosing to do the right things at work.
• The Ability to Provide: Having enough business in 2009 to allow us to provide for our families when there are others that do not have jobs.  The biggest stress that I have at ThreeWill is worrying about having enough business to sustain fairly paying people that work at ThreeWill.  The economic environment in the past 2 years has caused us all to work harder to make sure we can continue to provide to the people that depend on our incomes. 

I am excited about...

• Our Message:  "We help the leading software companies build commercial products on the SharePoint platform and this experience helps us assist large enterprises with complex SharePoint integration scenarios and enterprise applications on SharePoint."
• Our Partnerships:  A big part of my job satisfaction is being able to deliver to new clients.  The relationship with Jive has been great.  To hear from Jive that "ThreeWill is Love" really energizes me and drives me to say how can we continue to "kick it up a notch".  I look forward to what we will do in our enterprise accounts as we grow deeper in those accounts.  It is awesome to hear from existing accounts that  "We choose ThreeWill as our partner of choice for getting things done with SharePoint" and I envision over the next 3 years we will be hearing more of that.
• Our Upcoming Growth: In many ways, it will be exciting to see our company grow.   During this growth we will bring in new minds that will challenge us and help us deliver on our business plan.  I look forward to embracing the diversity of people who do not think like I think and can provide new insights that allow us to grow.  I also look forward to all of us growing our skills and responsibilities in support of the objectives we have set. I truly believe that everyone working at ThreeWill is making a difference.  I appreciate the sacrifices you make to allow our company to be successful.  I also want to thank your families for the support they provide.  They are a key part of allowing you to do your job at ThreeWill (please thank them over the holidays buy giving them the attention they deserve). 

I wish the peace of the Christ, who is in all of us, to be with you over the holidays.  Please enjoy the time you take off to really connect with your family and loved ones.  This upcoming year should be quite a ride! 

Cheers!
Tommy.

Last week's SharePoint 2009 Conference was, as expected, a great experience for ThreeWill. Microsoft continues to deliver a platform that helps empower their partners. It was great to see people in the SharePoint community (fellow partners, customers, and consultants) and we enjoyed supporting the Jive Booth (showing off Jive's SharePoint Connector that we built with Jive).

A highlight of the conference was hearing Owen Allen, Sr. Product Manager for SharePoint ISV Partners, present "SharePoint as a Platform". Owen said there has to be a perception change from "SharePoint as an Application" to "SharePoint as a Platform." What we heard (from the conference and with discussions with Microsoft) is having ISVs and Enterprises connect, build, and extend SharePoint is critical to the future of SharePoint. Connecting, building, and extending "validates" the platform and the new features of SharePoint 2010 (see Kirk Liemohn's Top 10 SharePoint 2010 features) will continue to maintain SharePoint as best in breed web portal platform.

At ThreeWill, we have seen "SharePoint as a Platform" since the inception of SharePoint 2007. We have struggled with Microsoft backing that story (it has been more support for "SharePoint as an Application"). Steve Ballmer said early on with SharePoint 2007 that SharePoint is the new OS, but I think he was planting a seed to be harvested later and we think that that time has come.

We are thrilled to excited about delivering solutions built on top of the rich SharePoint API. The set of features that will be available in 2010 will be overwhelming. We look forward to helping our clients understand which of these features best map to their business problems. That being said, we see that SharePoint 2007 is a strong foundation and the development techniques (like Silverlight, AJAX, RESTful Web Services, and JQuery) we use today map well to the upcoming features and put us in a great place to take advantage of SharePoint 2010.

ThreeWill is giving away an Amazon Kindle to one of our lucky Facebook Fans. 

http://www.facebook.com/pages/ThreeWill/88792767817

If you are a fan of our company and want to qualify simply become a fan by the end of this month (October 31st, 2009).  We will post the randomly chosen winner's name on the wall the week of November 2nd.
We look forward to connecting with you on Facebook. 

Sorry, ThreeWill associates and their relatives don't qualify...

Cheers and Good Luck!

Here are five, ok, six things that excite us about the future...

1. Success of the SharePoint Platform

No one can deny the overwhelming success of SharePoint. In fiscal year 2009, SharePoint easily broke the 1 billion revenue mark and also the 100 million license mark. IT Administrators love the easy provisioning, the extensive community and products available for SharePoint, and the familiarity of managing a Microsoft server product. Business Users love what they can accomplish using lists, document libraries, and configuring web parts. Everyone is happy. 

2. SharePoint Saves Our Clients Money

We are busier than ever in a down economy (not only because of the quality of our people) but also because SharePoint is bringing significant savings to Enterprises. Because of our deep knowledge in SharePoint, we know how to leverage what is out of the box and extend where necessary in a way the companies can get the most of their SharePoint investment. Watch the movie on our home page (http://www.threewill.com) to see a number of examples of ROI's our clients are seeing.

3. Upcoming Release of SharePoint 2010

Our company took a laser focus on SharePoint as a development platform when it came out as beta in 2006 and we have not regretted this move one bit. As we see the launch of SharePoint 2010 approaching, we feel the momentum building toward being able to create the next generation of applications. It's common knowledge that it usually takes three versions of software to reach the tipping point. And now that SharePoint is going into the 4th version, SharePoint 2010, it will be icing on the cake!

4. SharePoint Increases Developer Productivity

We continue to be amazed with the applications we can build and the integration scenarios we can create with SharePoint as a platform. We have enjoyed being the catalyst for ISVs (Independent Software Vendors) and Enterprises to leverage SharePoint as a development platform. Because of our deep knowledge of SharePoint we have been able to serve our clients by showing them the fastest and most effective way to build things on SharePoint. We have seen that the true power of SharePoint is not having to start with a blank slate. As a developer, you are provided a set of backend and UI framework services that allow you to focus on the business problem vs. building generic framework services.

5. SharePoint as the Glue

ThreeWill is working with some of the most innovative companies in the world to build products that integrate with and are built upon the SharePoint platform. The fact is that the integration technologies built into SharePoint (e.g. Web Services API, Search, Web Parts, SSO) make it the portal technology to bring together all of your technology investments. Every time we work with ISVs, we are thrilled with how we can make 1+1 greater than 2.

Ok, one more...

6. Going Beyond Collaboration

Collaboration for the masses is becoming a reality in Enterprises because of SharePoint. The evolution of collaboration has pointed toward social networking to get the right people connected with the right information at the right time. We have experienced seeing the demand for Social Networking inside and outside of companies. We have made a significant investment in our teams to be ready for the wave of projects that will have a significant social component. 2010 is going to be an incredible year!

Tommy and Danny Ryan will be there - Let Danny know if you are attending next week and want to meet up.

WPC Information:
WPC 2009 website: www.digitalwpc.com
Join us: FACEBOOK or TWITTER.

Today we formally announced the Community Wiki - http://www.prweb.com/releases/2009/03/prweb2203774.htm .

Alpharetta, GA (PRWEB) March 5, 2009 - ThreeWill, a leading Microsoft systems integrator for Microsoft SharePoint, has announced the formation of the SharePoint Depth Community, a free, public community to support those deploying and customizing SharePoint in their enterprise. Designed to encourage interaction and sharing among clients, partners, developers and end-users, the SharePoint Depth Community features wikis, blogs, shared bookmarks, forums, free software downloads and more.

"We were looking for a way to share and build momentum around key topics for enterprises leveraging Microsoft SharePoint," says Tommy Ryan, Co-Founder and President of ThreeWill. "We also see this as a way to build community and shared expertise because so many enterprises are looking at SharePoint not only for core collaborative features like document libraries and lists, but also as a development platform for building business applications."

Some of the key SharePoint topics covered include Administration, Planning and Architecture, Frameworks, Integration, Engineering Disciplines, Products, Tools and Utilities and Learning SharePoint. There are also a couple of blogs that are available on the site, one focused on what's happening in the field called "Implementing SharePoint" and another focusing on more business related topics called "Work Together Better."

Community members can post questions about SharePoint, share bookmarks, and make comments on content. "We are looking for members to join in the discussion," remarks Ryan, "you can register for free and add wiki content or just share a bookmark or make a comment." To access the community, go to http://www.sharepointdepth.com. To register, click on "Sign Up."

About ThreeWill
ThreeWill is a professional services firm based in Alpharetta, GA that helps companies build custom collaborative and workflow solutions that enable their people to "work together better". As a Microsoft Gold Partner, we specialize on the building on SharePoint 2007 technologies (including Windows SharePoint Services and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007) to produce effective solutions for our client's business problems. The solutions we provide through our services involve small, highly effective teams of 2 to 4 consultants for average project durations of 3 to 6 months. We apply enterprise development practices to building applications on SharePoint 2007. For more information about ThreeWill, please visit http://www.threewill.com.

I've migrated a majority of the content from our SharePoint based Work Together Better to our new blog site in Confluence.  The old blog was working just fine but we are looking to show off some of the integration and features available from using SharePoint and Confluence together.

We are setting up the SharePoint Connector for Confluence on http://wiki.threewill.com and will show off the features of  the connector.

We hope that you enjoy learning more about SharePoint, Confluence, and using the two products together for enterprise collaboration.

We have published our Seminar Schedule for 2009 - see the ThreeWill Events space for more details - http://wiki.threewill.com/display/events/ThreeWill+Events.

We will update with Microsoft events that we get involved with in 2009.  Feel free to subscribe to the calendar.

You can use Overlay Mode in Outlook to see which date would work with your schedule once you subscribe.

Andi - Let's start with your childhood. Tell us about your favorite pastime?

Jerry - My parents used to buy and sell horses and it was my job to test if they were 'ride-able' or not. Some horses were not 'ride-able'. I have been thrown from a few. But winning 6th place in a barrel race when I was 12 years old it one of my favorite memories. I had actually tied for 6th and ran it again to win.

Andi - How did you meet your wife, Ami?

Jerry - We went to the same college, a small Christian college. Our first year there, we went out and did not hit it off. We both just kind of said 'see you around'. We were in the same group of friends and during our senior year we became best friends. Then, without even dating I asked her to marry me and she said yes.

Andi - Changing gears to the workplace....What is your favorite aspect of working here at ThreeWill?

Jerry - The people I work with. It's a pleasure working with such a high caliber of people with a passion for what they do. They are also fun to be around.

Andi - What is your favorite technology and why?

Jerry - I enjoy scripting technology like VBScript and Powershell. I like automating administrative tasks. One of my favorite scripts that I wrote awhile back was Wake-on-Lan script. It would shut down all desktops at a selected time and would reboot them at 5am. I'm also a big fan of open source technologies and the collaborative aspect of it; especially Linux and Asterisk (Editor's note - since Jerry is such a big fan of open source ThreeWill tried to change Jerry's salary model to one closer to open source, but for some reason he doesn't agree with it for that case .

Andi - I see you are drinking out of your Superman coffee mug, so I see it fitting to ask if you could have any super power, what would you choose and why?

Jerry - I would like the ability to travel in time. Like that old TV show Quantum Leap where the guy would go around righting things that once went wrong.

Andi - You and I share a common hobby/passion in Texas Holdem (poker). How did you start and why do you love it?

Jerry - Like most people begin playing, I watched in on TV. I watched the WPT and Celebrity Poker Showdown with Phil Gordon. Then I started playing poker with my buddies and realized this game was more than just luck so I decided to read the "Little Green Book" by Phil Gordon which lead to reading "The Theory of Poker' by David Sklansky which really opened my eyes. I started playing online and have made just over $2,000 playing small stakes. I enjoy the challenge and all the different levels of thinking and like most great games, it takes a moment to learn and a lifetime to master.

Andi - Let's make a favorites' list. What is the first thing that comes to mind when I ask you your favorite:

Book: Lord of the Rings
TV Show: Battlestar Galactica
Gadget: Zune
CD: Yazz, Upstairs at Eric's
Movie: Better Off Dead

Andi - Okay, last question. What is your favorite motto to live by?

Jerry - That nothing is ever easy and if it is, then you are doing it wrong. I made that up myself and I think it's true.

Jerry Rasmussen tried to take over my interview and asked Tim "If you were a programming language, what would you be?" Tim quickly responded with "T-Sharp". Perhaps Jerry should take over the interviewing.

Andi - In the beginning...where were you born and raised?

Tim - I was born at Crawford Long Hospital and was raised in Mableton, GA. I'm actually from here and my plan is to stay here. Most of my childhood memories include little league sports, riding my bike with the other kids and being involved in church.

Andi - Describe a typical day in the Tim Coalson life.

Tim - I am married to Sonya and have three kids so they are included in a typical day. I get up at about 5:15am and go to the YMCA three days a week. (Am I going to get stalkers if I say that?) Thursday mornings I lead a men's bible study at J Christopher's. Sonya is heavy involved in church and takes real good care of the house. I am involved in the church softball league; I teach a 4th grade Sunday school class on Wednesdays and I also participate in a jail ministry one weekend a month.

Andi - What is your favorite aspect of working here at ThreeWill?

Tim - The people. The smart people that are always willing to help out, to help you succeed.

Andi - What is your favorite development topic and why?

Tim - Hum...well, I have always enjoyed user interface coding because I'm the type that likes immediate gratification and see the results quickly. I like tweaking it and that's the part of the application that people are going to see and experience.

Andi - Let's say in theory that you could only read on book, listen to one album and watch one movie for the rest of your life...what would they be?

Tim - The book would be the Bible. The album would be Third Day, Offerings and the movie is Shawshank Redemption.

Andi - If you could meet any one person in the world or in history, who would it be and why?

Tim - Probably Jesus and Apostle Paul, although I plan to meet both of them in the future. I'd also like to meet Timothy, the son of encouragement because he really fits with my personality. But mostly Jesus because of the impact he has had - to start out with 12 people and change the world.

Andi - You are very open about who you are, but tell me something that most people don't know about you.

Tim - Ha, I used to work at Six Flags. I was 16, it was summer time and with so many people to watch it was fun. I worked at the sky buckets, the carousel, the Mo-Mo Monster and I worked my way up so that I was in charge of the rides. Oh, I also did the fireworks...6 inch bombs are kind of a big deal.

Andi - When people look back at your life, how do you want to be remembered?

Tim - In order...as a good husband, a good father and as someone who liked to help people.

Andi - What did you enjoy doing as a child? For example, an outdoor activity or a sport?

Pete - I played basketball for years. You could always find me at the neighbors until all hours playing street ball. I was pretty good and played through college, but my glass ankles gave out so I had to stop playing competitively.

Andi - What things do you find yourself doing as an adult that you said you'd "never" do as a child/teenager?

Pete - The list is so long...but probably the biggest is worrying about money. I didn't think I would worry about it. Also, I never thought that I would have kids, but that changed for the better.

Andi - What is your favorite aspect of working here at ThreeWill?

Pete - The caliber of the associates is phenomenal. It is great to work in a company where whoever you ask is willing to help and has a certain expertise... and are all very humble.

Andi - What is your favorite development topic and why?

Pete -My favorite topic is workflow. More because I have such a background in help desk and service automation. I have a lot of experience in the area and I just like to fall back on it. Plus, it is just cool.

Andi - Now for some 'what ifs'...If you could meet any person in the world or in history, who would it be and why?

Pete -It would be one of two people. The first being Aristotle - just so I could ask him things and talk to him. This stems from my degree in philosophy; I have always been intrigued by his writings. The second would be Da Vinci because I want to know how that guy's mind worked. Like, how he mastered so many things and had passion for so much.

Andi - If you could be truly gifted and/or talented in any area/expertise what would it be and why?

Pete - Something simple, like a carpenter. I say simple but I mean pragmatic. A skill that is useful. I deeply value tangible results. So when I look at a piece of furniture or a house, it stands the test of time, leaves a legacy, provides shelter and is very functional.

Andi -When did you know that you wanted to marry your wife, Kristine? How did you propose?

Pete -Skipping straight to the second part of your question - I proposed to Kris the night I met her on New Year's Eve 1992 in Boston on a crowded train car. I got down on one knee and the whole bit; and without missing a beat, she asked where the ring was and I said that I didn't have a ring and she immediately said then 'NO'! It was about 6 months later when she came back for the summer on our second date that is was just obvious I wanted to marry her. I figured I had already proposed, so I might as well stick with it.

Andi - When people look back at your life, how do you want to be remembered?

Pete - As somebody who was helpful and who was a good friend

Yes, we are continuing on the tradition (or the torture) into the New Year.

Andi - Let's start with your childhood. Tell us a favorite memory?

Kirk - I lived in Knoxville and was in 5th grade at the time that I was on an undefeated hockey team. I remember our last game of the season and we were down 4 - 2 with 30 seconds left in the game. We were in fear of losing the game. But I made one goal and with 15 seconds left in the game, we made another to tie the game. We ended up undefeated that season.

Andi - Congratulations again on your new baby Megan. How has she changed the dynamic of your family?

Kirk - (Lots of laughing) My oldest daughter Alden keeps stealing her toys and playing with them, which is just funny. Megan doesn't cause us less sleep believe that or not. Basically we are just back to the diapers and spoon feeding.

Andi - Changing gears to the workplace....What is your favorite aspect of working here at ThreeWill?

Kirk - The teamwork aspect. The collaboration we have. Everyone wants to help everyone else. A close second is the family oriented nature of the company and the individuals here.

Andi - What is your favorite development topic and why?

Kirk - Hum. The first thing that comes to mind is web parts. I like the aspect of having an easy to use visual component that can get as technical as you want it to. Also, there is lots of support within the framework.

Andi - Think outside the box. If you could have any super power, what would you choose and why?

Kirk - Being invisible would be cool. I am thinking back to a Chevy Chase movie called Memoirs of an Invisible Man. Why, you ask. Because it would be cool!

Andi - How did you meet your wife Catherine?

Kirk - Good story. Initially I saw her while we were playing beach volleyball. She tried to follow me home but almost got in a wreck doing so. Due to rainouts and such I didn't see her at any following volleyball games. I attended a party that she also attended. I didn't recognize her even though she was with 10 feet of me most of the time. She thought I was there with someone else and wrote me off. Then I got center front row tickets to the Phantom of the Opera at the Fox and tried everything I could to track down her phone number. She didn't get back to me in time to go to the play, but we made a date that next week and that was that.

Andi - Let's make a favorites' list. What is the first thing that comes to mind when I ask you your favorite:

• Book: Currently I like, America: The Last Best Hope by William Bennett. I also enjoy the Left Behind series.
• TV Show: That's easy. 24.
• Gadget: My wireless headphones that I listen to the news on while eating my breakfast in the mornings.
• CD: James Taylor's Greatest Hits.
• Food: I don't recommend these together, but French toast and sushi.

Andi - I like to wrap things up with this question. What is the best advice anyone has given you and how do you apply this to your life?

Kirk - As far as direct advice given to me; my mother in law gave Catherine and I an article called "Hold Hands and Jump." We were having trouble deciding whether or not to buy our house and we decided to go for it because we were in it together. For indirect advice, my parents really instilled in me somehow to be caring towards others all while not necessarily going with the flow.

Looks like most of our content from Techlinks is no longer available since moving over to the Community Server version of the site.  I did see that the interview pages are still available though.

Here are the links:

Tommy's Interview - http://www.techlinks.net/members/tommyr/default.aspx

Danny's Interview - http://www.techlinks.net/members/dannyr/default.aspx

Here is a link to the presentation - Turner Keynote (pdf, 8MB)

This focused on an example of an Office Business Application:

• Part 1 - Office 2007 Integration with line of business data/information
• Part 2 - Workflow Foundation for centralized process management / SharePoint 2007 for consolidated views/dash boarding
• Part 3 - Windows Presentation Foundation/ Virtual Earth for immersive experience and visualizing large data sets for better decision making

Thanks to Kirk Evans from Microsoft and Don Browning of Turner for including us and putting on a great event.

I wanted to publish the Appendix for the seminar - we covered a number of key areas within SharePoint and there is an active ISV community building products to help customers build and integrate with the SharePoint 2007 platform.

I wanted to highlight a product for each of the areas that we covered in the seminar:

• Business Apps and Workflow - K2 (Business Process Automation and Workflow Platform) - http://www.k2.com
• Single Platform - CorasWorks (Workplace Suite and Data Integration Toolkit) - http://www.corasworks.com
• MS Office Integration - Colligo (Take SharePoint Offline and Into Outlook) - http://www.colligo.com
• Business Intelligence - eSENSE Visualizers (Visualize Data in SharePoint) - http://www.nse.com
• SharePoint Security - Extranet Collaboration Manager (Manage Extranet Users) - http://software.sharepointsolutions.com
• Communities and Collaboration - Atlassian Confluence (Enterprise Wiki Product with SharePoint Integration) - http://www.atlassian.com/sharepoint/
• Enterprise Content Management - Handshake Software Agility Suite (Toolkit-based Integration & Innovation for SharePoint) - http://www.handshakesoftware.com
• Enterprise Search - Ontolica Search 2007 (Advanced functionality and configuration capabilities for searching SharePoint) - http://www.ontolica.com

Look for a blog post from Kirk later today on http://www.implementingsharepoint.com with the Virtual Earth web part that he demonstrated in the Seminar.