PremierPoint Solutions will host a free one-hour webinar May 4 at 11:00 a.m. EDT titled, “The Fastest Customer Extranet for an IT Admin to Set Up.”

During the webinar, Jeff Cate, president of PremierPoint Solutions, will demonstrate how an IT administrator can install and set up a secure, on-premises customer extranet in less than an hour, using Extranet Collaboration Manager (ExCM) 2013 R2 for SharePoint.

Cate will begin the webinar with a clean multi-server SharePoint farm and end with a fully functional customer extranet deployed.

“Participants will see for themselves the dramatic reduction in time and effort it takes to deploy a private and highly secure extranet for collaborating with customers, vendors and other business partners,” he said.

To register for the May 4 ExCM webinar, visit: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/5006295618116857857

An R2 is a major new release of a software product. With ExCM 2013 R2:

• The new Extranet Setup Wizard automatically configures SharePoint’s Forms-Based Authentication (FBA) technology, which is the foundation for using SharePoint as an extranet platform
• Complicated and tedious manual edits to SharePoint’s web application configuration files to set up FBA are eliminated
• All of the web.config file changes are deployed via the new Extranet Global Configuration Timer Job infrastructure, which has been designed to work quickly and efficiently in SharePoint farms of any size

The new release also makes it easy to configure several advanced features that previously required tedious and error-prone XML-file edits. Graphic User Interfaces (GUIs) are included for:

• Extranet Account Manager set up
• Extranet password policy
• Account expiration policy
• Password expiration policy
• Global registration settings
• Global domain policy
• People Picker restrictions

For external users needing access to multiple sites, the R2 has an extranet directory web part that ships with ExCM. It is security trimmed so that users only see what they have permission to view. The directory is self-updating and self-maintained.

Support for Trusted Identity Providers (TIPS) includes Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) and other SAML authentication providers.

“Companies using on-premises SharePoint 2013 for their intranets also have access for an unlimited number of external users included with their SharePoint licenses,” Cate noted.

“Unless you bought the very expensive SharePoint 2010 for Internet Sites product, SharePoint 2010 required the purchase of a license for each external user or device in addition to the server licenses. With SharePoint 2013, external users are included with the server licenses,” he explained.

Current ExCM customers with support can get the R2 at no cost. New customers can download and evaluate the R2 with a 30-day trial key.

ExCM was initially created as a software add-on for SharePoint 2007. Just six months after its introduction in February 2007, it was named winner of the “Editor’s Best Awards” in the SharePoint award category by Penton Media’s Windows IT Pro magazine.

PremierPoint Solutions subsequently developed additional versions for SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint 2013 as ExCM established itself as the industry leader in powerful, effective SharePoint extranet deployment and management. Today, ExCM continues to be the most widely deployed extranet solution for SharePoint. It is used and trusted by companies around the world in legal, accounting, construction, engineering, health care and financial services, as well as many other industries.

Later this year, PremierPoint Solutions will release a new version of ExCM for SharePoint 2016.

While SharePoint provides many of the raw capabilities necessary for extranet collaboration, it lacks critical tools that SharePoint administrators need to establish and maintain the collaboration environment. That’s where ExCM comes in.

ExCM 2013 is a seamless add-on to SharePoint that extends and enhances SharePoint’s out-of-the-box extranet capabilities, simplifying SharePoint extranet administration and enabling easy collaboration for extranet users.

ExCM improves collaboration with individuals outside an organization by providing partners, customers and suppliers with access to important information while still maintaining security. The product relieves IT staff of much of the burden of administrating a SharePoint extranet by enabling an administrator to delegate authority to power users designated as “site sponsors,” who can perform routine administrative tasks like sending invitations, adding and unlocking accounts, etc.

It also empowers extranet users to do for themselves tasks such as signing up for extranet accounts, resetting their passwords, updating their user profiles and more.

Based in Nashville, Tenn., PremierPoint Solutions is a Microsoft Certified Partner and a nationwide leader in expert-led in-person and online public classes on SharePoint products and technologies. The company’s software division professionally develops high-quality commercial add-ons for SharePoint. For more information visit https://www.premierpointsolutions.com/.
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