Editor's note: As has become our annual tradition, before we bid adieu to 2012, we'd like to take a few moments to reflect on some significant events from the past "Year in Bamboo" ... and to offer a glimpse into what the future may hold for our customers. We get the series underway with the perspectives our three product managers, with each of them offering considered thoughts on the products they oversee, and we'll wrap up with the view from Bamboo's Solutions Center.
You're the Product Manager for the lion's share of Bamboo's component products, and you've now moved to Vietnam, spending most of the year working with our colleagues at our Research & Development Center in Ho Chi Minh City. How has being able to physically interact on a daily basis with the teams working on your products affected the product lifecycle?
My experience in Vietnam has been incredible. The goat brain and blood is amazi... oh sorry, you were talking about work, not food. 
The ability to work with our teams directly has provided amazing opportunities for our products to grow and mature faster. A prime example is the imminent release of the latest iteration of Data-Viewer Web Part - given the wealth of new features it provides, it has become an essential tool for any SharePoint deployment. The new capabilities of Data-Viewer Web Part are particularly important for the upcoming 4.0 release of Bamboo Project Management CentralTM, due out in January.
Most of your products have seen new releases this year. Which new features or enhancements have won the most acclaim from users?
It always amazes me how much Bamboo can do in a year's time! This year our primary focus has been on making our existing product line better, faster, stronger (sounds like a commercial featuring the Energizer bunny). Some of the notable releases (besides the already mentioned Data-Viewer Web Part) include:
- User Account Setup and Password Change Web Part: Both products gained a wealth of new features and improved usability.
- Password Management Toolkit: The successor of the original IT Productivity Pack now includes Password Expiration Web Part.
- File Share Library: Now offers additional control over the sync logic between the External File System and SharePoint Library.
- Video Library: Now has the ability to connect to File Share Library, allowing users to store files on the External File Share, saving valuable space in the content databases.
- Team Calendar Web Part: Features improved user experience across the board.
- List Rollup Web Part: We've merged the old List Rollup Classic into the List Rollup Schema architecture.
- In addition, patch releases throughout the year across the entire product portfolio have improved product stability.
Has there been any particular product (or products) from your stable that's really broken away from the pack to capture the attention of users this year?
File Share Library and Video Library really are the diamonds in the rough. These two products are secretly stealing the spotlight as customers continue to move more multimedia to their portal deployments.
Several of your products saw release (or initial release) to Bamboo Labs this year. How were each of those free beta releases received by the SharePoint community?
Bamboo Labs is truly a funny area of Bamboo Nation. We see incredible download rates, indicating strong interest, but we practically never get any feedback. I would say the one that stands out the most is our SharePoint Analyzer. We decided to take a completely different approach from R1.0 (which is like any other analyzer out there, extremely bulky and slow because it does everything) to focusing instead on a specific mission. For the 2.0 release, we "threw out" the old code, and instead focused just on where Web Parts reside. This tool has the ability to be scoped at the Site, Site Collection, or even Web Application level, then you enter the dll associated with the Web Part and it provides you a CSV file of every page the Web Part is deployed to. We plan to next add the ability to locate custom application pages and, finally, particular lists and libraries. This will be especially useful for the SharePoint Community as they begin to move to SharePoint 2013.
World Clock and Weather (WC&W) was Bamboo's first free Web Part released to the SharePoint community way back in the days of SharePoint v2. This year marked its debut as Bamboo's first free release to Microsoft's SharePoint App Store, and was even used by Microsoft's Chris Bortlik as an example of the usefulness and ease-of-use of SharePoint Apps at this year's SharePoint Conference. What can you tell us about WC&W's path to the App Store and its reception so far?
Reception has been incredible, with over 1,000 downloads since its September release (though the download number is unfortunately no longer visible to the public on the App Store site). We're still deciding on the future of this app in terms of which new features to add, but I can promise that we will never charge for this app, so happy vacation planning. 
What's your personal favorite new feature in SharePoint 2013? The introduction of the App Store? Something else?
This is a tough one. SharePoint 2013 offers so much re-architecture (on the backend) that I'm still seeking to understand everything. I think from an end user perspective, the biggest feature for me is that it no longer requires Excel to be installed on the local client machine to get into "Datasheet" (now called Quick Edit) mode. I don't know about you, but it drove me nuts when you got that error in SharePoint 2007 and 2010 when you tried to access Datasheet mode and you got an error because you have 64-bit office installed on your machine. It's the little things that make me happy. From the backend perspective, I would have to say the integration with cloud services will open a huge opportunity for vendors and customers alike.
What can Bamboo users look forward to in terms of new releases of your products in the year ahead?
Bamboo's number one focus for the next six months is SharePoint 2013, SharePoint 2013, SharePoint 2013. Expect to see the entire Bamboo product portfolio to be migrated to SharePoint 2013. As a customer, know that as long as you have a valid premium support contract, you will receive the SharePoint 2013 build of the products you've purchased for free ... so check the status of your support contracts today!