Aligning Business Needs, Processes and more within the

SharePoint platformITP116, CIO116, PM116, IA116

Wes Preston MCTS Inetium www.inetium.com wes@idubbs.com Wes is a SharePoint consultant and

organizes the Minnesota SharePoint User Group (~150 attendees/month)

http://www.idubbs.com/blog

Abstract

SharePoint offers a broad range of features and functionality that business users and administrators can use to solve problems and inefficiencies. Learn how SharePoint features align with business challenges and why SharePoint should be considered as both a solution and platform.

Perspectives

1. What SharePoint features are available for information workers to construct reliable and robust solutions.

2. What reasons are there for using SharePoint instead of traditional business solutions, software and processes.

3. Why are SharePoint solutions more effective than commonly used standards?

Foundations for success

Work with a resource that knows the boundaries of the SharePoint platform OOB functionality Custom solutions and 3rd party add-ons

Governance: Provide a stable and supported environment for your users

Governance: Train your users so they understand what you are providing them

A few user requests…

How do I find employee information How do I find the data I’m looking for with

all the other information out there? How can we better coordinate work

requests?

Best Practice #1 - People Search

In MOSS, enable People Search Most companies list an employee directory,

people search or some variation among their top needs

Why: The ROI for the ability for users to be able to

find each other is high

Best Practice #1 - People Search

Examples: Want to quickly find contact information for

someone in the organization Need to know who to escalate to

Search results…

Profile page

Best Practice #1 - People Search

Trade-offs: Generally requires AD to contain data and be

up to date in order to be useful Custom or 3rd party solutions for employee

search may already be in place – SharePoint will need to meet the expectations already set by these solutions

Best Practice #1 - People Search

Additional thoughts: It is a common misconception that you need

to enable My Sites before People Search is effective.

If AD is already being populated (and imported), users get immediate value with very little additional effort

Best Practice #1 - People Search

Additional thoughts: Once the profile db is populated, the same

content can be used for other features – Audiences– Laying the foundation for future social networking

functionality

Best Practice #1 - People Search

Governance: Which fields in the profile db should users be

allowed to edit. Select choices from a list, or allow free form, etc…

Worst Practices: Allowing users to edit fields

Best Practice #2 – Lists and Views

SharePoint adopters are quick to jump on list functionality, but frequently miss out on the benefits of creating role or task-specific views that would make users more effective

Why: Again, findability is key. The quicker the user

can find their data, the faster they can act on it.

Best Practice #2 – Lists and Views

Examples Edit current view Grouped by vs. Filtered web parts

These are the components being used to build dashboard types of pages for specific roles and tasks…

Demo

LISTS AND VIEWSDemonstrate a few examples of view usage

Best Practice #2 – Lists and Views

Trade-offs: May take a little more effort to set up

Additional thoughts: Shared views vs web part specific views

(Edit current view) and when to use them Using multiple web parts, filtered by group or

category instead of using the Group functionality – different look, same links

Best Practice #2 – Lists and Views

Worst Practices: Don’t create tons of shared views and clutter

up the drop downs

Best Practice #3 – Work Queues

There are a number of robust and mature use cases for certain solutions: Help Desk, etc – but these typically aren’t extended to other use cases that could benefit from similar tools

Best Practice #3 – Work Queues

Task lists, alerts, workflows all play a part in a solution

Dashboard page / views for various roles

Other Best Practices

Communication Use News and Announcements lists for

distributing information rather than e-mail. – Users can still receive e-mail if they want with

alerts or RSS feeds

Document Distribution Don’t attach documents if they can be linked

– Send a link to a document rather than another copy of the document

Other Worst Practices

Document Libraries Do NOT just dump whole directories from a

file share into a library. Don’t have screen shots in anticipation of

your demo environments breaking

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