Sharepoint consulting in Indianapolis

Hello, and welcome to my blog.  My name is Paul Haynes and I am a Senior Account Executive for IncWorx Consulting and work out of Indianapolis, IN.  I have been with IncWorx Consulting since March 2008 and focus on new business aquisition as well as account management.  Prior to joining IncWorx Consulting I worked as an Account Manager for Careerbuilder.com and before that I graduated from Valparaiso University with a degree in History. 

In my role at IncWorx I work with companies who need outside assistance with Microsoft technologies such as SharePoint and Microsoft, I learn more about their problems, assign the appropriate technical resources, and work with them regularly to ensure that they are getting the problem solved and that everything is going smoothly.  Also, since IncWorx is a specialty firm and we have a particular focus, I help clients find quality partners that can help them with their others needs such as Dynamics GP, Business Intelligence, etc.

When I'm not working with companies around their consulting needs, I enjoy working out, playing basketball, snowboarding, wakeboarding, playing golf, and playing with my chocolate lab puppy. 

I can be reached via email: paul.haynes@incworx.com or at 847-839-9679.


About IncWorx
IncWorx Consulting is the premier consulting firm when implementing SharePoint 2010, we service clients in: Chicago, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, Cleveland, New York, Houston, Topeka, Milwaukee, San Antonio, San Diego, Dallas, Houston, Austin, Tampa, Orlando, Boston, NYC, San Diego and Los Angeles.  We specialize in SharePoint and have invested significant time and resources into our SharePoint practice.  We take a holistic approach from inception to delivery which provides the best possible outcome for our clients.   IncWorx was also the winner of Microsoft’s 2010 worldwide partner of the year award for SharePoint Deployment and Planning Services (SDPS) and is a managed Gold Certified Partner. They have been focused on delivering solutions utilizing Microsoft tools and platforms since 1998. IncWorx is considered the premier Microsoft Partner for SharePoint architecture, design, development, integration, deployment and support.

Given my role as an account executive at IncWorx, I interface with many customers that are looking at deploying a new SharePoint farm or migrating to a newer version.  One of the big things that sets IncWorx apart is our approach when it comes to these types of engagements.  It's important to properly plan in the beginning to ensure that your business realizes the full benefits of SharePoint and it doesn't become an unused platform that your IT staff is burdoned with supporting.  The approach below outlines the steps we generally follow in one of these engagements. Please note, installing and configuring SharePoint is the easy part....having experts that can understand your business and align their needs with SharePoint is the hard part...It's also our forte!  You can also learn a bit more here!

 

Phase 1: Discovery

During the Discovery phase IncWorx generally performs a complete audit of the current systems in use that will be phased out and also conducts “Pain Points” meetings with business users to understand how they could utilize the features of SharePoint 2010/2013.  This phase generally includes the following:

• Analysis of current technology infrastructure
  • Current means of document storage
  • Current intranet (if any)
  • Home grown internal systems that act as a hub for the company

• Review of high level Client requirements for intranet

• Pain Points meetings with key departments to determine fits for new/enhanced functionality in SharePoint 2010, and understanding Client’s near term and short term goals with the SharePoint platform

 

Phase 2: Information Architecture (Governance and Taxonomy Planning)

During the information architecture phase, IncWorx will work with Client to understand current governance and taxonomy strategies with the goal of understanding the current pain points or gaps.  We will then develop new models based on our extensive experience that will align with Client goals and will ensure optimal usability for end users.  This phase will include a review of any available documentation of the current taxonomy as well as current Governance documentation.

 

Phase 3: Documentation and Migration Plan

During this phase, IncWorx will create documentation that outlines our findings and recommendations from phases 1 and 2.  The documentation will include, as appropriate, the following:

• Findings from the Discovery phase

• Recommended  taxonomy model(s) from Phase 2

• Governance overview and/or outline

• Recommended features/functionality  found in SharePoint 2010 based on Pain Points meetings

• Determination of the appropriate migration path for existing data that will be housed in SharePoint

• Recommendations for 3^rd party tools based off of our findings in Phases 1 and 2 (if applicable)

• Hardware/software shopping list (if applicable)

• Roadmap and deployment plan that provides approach and strategy short and long term platform growth

 

Phase 4: Hardware/Software Procurement(if applicable)

During this phase Client will procure the hardware and software based on IncWorx recommendations.  IncWorx will lend guidance for properly configuring and installing components if necessary.

 

Phase 5: Proof of Concept

During Phase 5, IncWorx will create a SharePoint 2010/13 POC environment based on the roadmap and deployment plan from Phase 3 and will perform one or more data migration tests to validate the approach prior to the Production deployment.  This phase will include:

• Creation of Service Accounts
• Installation of SharePoint 2010/13 (if applicable)
• Test migration(s) of data
• One department/test group built out with data and desired functionality for validation of the approach
• Documentation of all issues encountered as well as their resolutions

 

Phase 6: Deployment

Once the POC and migration tests are complete, IncWorx will perform the production deployment. 

 

Phase 7: Testing, Tuning, Tweaking

During this phase, IncWorx will review the production SharePoint 2010/13 environment with Client to ensure that the criteria from the roadmap and deployment plan have been met and that all desired functionality within the scope is present.   IncWorx will also perform a post deployment analysis and ensure that all features and functionality are working properly, that all migrated data is intact, and to finally ensure that client has a solid foundation from which they can continue to build and expand upon for future phases.

 

Deliverables from all phases:

• Comprehensive roadmap and deployment documentation

• A fully functional SharePoint 2010 POC

• A fully functional SharePoint 2010 production implementation that meets the criteria outlined in the Roadmap and Deployment Plan

 

Please contact me if you need help or would like to discuss further.  Paul dot Haynes at IncWorx dot com or 847-839-9679.

Here are my 3 favorite things about SharePoint 2013 (at this given moment).  In my role at IncWorx, I am focused on acquiring new customers and interfacing with existing customers.  I work with a lot of our SharePoint support customers and prospects and speak with them about things that are important to them or their users.  These 3 items are things that I see making an immediate impact for things people complain about in previous versions of SharePoint. 

 

1. The Newsfeed.  This is probably the feature that I'm most excited about in SharePoint 2013, because I feel like it's a small step toward making SharePoint more social within the enterprise.  Mysite functionality and other "social" features had more robust marketing behind them than actual functionality.  The newsfeed allows your users to do things they do today on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and other social applications that they use.  They can follow documents, sites, and people with relative ease and people can view their newsfeed, similar to facebook.  People constantly tell me they want SharePoint to be something that people use every day (user adoption is on everyone's mind), I think this is a fun feature that will get people excited about SharePoint and will also enable better collaboration within your organization! 
2. Drag and Dropping documents.  This is simple....but just cool.  This is something that is easy, users are familiar with this functionality, and it removes one more barrier to entry users.  This is another way to enhance user adoption.  Seems simple, but is a small step to get people excited about SharePoint.  Clicking a link to add a document, then sorting through files, and clicking "upload" is old school...
3. The app store.  I'm excited about this concept because each year I go to the SharePoint conference, there are more and more different vendors doing different things.  It can make your head spin.  Search the web and there are thousands of people you may or may not have heard of that have an app for SharePoint.  Finding good solutions can be pretty challenging if you're looking for something that the big names in SharePoint add-ons don't offer.  The app store offers one place, where people can go to find solutions, read ratings/reviews, and ultimately save a lot of time by avoiding the development of something that probably already exists.  I'm interested to see how well this takes off. 

 

 

While at the SharePoint conference in Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago, I attended an interesting session about planning for the lifecycle of SharePoint 2013.  The topic was interesting to me, as this is something that we help a number of our clients with.  Understanding where they're at today, where they want to be, and helping them determine a logical path for getting there without sacrificing user adoption (by throwing too many features out at once).  The speaker, Geoffrey Edge started off with a picture of a nasty looking toilet in the woods and essentially said people would only use it if they absolutely had to.  He then compared it to people with unsuccessful SharePoint implementations; employees only use it when they absolutely have to and it's not something that is widely adopted.  I really loved the analogy, I think it's a very important topic, and I am including 3 key tips to ensure your employees will happily use SharePoint! 

1. Planning: a number of companies with failing SharePoint intranets roll SharePoint out, tell people they have to use it, and set them loose.  That leaves organizations to essentially try to figure out how their daily tasks "fit" within SharePoint.  For successful SharePoint implementations, our goal is to help SharePoint fit within your organization vs. fitting your organization in to SharePoint.  If you make users more efficient, enhance their day to day tasks, they will love using SharePoint!  While it seems simple...leaving users to figure out SharePoint's features and functionality and "requiring" people to do XYZ in SharePoint, you create a hinderance in their daily life which kills user adoption! 
2. Branding: the look and feel of SharePoint leaves something to be desired, especially since business users have access to so many well designed user interfaces and applications they use in their personal life.  People's general expectations have been raised, and SharePoint needs to meet those expectations for successful adpotion!  IncWorx has out-of-the-box branding solutions that are highly customizable and quickly give you a mature branding option in a matter of hours.  Others prefer custom branding that is designed with the input of your organizations marketing and design department which IncWorx does a lot of.  The key take away for this point is that there are a lot of options, and regardless which route you go, branding is important.
3. User Champions: some of the most successful companies that have great user adoption identify key individuals within their business departments and leverage them as a champion.  Very early on, it's common for IncWorx to meet with these people during our engagements, learning about their departments and their daily functions, and giving them ideas of features/functionality that they may or may not be aware of, and we also give them ideas of things that we've done with other clients.  This gets them excited, they go back to their team and start getting them excited, and you can continually leverage your champions as your roll out more and more functionality in your roadmap. 

 

Feel free to add your key tips that you have experienced success with  in the comments or contact IncWorx if you have any questions about how we can help! 

2012 has been a year of huge growth for IncWorx's SharePoint Support Services (s3) Program and has been the 3rd straight year of substantial growth.  The program started in 2008 with one client who took a chance and wanted a more personal alternative to Microsoft Premier Support, and has since grown to a roster of over 40 clients all leveraging IncWorx to fill their internal knowledge or resource gaps! 

What we find when we're discussing our model with potential clients, is that they always say they wish they had known about IncWorx and the program earlier, and that we have seemed to find a way to address their EXACT need.  The reason why we have this conversation so often, is because IncWorx was on the forefront of the SharePoint Consulting community and we identified the need for this level of service for our customers. 

Here are the top 3 reason why people choose s3:

1. IncWorx offers a personal experience - direct access to the same person or people EVERYTIME!  After a month or two of working with IncWorx, clients often times tell me that they feel like IncWorx is part of their internal team!
2. Lightning fast response time!  Our program was built and designed to provide rapid response on issues averaging less than an hour to get started on your issue!  Who can wait a week or two for an urgent issue?
3. IncWorx is one of the top consulting firms in the nation, Microsoft designated us at the Partner of the Year for SharePoint, our clients have nothing but great things to say about us, and we are extremely passionate about what we do! 

Click here to learn more about the program! 

For those that are interested in our SharePoint 2010 branding solution, BrandIt, I've attached a couple of screen shots below.  We have two major designs that are fully customizable (colors, logos, images) through an easy-to-use Style Sheet UI that we include in the package.  Both packages also include a set of branded web parts that enhance the functionality of SharePoint.  If you're interested in BrandIt as a solution for your organization, please do not hesitate to contact me to arrange a demo!  I can be reached at Brandit@incworx.com or at 847-839-9679

 

Matisse: 

Bold Colors:

The Kansas City Chiefs are one of the premier teams in the NFL, based in Kansas City Missouri that have a multitude of business operational groups within their organization.  The Chiefs move fast both on the field and off, and when it comes to matching up technology with their business, they need high powered solutions.  The Chiefs implemented SharePoint 2010 to replace their old intranet to increase the ability to collaborate and share information across the organization and ultimately to make the business more efficient.

Two big issues that the Chiefs identified with SharePoint 2010 were that the design left them wanting more and user interface was not as intuitive as they hoped.  There were concerns that as a fast paced business, the efficiency and productivity of the end users would suffer and there would be poor adoption.  In order to address the issues, some of the internal IT staff began devising a plan to build a custom design and develop tools to enhance the user experience.  They quickly found that the efforts would take a great deal of time and resources, in addition to everything else that they had to get done on a daily basis.

After viewing a demonstration of BrandIt, the IT staff for the Chiefs quickly concluded that BrandIt met a lot of requirements they had developed for a more intuitive design, and had additional value adds that would drastically improve the usability of SharePoint 2010 that would ultimately help everyone in the organization be more efficient.  The time required to implement the solution went from 2-4 months if they built it custom, to less than 2 hours, which was the time it took to get BrandIt up and running. The Chiefs technical staff can now focus their efforts elsewhere since the huge hurdle that they were facing was tackled by BrandIt!

For more information about BrandIt, contact paul.haynes (at) incworx.com or call 847-839-9679 X204

If you have been looking for an auto complete web part for SharePoint 2010 that requires zero coding, the auto complete web part that is part of IncWorx's BrandIt solution might be just the thing!  BrandIt has been in production for 2 months, after 6 months of beta, and the development team is heads down rolling out new web parts to accompany the solution.  This web part  is one that I have been excited about for a while.  As you can see below, the screen shot shows that I have started typing a name and have the letters "M" and "A" in the box and it has begun to show me all queries that match the search and narrow as I type more letters.

This web part was built using jQuery, so the content will populate automatically without the whole screen having to refresh which is very common in SharePoint.  In this particular example we've shown a very basic functional.  I can instantly find the contact, click their name, and an oulook email message pops up. 

The beauty of this web part is that it is highly configurable and can deliver some very advanced functionality.  It literally allows you to point to any list/library within SharePoint and create an auto complete search box for it.  In regard to some of the additional functionality beyond that, the possibilities are endless.  I could do a search for Matt Breski, and take a look at where his clients are across the United States.  All the user would need to do would be to click his name, and then on the back end, our web part would look for all of the clients in our system that are assigned to Matt, look at what their city and state are, plug the data in to Google Maps or Bing Maps, and it would open a new window with a map of the U.S. showing a pin for all of his client location across the country. 

If you are interested in leveraging this functionality and would like to learn more about our BrandIt offering, of which the web part belongs, feel free to click the header of this blog and schedule a demo! 

If you have been following our blog or have seen any other posts, you're probably very familiar with our new UI/UX package called BrandIt.  If you haven't been, BrandIt is an easy-to-deploy UI/UX package that includes a custom master page as well as Web Parts that were designed to help improve the user experience and bolster user adoption. 

With BrandIt having been in production state since the end of March, our next phase is to roll out new web parts to continue to increase the usability of SharePoint.  Our most recent web part/functionality roll out is the "Recently viewed documents" view.  This is a feature that many users of the various office tools enjoy using that is not available in SharePoint out-of-the-box.  Having provided this functionality within the BrandIt package, we have equipped users with yet another added benefit that will make them LOVE using SharePoint 2010! 

If you have any questions or would like to see a demo, contact Paul.Haynes (at) IncWorx.com

IncWorx recently launched a comprehensive branding package called "BrandIt" that includes a custom master page as well as 3 web parts.  I wanted to call out specifically one of the web parts that we include with the package, the web part is an interactive tab control.  

This is one of my favorite web parts in BrandIt for a couple of reasons.  First off, this web part basiclally allows you to connect to multiple SharePoint lists and essentially lets you have them at your fingertips.  The cool thing is that this web part was built using jQuery, so you can hover your mouse over the tabs or you can select an option to click on these tabs and the content will instantly populate.  No need to refresh the entire page or click a link and have to wait to be directed to a particular list.  This allows you to have a ton of information right in front of you on the main page without having to navigate all around the intranet to find what you need! 

 

Are you looking for a viable way to support SharePoint?  Has SharePoint grown to the extent that you have a lot of business requirements that you cannot fulfill, but you don't yet have the approval to hire a full time SharePoint admin?  Did you just lose your one and only person who was supporting SharePoint at your company and now you're scrambling to support SharePoint? 

I have seen virtually all of the different scenarios mentioned above and many more that are extremely common.  Supporting SharePoint has been a pain that has been popping up more and more with the growth of the platform, given the complexities associated with working with the technology. 

A few years ago, IncWorx was primarily a project based firm.  We have been around since the early days of SharePoint and have done a lot of work with the 2003, 2007 and 2010 products and we have done more migrations that I can count on all of the fingers of our employees.  We have a wonderful collection of clients that includes GM, Dell, P&G, Fortune Brands, and hundreds of companies that you have never heard of and we won the SharePoint Partner of the Year Award in 2010.  One problem that we were running in to was that our project teams were in very high demand and the queue of projects was pretty long, but when our past clients needed minor help or a new prospect had a simple issue they needed help with, we would have to drop what we were doing to assist (which was throwing off the scheduling of our projects).  The situation was popping up more and more, and we started to realize that only a small percentage of companies had enough internal expertise to fully support SharePoint and that when people needed help, they could not get the attention of a consulting firm to help them with a very small problem that might only require 1 hour.

Given the situation that was popping up often, IncWorx decided to create a dedicated SharePoint Support team.  The team consists of Senior level SharePoint consultants who our clients get direct access to.  We modeled the program around giving our clients an experience unlike the 'call center' experience, which was easy to do, because we're a small niche SharePoint specialty firm.  Some of the key highlights are that we give you a primary point of contact who is familiar with your environment, your team, and your goals who you have direct access to and recieve very quick turn around times from. 

We offer an annual contract with a bucket of hours to use each quarter and we generally provide an initial setup to become familiar with your team and your environment, to perform and audit and health check, and to address some of the issues sitting in the backlog or to fix things we found during the health check.  After the initial set up, we provide remote support going forward and can connect remotely via VPN/citrix or can work via remote desktop of one of your admins. 

If this sounds like a service that you would be interested in, I would be more than happy to schedule some time to speak with you and cover your scenario and we can determine if this package would work for you.

IncWorx Consulting, traditionally a consulting services firm, just started rolling out products that address the needs that we hear all of the time from our customers.  One product in particular, RouteIt, helps users automatically route documents from a 'drop box' document library to the specific document library that it belongs to.  Our tool allows you to create rules based on the meta data of a document , similar to outlook's rules based routing, and will route documents instantly. 

To add additional horsepower, there are tools that can be used in conjunction with RouteIt (ask me if you're interested) that will allow you to extract metadata from a document.  So when used in combination with RouteIt, a document comes in to a document library, one of these extraction tools will populate the metadata, and RouteIt will automatically put the document where it belongs.

A good use case would be a hospital, they scan documents that will land in a general scanning drop box , one of these extraction tools would pull out things like the patient ID, patient name, physician's name, etc. and our tool would be able to automatically put those documents in to that patients file, or the physician's file, etc.

Please let me know if you're interested in learning more about this tool.  I would be happy to do a demo and provide a trial of the software.  

Many companies in the Indianapolis area who are struggling to support SharePoint have limited options on companies that they can work with or resources that they can hire.  If internal staff is not up to speed, folks on the IT team can feel overwhelmed with supporting the platform as the demand from the business increases each day.  

IncWorx Consulting offers an on-demand SharePoint Support model that alleviates the needs of people in situations described above.  IncWorx has been working with SharePoint since before the 2003 product was in beta and we are one of the most experienced firms in the nation when it comes to the platform.  Due to our reputation in the market, companies like Dell, General Motors, P&G, Rubbermaid, etc. have come to IncWorx to engage with our team.  The overwhelming demand of our consultants forced us to create a dedicated SharePoint Support team.  -- We modeled the support packages around all of the things that people dislike about existing options.  Our support clients get a primary point of contact that never changes, they get in touch with a technical person right away and don't waste time being walked through a script, there are no communication issues since our folks are all on-shore, and finally our packages are cost effective as opposed to the $2XX.00 per hour other companies charge.  

If you're interested in meeting to discuss, please contact me via email (paul.haynes@incworx.com) or via telephone at 847-839-9679.   

I sure hope this does not happen to anyone, but if it does there is a way to restore them.  Service Pack 1 for SharePoint 2010 rolled out a new feature (Site Recycle Bin) that allows you to quickly and easily restore a site or site collection that has been accidentally deleted.  With this new feature, you can do the restore without having to dig in to the backups.
There has previously been a recycle bin option for lists, libraries, and documents but the new funtionality provides a bit more cushion for those still learning! 

As a Senior Account Executive here at IncWorx Consulting, I have a ton of conversations about our company's SharePoint Support program.  IncWorx is one of the top providers of support because we created the program to be the opposite of the support options that currently exist and people hate using. (We focus on good communication, getting you to the technical contact from the beginning and not wasting time with a non technical person walking you through a checklist, quick response times, etc).  One question that comes up a ton is "How would I leverage your SharePoint Support within my company? ".  My answer varies because we are flexible in our arrangements with our clients.  Here are some of the most common ways we fit in: 

• As a point of escalation for Help Desks, IT professionals, and SharePoint Admins, the top tier level of support.  This prevents the aformentioned people from having to go through Microsoft support or something that is going to waste a lot of time in their already busy schedule.  
• As an extension of your existing SharePoint team.  We all know it, SharePoint talent is hard to find and it requires a wide range of skills.  Some of our clients leverage us as a teammate to fill in the gaps on skillsets that don't exist in their companies.
• As a mentor for the IT staff, to lean on us for architecture questions, inquiries about development paths, best practices for upcoming projects, etc.
• As the help desk, if there is absolutely no SharePoint expertise within a company we will provide 100% of the support for clients upon request.

Again, these are just some of the most common ways companies leverage us.  There are arrangements that are not detailed above.  If there is a support model that you're looking for, and cannot seem to find, shoot me an email and I would be happy to discuss IncWorx's ability to provide you with exactly what you're looking for.  You can reach me at: paul.haynes@incworx.com or at 847-839-9679.

IncWorx Consulting offers a wide range of custom .net development consulting services.  We work with our clients on a staff augmentation basis with some of the best consultants located in Chicagoland and also have a full service project team who has lead technical architects, senior developers, PMs and QA.  All of our resources are on-shore with 10 out of 10 communication. 
Please contact me if you would like to discuss further: paul.haynes (at) incworx.com or call me, 847-839-9679.  

I received a very interesting email yesterday from a person at the State of Texas Education Department who thought I had a candidate that she was interested in for a business analyst role.  The email was clearly a mistake, but certainly caught my attention.  The Education Department had contacted different Staffing and Consulting firms with the requirements, and they had made their selection of candidates.  Their choice of candidate was what really blew me away.  This person was an offshore resource and their firm's telephone number required you to dial a different country code. You had to dial "91", which is the country code for India. 

I understand that folks have tight budgets to work with, especially state governments, but really?  Tax dollars from folks like you and I are being spent over seas?  I could not be more disgusted with this practice.  This is not the first time I've heard of it either. 

While IncWorx Consulting is known for our award winning SharePoint practice, we also have a top notch custom development practice as well!  IncWorx has very senior developers and solution architects on the .NET side and we also have consultants with skills that are very difficult to find such as: experience with MVC 2 and 3, mobile development expertise, Windows Workflow, MVC, WPF, Silverlight, etc.

Please contact me if you are looking for a strong MVC developer or another specialized developer you need!  paul.haynes@incworx.com

IncWorx is currently experiencing rapid growth and is seeking experience SharePoint Architects, Developers, and Administrators for full-time and contract positions with the opportunity to work from home as well. 

Please contact me at 847-839-9679 and reference this blog post.  I would be happy to speak with you. 

About IncWorx: IncWorx Consulting is one of the top SharePoint firms in the nation, winner of the 2010 SharePoint Partner of the Year Award, we work with clients like P&G, Rubbermaid, Fortune Brands, Sara Lee, Unilever, Lojack, General Motors, Dell, etc.

As one of the premier SharePoint consulting firms in the nation, IncWorx Consulting works with some of the biggest companies out there including Dell, GM, Rubbermaid, Unilever, Fortune Brands, Lojack, P&G, etc. We're very proud of our existing client base and could not be happier with the new clients that we've aquired so far this spring!  We've brought on more than 20 new clients including companies like Live Nation, E.T. Browne Drug Company, Optiver USA, and the Federal Reserve Bank!  
While the scope of work ranges widely with all of our new clients, they all have one thing in common.  They all have recognized that IncWorx Consulting is one of the nation's best and most experienced firms when it comes to SharePoint.  Also, as the winner of the SharePoint 2010 Partner of the Year award for Planning and Deployment, we have been recognized by Microsoft as being the nation's BEST firm for deployments and migrations.  With so many companies migrating from MOSS 2007 to SharePoint 2010, we are extremely busy, but very excited to have so much opportunity to grow relationships, old and new! 

Per the Microsoft Technet blogs, Service Pack 1 for SharePoint 2010 is expected to be released at the end of June. 

Highlights of the service pack include: 

• Better alignment between Project Server and SharePoint Server browser support
• Improved backup and restore functionality
• Word Web App will have printing support in Edit Mode
• Project Professional will sync scheduled tasks with SharePoint task lists
• IE9 native support for Office Web Apps and SharePoint
• Office Web App support for Google Chrome
• Inserting Charts into Excel Workbooks using the Excel Web App
• Support for searching PPSX files in Search Server. 

For more details go here: http://blogs.technet.com/b/office_sustained_engineering/archive/2011/05/16/announcing-service-pack-1-for-office-2010-and-sharepoint-2010.aspx