Deprecated means that the actions are still available and can be used, but only if you create SharePoint 2010 workflows. They are not available for use in SharePoint 2013 workflows. And deprecated is usually a sign that the feature is heading towards File 13 (aka oblivion, the bin, refuse, trash can… you get the picture). So you can create SharePoint 2010 workflows, even on a SharePoint 2013 platform (including SharePoint Online as part of an Office 365 subscription), but don’t bet on them working for as long as those built specifically for SharePoint 2013.

The full list of elements no longer being used is available in the MSDN article. Here are some highlights, with comments:

Actions deprecated

• Send Document Set to Repository
• Set Content Approval Status for the Document Set
• Start Document Set Approval Process

Seems Document Sets are no longer popular in workflow… I’m finding some interesting behaviours trying to create them from within a workflow too, raising concerns about its long-term future. Consider going back to using normal folders

• Declare Record
• Undeclare Record

Records aren’t popular either anymore, at least as part of a workflow.

• Inherit List Item Parent Permissions
• Remove List Item Permissions
• Replace List Item Permissions
• Along with the following conditions:
  • Check list item permission levels
  • Check list item permissions

Managing permissions as part of the workflow is now completely different. There’s no impersonation step anymore for starters (it only arrived in SharePoint 2010, so assume that feature didn’t work out as planned). There’s an MSDN article detailing the new method – running workflows with elevated permissions.

• Lookup Manager of a User
• Assign a Form to a Group
• Assign a To-Do Item
• Collect Data from a User
• Along with data source:
  • User Profile lookup

Steps involving user profile details were also new in SharePoint 2010 and didn’t last long… Shame, it was a nice feature. I’d be tempted to hang on to some SharePoint 2010 workflows if it still works with them

Other items not to forget – the Design view is gone from SharePoint Designer, along with Visio integration, though an alternative is now included that is Visio-like for help with visually designing workflows.

All in all, the direction is moving SharePoint Designer away from being a tool for creating quick and simple solutions without requiring depth knowledge of design or development. In many respects, it’s an understandable shift, particularly in relation to SharePoint Online with it’s much stricter customisation requirements to guarantee service levels. And certainly, dodgy customisations have led to plenty of problems within SharePoint deployments to date. But it’s also a shame to see customisations becoming a little  bit more elitest. SharePoint stood out from the crowd by letting everyone create solutions without needing to be experts. Not all creations resembled Frankenstein…

Here’s the video

And here are the slides

SkyDrive Pro is a new capability that integrates with SharePoint 2013 for individuals to sync their documents. If the name sounds vaguely familiar, you may have already heard of or use the consumer version of the same tool, called… drum roll… SkyDrive.

First a disclaimer. The information in the post is accurate at the time of writing but features in SharePoint 2013 Online are being updated on a more frequent cycle and may change. In fact, they are highly likely to. This is a new feature and teething problems are to be expected.

What is SkyDrive

SkyDrive is online storage with file synchronisation capabilities. You store your files ‘in the cloud’, i.e. it sits in a datacenter accessed over the Internet, and can synchronise copies of the files across various devices. So if you find yourself disconnected from the Internet, you can still access your local copies. When you reconnect, changes to those files should automatically synchronise with the online store. At the time of writing, devices running Windows, Apple OSX (Lion or later) or iOS, and Google Android are supported. As well as syncing files between your own devices, you can also choose to share files with others, and they will be sync’d to their devices too, allowing people to co-author and provide feedback on documents. You get version history, the ability to tag with keywords. All sorts of fun stuff…

Differences between SkyDrive and SkyDrive Pro

SkyDrive is intended for personal use in a non-work context. When you set-up a Windows Live account, you get a certain amount of SkyDrive storage included. At the time of writing, the default is 7GB. There is no annual fee for this unless you choose to purchase more storage space.

SkyDrive Pro is intended for personal files in a work context, in that they are technically the property of the organisation you work for. There isn’t much difference in the user interface. In the screenshot above, you don’t see the word Pro. Instead, you get Skydrive @ <Organisation Name>. You only get access to the SkyDrive Pro account as long as you are part of the organisation. Leave the company and your access will be revoked. More on that further down the post…

And SkyDrivePro integrates with SharePoint 2013, replacing part of the personal site features. There are two configuration options available. It can be part of an Office 365 subscription (that includes SharePoint Online). This means that, just like the normal SkyDrive, files are stored online and users are each given 7GB of storage. There is also an on-premise option, for organisations who do not want their files stored online. On-premise, SkyDrive Pro is just part of the SharePoint 2013 deployment. Online, it may be used with or without SharePoint – it’s an Office365 service.

SkyDrive Pro and SharePoint

SkyDrive Pro replaces the document libraries that were part of a user’s personal site in SharePoint. In previous versions of SharePoint, personal sites would include a personal document library (for private documents) and a shared document library (for shared documents). When moving to SkyDrive Pro, content in the personal document library is moved to the root of the user’s SkyDrive Pro account. Content in the shared documents library is moved to a sub-folder called ‘Shared with everyone’.

But it goes beyond that. Microsoft has put a lot of emphasis on the individual user in SharePoint 2013. Where as in the past documents may have been placed in a SharePoint team site, linked to a SharePoint Workspace site for peer-to-peer collaboration, that’s all gone. There is no SharePoint Workspace any more. Instead, all demos point to encouraging people to keep files in their personal SkyDrive Pro and share them with people who will be co-authoring or providing feedback. It’s quite a shift in focus.

If you watch any demos, you’ll almost certainly see the ‘drag-n-drop’ feature. Want to access a file offline? Then simple drag-n-drop into your SkyDrive Pro account. Need others to contribute to changes on the document? You can simply share it from within your SkyDrive Pro account.

Sounds great? There has to be a but…

File sharing versus management

SkyDrive Pro is about file sharing and synchronisation, enabling you to access content offline and have changes automatically synchronised in the background when your device (or devices – you may have files sync’d to multiple different locations) reconnect to the Internet.

But for synchronisation to work, there are some trade-offs. These matter little if you are just deploying simple file sharing tools. They might matter a lot if you are responsible for content as part of a document management system.

Here are some features to be aware about:

• If users drag-n-drop files from a SharePoint site, it will be treated as a move (like cut/paste). No copy will be left behind on the team site.
• When files are moved to SkyDrivePro, they lose any version history and metadata (a new version history will begin within SkyDrive Pro)
• If file is moved to SkyDrivePro that requires mandatory metadata to be completed (that hasn’t been), it will be left in ‘Pending’ mode until the user completes the necessary details. This means it may be stored locally on the user’s device but will not yet be stored or sync’d online
• You are not able to check-in/out documents from local SkyDrive apps. Saves are just instantly sync’d and the version history tracked online

And if you haven’t asked yet, you should have What about conflict resolution? For Office files, the news is quite good. Delta changes are now sync’d, i.e. only the differences between files rather than entire copies. I believe it is at the page (Word), worksheet (Excel) and slide (PowerPoint) level within files. And naturally only works with Office 2013. But this does enable very fast sync’ing when online. The challenge is always when making lots of changes offline for an extended period whilst someone else is also working on their copy of the document.

The other concern is that I, like quite a few others, have experienced SkyDrive and SkyDrive Pro failing to sync documents and folders. Placing rather unfriendly red crosses next to them with little indication as to what the problem is. So far, the only resolution has been to replace the files. This is not a great story if version history matters. I would expect it to be fixed and improve through feature updates.  And have seen the same happen with Google’s equivalent – Google Drive. In my opinion, DropBox leads the way in terms of reliability of the sync’ process.

And finally for this section, it’s important to recognise that file-sharing/sync’ing is a the social end of collaboration tools. Don’t expect traditional enterprise content management systems or processes to cope well within these scenarios. This is not unique to SkyDrive or SharePoint.

Planning Decisions for SharePoint 2013 Deployments (Online and On-Premise)

To wrap-up, SkyDrive Pro introduces some elements to consider if deploying SharePoint 2013.

• Personal sites have an essential role in various features of SharePoint 2013. If you haven’t previously deployed them or have disabled them by default in the past, it’s time to change. You must plan to deploy personal sites from the beginning and that means SkyDrive Pro too.
• The account deactivation process when a user leaves the organisation must allow for retrieving files from their SkyDrivePro account before it is permanently deleted. Users may still have copies sync’d locally but the original and its version history are part of the SkyDrive Pro account.
• At the time of writing, there is no remote wipe facility – after leaving the organisation, the original author may still have copies stored on their personal devices. There is nothing you can do about this. You can’t anyway – even with remote wipe, a devious person could just use a memory stick as back-up.
• If files are moved to SkyDrive Pro accounts from SharePoint sites used for document or records management, be aware that version history and metadata will be lost. This may raise compliance concerns. It applies equally to other enterprise content management systems and file sync’ing tools. File sharing/sync’ing is at the social end of content/collaboration and has little concern for enterprise information management.
• Care will be required in terms of metadata and processes that may cause the file to not be uploaded. You could end up with some documents never sync’d and sitting at the ‘Pending’ state on a user’s local computer. This is not a good outcome. Training will be necessary to make sure people are aware what documents should and should not be placed on SkyDrive Pro, and how to make sure documents are being kept in sync.

SkyDrive Pro without SharePoint (Online only)

And there’s another scenario. You can use SkyDrive Pro as part of an Office 365 subscription. It doesn’t have to involve using SharePoint sites. This is positioning SkyDrive squarely in competition with alternatives such as DropBox, as a simple file-sharing and file-sync’ing tool across devices and platforms. And, combined with Yammer (who Microsoft acquired in 2012), competes against other social networking solutions that focus on simplicity. Office 365 includes SharePoint Online but is a wider set of information, communications and collaborative tools to pick from.

SkyDrive versus File-sharing Alternatives

I’ve experimented with three file-sharing tools over the last couple of years – Skydrive, Google Drive and DropBox. My personal favourite remains DropBox for it’s cross-platform support (I use a lot of Microsoft software, but the hardware is mostly Apple), reliability and speed when sync’ing files.

The image above shows status icons for all three tools running on my MacBook Air. From left to right, DropBox, Google Drive and SkyDrive. Spot the one with a red cross. There are currently 350 files that cannot be sync’d by SkyDrive. Because it doesn’t support special characters in file names whereas DropBox and Google Drive both do. (The same set of files are sync’d on all three platforms as a test, including a web site backup). Side note: it wouldn’t hurt for Google to consider displaying a more visual indicator of success vs failure of the latest sync. Hat tip to both DropBox and SkyDrive for making it easy to spot if there’s a problem.

If you have an Office 365 subscription, it makes absolute sense to use SkyDrive rather than include another tool with a separate login process. However if you are just evaluating SkyDrive on its own verus alternatives, then you may find the alternatives a more reliable option.

A final comment to close, and reiterating what has already been said. It’s important to differentiate between social and mobile computing scenarios such as this and enterprise content management needs. Do not try to build a single solution to satisfy both. This is not a SharePoint (or technology) problem, it’s two clashing systems with very different priorities.

Previously, SharePoint licensing was a mix of the following:

• Server license – per server. Choice of SharePoint Server Standard or Enterprise edition
• Client Access License (CAL) – per device or per user, for Standard or Enterprise edition
• Internet connector license – per server connected to the Internet (no separate CALs required)

In the new model, there is now no Standard or Enterprise edition and no separate Internet connector license. However, the base Server price has been increased. So it will be cheaper for people who were using Enterprise Edition and the Internet connector license, but more expensive for those using Standard edition until now.

New licensing model:

• Server license – per server. No separate pricing for Standard or Enterprise edition
• CAL per device or per user. Per user CALs now more expensive, but can connect up to 5 devices under one user CAL

At the recent SharePoint conference, Microsoft also announced that Yammer would now be included in the Office 365 subscription at no extra cost. It can also still be purchased separately.

References

• Office Wave 15 price increases – MSFTAdvisers, Nov 2012
• Microsoft to raise Office server prices – ZDNet, Nov 2012
• Microsoft details road map and pricing for SharePoint and Yammer – ZDNet, Nov 2012
• Microsoft users warned of upcoming SharePoint and Lync price hikes – IT Pro, Nov 2012

Following the general availability of SharePoint 2013 on 27th February, the slide below is now out of date. Some elements of browser-based interactions are vastly improved with SharePoint 2013, including the ability to edit in datasheet view across browsers including mobile Safari (tested on my iPad!)

— original post —

Over on the parent site Joining Dots is a post and presentation comparing the different tablet choices from Apple, Google and Microsoft (alphabetical order, not an indication of preference ) for use in the workplace.  A bonus slide was included specifically looking at using SharePoint on tablets now that Microsoft has entered the fray with two types of tablet – Surface RT and Surface Pro. The latter has full PC capabilities whilst the RT version includes limitations that affect integration with SharePoint.

Here’s the SharePoint slide:

The biggest gain from using a Surface RT compared to an iPad for accessing SharePoint is the integrated keyboard cover that is more convenient if you plan on editing large documents, and Office RT running on the tablet for editing those documents natively. If you’re using an iPad, you can also use an external keyboard but you would have to import the documents into iWorks or a third-party app to edit them. And iWorks is not Office, it takes some getting used to.

Including Office with the Surface tablet makes it an attractive tablet option for many organisations. But the integration with SharePoint itself is very limited. No Silverlight and reduced Office functionality means there is no direct integration or Office-dependent browser interaction (no Datasheet view, no bulk upload) with SharePoint. For these capabilities, you would need to use a Surface Pro hybrid-tablet or equivalent running the full Windows 8 operating system. The latter option will be far better in the physical workplace but sacrificing mobile working in the process due to its inevitable heavier weight and shorter battery life.

Additional notes about using tablets are included in the original blog post. The full presentation is embedded below.

…and as reported by Mary Jo Foley in ZDNet last week, Microsoft has begun to announce new pricing plans for Office 365 to include installing Office locally on up to 5 devices per user account.

The Slideshare presentation below outlines the different plans currently available for Academic, Business and Government, and initial proposed changes. As more information becomes available, the slides will be updated.

As a rule of thumb, I’d caution small businesses against opting for the P plan due to its limitations if you want to later upgrade. E2 is the best starting point if you plan on using Office web apps, else if you already have Office installed locally then start with E1.  The P-plan at best is up against Google Apps and if you don’t need Active Directory synchronisation, go with Google Apps instead in that scenario.  Consider the E plans if you want to use SharePoint properly. Google’s equivalent – Sites – falls way short.

References

• Office (2013) reaches RTM – Microsoft Office News, October 2012
• SharePoint (2013) reaches RTM – SharePoint Product Group blog, October 2012
• Microsoft Office 365: More new prices and packages coming in November – ZDNet, October 2012

This isn’t a big deal if you are still using SharePoint Server 2010 installed on-premise (as most people are) but if you have any plans to adopt either the online version of a hybrid mix of on-premise and online (the more likely scenario for many) in the near future, it’s worth checking what browsers everyone is using and ensuring they are up to date. Organisations that have rolled out Windows 7 are likely to still be using the browser that it came installed with as the primary browser.

Another reason to update browsers on the desktop is the increasing use of mobile devices to access web sites. Tablets and smart phones all typically run the most recent versions of browsers: IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari or Opera-based. It means that the user interface is beginning to look better on a tablet than on a desktop, if the desktop is getting crusty around the edges.

Whilst you may not have immediate plans that involve either online services or tablet devices, I wouldn’t bet against them over the next 12 months. Most larger organisations need to test browsers for compatibility issues with in-house applications. That takes time so better to start sooner rather than later.

Andthe next version of SharePoint – SharePoint 2013 – won’t be supporting IE7 either. Current plans include support for IE8+ and the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox and Safari. See related Microsoft article: Planning browser support for SharePoint 2013

For organisations primarily running Internet Explorer, I’d recommend upgrading to at least version 9. Microsoft has been the slowest to adopt the new CSS3 standards that can make creating great visual web interfaces so much easier. IE9 includes compatibility modes to run as thought it were an older browser if needed for legacy applications. Other than that, it’s the closest to matching Firefox, Chrome and Safari for creating modern web designs.

Finally, if you are also using other vendors subscriptions services, such as Google Apps, they typically include support for the latest 2 releases of Internet Explorer. Once IE10 is released later in October, that will mean IE9+. Another reason to skip IE8 and get up to the most current version.

‘End of the road’ Flickr image kindly shared by Kevin Dean

Microsoft recently published details about discontinued features and modified functionality in the Microsoft SharePoint 2013 Preview, the public beta for the next release of SharePoint. No official word on when SharePoint 2013 will be launched. Rumours suggest an RTM (release to manufacture) before the end of the year with GA (general availability) from February 2013.

Full details about removed features can be found on the Office Preview site. Here is a summary:

Site Templates

• Document workspaces templates discontinued** <- was never a fan of them in the first place. Recommendation now is to use normal team sites
• Meeting workspace templates discontinued** <- this is a bigger issue as the capability to integrate meeting workspaces with Outlook appointment has been popular, albeit buggy. Recommendation is to use Lync for live meetings, OneNote for note taking and SharePoint team site or MySite to store documents
• Group Work Site template discontinued <- well that was brief, only introduced in SharePoint 2010. It wasn’t great and now it’s gone
• Personalization Site template discontinued** <- another brief visit, introducd in SharePoint 2010. I disliked this template as it had high potential to cause problems. Looks like that’s what happened.

** In these cases, the template will still be installed but hidden from the user interface. Server administrators will be able to edit the flag to enable them. But I wouldn’t encourage doing so. Hidden this time = gone in the future. The only reason to enable would be on a temporary basis to migrate content into normal team sites.

Records Management

• Insert Barcodes and Print Labels discontinued <- not used much by my clients. Or anyone else according to Microsoft (and does not meet compliance and records management expectations). Recommendation is to find alternatives

Reporting, KPIs and Site Statistics

• Web Analytics discontinued <- another biggie as the statistics are basic but popular. Reason cited is performance issues for large scale deployments. A new analytics system is being introduced with the Search service, wait for the comparisons…
• Unable to create Visio pivot diagrams from a task list <- was a new feature in SharePoint 2010. The reason is because the ‘Assigned To’ field in the task list template is becoming a multi-value field and Visio can’t cope with that
• Chart Web Part discontinued <- Only reason is that similar features exist in other apps, i.e. Excel. To be fair, I tend to use Excel a lot for dashboard visualisations unless the full monty of PerformancePoint is required
• SharePoint KPIs and Status Lists discontinued <- this is a biggie as it’s a very popular feature. Again, the reason given is that similar features exist in other applications, i.e. Excel. Fortunately, it’s quite easy to work around and create your own if you like them. Plenty of articles already exist on the web, might get around to writing one for here

Search Results

• RSS feeds for search results discontinued <- this feature was central to displaying federated search results. Recommendation is to use the existing Search Alerts and SharePoint RSS. Not sure what the latter means, trying to find out about it via Google is a non-starter for obvious reasons. Will delve around the demo machine…

To conclude, most features listed as being discontinued have problems with performance, usually at scale. Never forget that Microsoft has to limit SharePoint capabilities to those that can be guaranteed to perform in very large deployments. It’s why you will always find richer niche solutions. Business intelligence/Performance management continues to be reduced as focus is put on simpler solutions within Excel. No mention on changes to PerformancePoint but yanking out the ODBC connector in 2010 amongst other features was a sign.

Performing a simple backup/restore of the Reports Centre site collection appeared to complete successfully, but then error messages were displayed in the web parts that should have been displaying dashboard content:

“The scorecard no longer exists or you do not have permission to view it”

Cracked open the Dashboard Designer, thinking we just needed to reconfigure the site collection that the dashboard was connected to. Turns out there is no friendly setting to redeploy an existing dashboard to a different site collection.  Just replacing the site collection in the Dashboard Designer properties led to another error message – “site could not be found or you do not have permission to access…”  And even without the error message (fixed later), this route doesn’t work. If you change the Server URL in Dashboard Designer properties, a blank dashboard is displayed.

At the time, thinking something must have gone wrong with the restore process, we created a fresh Reports site collection using the Business Intelligence site template. Ran the Dashboard Designer from the site to create the new server connection. And then tried to import items into a clean dashboard. The import process failed, logging some permissions issues. And then up came the same error message as previously seen:

“The URL is not available, does not reference a SharePoint site, or you do not have permissions to connect”

Knowing that PerformancePoint uses the unattended service account, and that the URL was both available and did reference a SharePoint site, the only logical conclusion was that this was a permissions problem. Trying to cheat, we just added the service account in to the site permissions with Full Control rights. Nope, that won’t work.

Off to consult with Dr Google, somebody else had already experienced the exact same error and posted the solution – thanks BI Architects! – Connecting PerformancePoint 2010 Site with Dashboard Designer throws error. With supporting link to TechNet confirming the issue and resolution – Create a PerformancePoint Service Application (SharePoint Server 2010)

The solution: The service account must be granted access direct to the content database. We followed Microsoft’s guidelines and ran the following Powershell

$w = Get-SPWebApplication -identity <web application>
$w.GrantAccessToProcessIdentity("<service account>")

We then stopped/restarted the PerformancePoint Service.

Back on the new site collection, we opened Dashboard Designer again with a blank dashboard. This time, we clicked Import Items, followed the wizard steps and success! The data source and all dashboard settings were imported in.  After saving the file, and checking the Server Connection was happy this time (it was), we deployed the dashboard into the new site collection and up came the scorecard.

Final note, the fix could have been applied to the restored site collection. However, you will still need to then import each dashboard into a fresh instance within Dashboard Designer and redeploy to the SharePoint site. If you simply try changing the Server Connection for an existing dashboard, the Dashboard Designer will just open a fresh instance.

The client only had a few dashboards deployed so it was a quick process to import each one and redeploy. The only additional hassle was to reapply a custom master page that I created for them that automatically refreshes the dashboards in the browser (they are displayed on a TV screen in the office).

User profiles in SharePoint can be used for more than just finding people based on general information. You can include more specific details and turn ‘People Search’ into a skills or resourcing database. The image above shows my demo, where someone can search for assistance with customer queries, filtering by product, role and location. Here’s how it was created.

This post requires SharePoint Server 2010 Standard or Enterprise edition.  A solution could be created with just SharePoint Foundation Service but would require mimicking the user profile service using a custom list instead.

—

Step 1: Create the required properties

The first step is to create any additional properties to be used to capture specific information. For my demo, I have created the following properties in the User Profile Service:

• Resource Role – to help identify if someone is pre- or post-sales. The list of roles is a term set (part of the Managed Metadata Service) and includes sales, project team, product support and customer service
• Products – to identify what products someone can help with. This is also a term set.
• Geography – to identify what locations someone can assist with. Yes, another term set…
• Resource Notes – a paragraph field, similar to ‘About me’ but specifically focusing on resourcing issues
• Resource Member – a checkbox, to notify that someone wants to be included in Resourcing search results

The image above shows the section ‘Resourcing’ added to the user profile page for people to complete these properties. The process for doing this was covered in a recent blog post: Create your own user profile properties

Step 2: Modify the display of individual search results

Once you have some specific properties, the next step is to modify the core search results web part to display them. This requires creating a federated location in SharePoint 2010, or modifying the XSL within the People Core Search Results web part in SharePoint 2007.

The image above shows our modified individual search results, displaying the Resourcing properties for one of the users in the demo. The process for doing this was covered in a recent blog post: Displaying more properties in search results

Step 3: Configure the Search Results page to automatically display all available resources

The final stage is configuring the search results page to automatically display all resources so that people can then refine the results to find the specific person who can help with their query.

To do this requires creating a scope to limit results and only display people who have elected to be part of the Resourcing matrix. This is what the checkbox was all about on the user profile page (see step 1). Scopes are created within the Search Service application (or per site collection within the site collection administration). They can be used to automatically limit the results returned for a search query to only those that match the rules of the scope.

In the image above, I have created a scope called ‘Resourcing’ and am pointing it to a search results page that I have created for the demo – resources.aspx (this is instead of the default results.aspx page). The scope contains a single rule to only include people who have checked the box ‘Add me to the Resourcing Matrix’ in their profile. The name for that field is demoResourceMember.  Currently, 5 users accounts in my demo have checked the box.

The next step is to automatically display the results of this scope when people click to navigate to the Resourcing page. To do so is simply a case of adding the search term to the URL for the page.

For example, if the page URL is http://intranet/search/resources.aspx then to automatically display all results that match the scope ‘Resourcing’ means adding ?k=Scope%3aResourcing

• ?k= is the start of adding the search query terms. If you perform any search in SharePoint, have a look at the URL and you’ll see this added
• Scope%3a adds the identifier for scopes – ‘Scopes:’
• Resourcing is the name of my scope.

And here’s the finished page (click on image to view larger version):

Some additional tweaks I included:

• Added the Resourcing page as a tab on the Search site – you can see the tab in the image above
• Included the ability to search by all or part of a name, using the Staff Directory Search tweak with an additional button to clear the filter and display all resources
• Modified the Refinement Panel on the left side of the page to display the Resourcing properties created for the user profiles – Role, Geography and Products, thanks to using term sets for those properties – see Managed Metadata Overview. Also, hat tip to Frank Cleynen for providing useful additional details about the refiner parameters

And there you have it, a way to use the Profiles to create a Resourcing database. If I had Lync running on my demo, the solution would also include presence status (the little grey boxes next to each name would be red, amber or green depending on if the users were offline, away (inactive) or online (active).