Editor's note: 2011 was another incredibly productive year at Bamboo, seeing growth in every measurable category, not least of which was the size of our product line. As we wrap up the first week of the new year, let's take a few moments today to look back on the past year's accomplishments (and also sneak a few peeks into what's in store for the year ahead) with each of our product management team leads…
Having essentially relocated from the D.C. area during the past year, you're now spending the majority of your time working out of our R&D center in Vietnam. How has your relocation affected the product release cycle?
Having a direct line of communication with our R&D teams has been a phenomenal experience! We have an incredibly excited, bright-eyed staff who are ready to tackle the challenges the SharePoint community faces on a daily basis. With the ability to serve as an interface between our Reston HQ and our R&D teams in Ho Chi Minh City, communicating face-to-face (in addition to our now-traditional online collaboration avenues via SharePoint), provides Bamboo with the ability to develop even stronger solutions, and bring them to market more quickly.
As the product owner who oversees the lion's share of Bamboo's component products, is it fair to say that you also work with the largest number of engineers dedicated to those products?
One of the amazing benefits of our R&D staff in Vietnam is their flexibility. Members of our staff can effectively and seamlessly shift from one project to another, providing Bamboo with the ability to be nimble in response to the needs of our customers.
Which entirely new products which made their debut under the Web Parts and Components banner in 2011?
The brand-new products we released included :
- Rating Column, which supports various rating styles, including Voting (True/False), Star Rating (5-point scale), and Numeric Rating (10-point scale).
- Cross-Site Display Web Part, which has already proven to be very popular, and which provides the ability to display any SharePoint List or Library across sites, displaying them in various views including Calendar, Gantt, and Standard view.
As is the norm at Bamboo, most, if not all, of the existing product line saw new releases in the form of patch releases throughout the course of the past year; which ones received major new releases?
List Search Simple received a major new release, expanding to support connection to lists and libraries across sites, additional search conditions (AND/OR/Phrase/Exclude) within individual column searches, and improved search results.
And which existing products saw minor releases during the year?
- Video Library, which included lots of cleanup in its interface.
- Alert Plus, which received several new features, including the ability to start workflows based on an alert job, including Workflow Conductor alerts.
- Mini-Calendar Web Part, which now supports List Rollup Web Part.
- Data-Viewer Web Part, which now supports List Rollup Web Part and SQL Tables/Views in Datasheet Mode.
Can you provide a sneak peek into any of the releases that you have planned in the months ahead?
- Products scheduled for release in January include:
- Password Change Web Part – New features will allow users to display a password complexity meter, modify layout of fields, and track all transactions in a SharePoint List
- User Account Setup Web Part – When connected to Active Directory, users will now be able to control all data collected by the Web Part for new accounts, and there will be improved transaction logs and the ability to optionally require approval before accounts are created.
- And February should see:
- File Share Library – Providing improved synchronization options between external file shares and the File Share Library.
- Video Library – Offering the ability to connect Video Library to a File Share Library as the storage mechanism.
Read the Year in Review from all three Bamboo Product Team Leads:
