SharePoint 2010 Governance Planning and Implementation

Presenter(s): Scott Jamison and Susan Hanley

In addition to just implementing SharePoint correctly (technically), you must make sure that you are solving the right problems, and that you incorporate / respect the company culture.

 

Why do you need a Governance Plan?

• Scott indicated that 20% of a successful solution implementation is about Technology, but about 95% of the Governance documentation is about Technology.  We need to be prepared for the other 80%.
• Users need to be trained appropriately before being empowered with the control of the system.
  • People do not treat SharePoint like an Enterprise Application
  • Letting users add unlimited items to a list – can kill the server
  • Not Planning for scale and growth
  • Users can do a lot – we give them “great power” and need to ensure they accept their “great responsibility”
  • Many of SharePoint’s capabilities are not required or mandated, so if you mess it up, there is a work around for them (e.g. they will collaborate through email if you don’t get SharePoint collaboration correct).

What Does Governance mean in the context of SharePoint?

• Your Governance Plan defines people roles, technology and policy guidelines and process to resolve ambiguity.
  • People – Define clear roles and responsibilities
  • Technology – Define policies for service levels and appropriate use
  • Policy – Articulate design and usage principles
    • In 2010, how will people feel if they give someone a rating of 1 (out of 5) for someone else’s document
• Process – For example provisioning a site

Define a Vision – Don’t think about requirements from the start, but instead, talk about the “outcomes” (what are you trying to achieve).  Requirements can be derived from the desired outcome.  The Governance Plan will help support the Vision

 

People Roles

• Get the right people in place (MOSS introduced many new roles that were required, but most organizations didn’t assign people to these roles.  Take the rollout of SharePoint 2010 as an opportunity to get people assigned to these roles. Most of these roles are NOT full time, and one person can fill more than one role.)
  • Executive Sponsor
  • Governance Board / Steering Committee
  • Business Owner
  • Solution Administrator
  • Technology Support Team
  • Site Sponsor / Owner
  • Site Steward
  • User
  • The management of Enterprise Corporate Taxonomy in SharePoint 2010 will need to have an owner (even though other may be allowed to update the data).

 

Guiding Principles

• Publish Once, Link Many
• No Email attachments – Send links
• In 2007 Use Metadata not folders – In 2010 Use Folders to inherit metadata.
  • NOTE The concept of using folders in SharePoint 2010 is a paradigm shift that IT and end users will need to understand and utilize.
  • Content management is everyone’s responsibility but site owners are accountable

Tactics for Successful Roll-out and Strategy

• Fun and engaging launch event
  • Example, Birth announcement of SharePoint, Scavenger Hunt for content within the site
  • Lunch-n-learns
  • Power Users Community of Practice – Power users teach others

Content Management Plan – Is changing a column on a list code or content?  Who is allowed to make these changes?  Is SharePoint Designer workflow code or content?  There will be even more decisions like this to be made with the rollout of SharePoint 2010.

 

Governance Plan Document

• Break documents into chunks
  • Vision
  • Roles and Responsibilities
  • Guiding Principles
  • Policies
  • Guidelines/Best Practices
  • Procedures
  • Do not include
    • Implementation Details
    • Network Requirements
    • Feature Requirements

Tip: The actual “process” of creating the document is more important than the actual document itself.  Make sure to include Human Resources (e.g. what can people post on blogs, put on their MySite, etc.).  Everyone wants SharePoint, but no one wants to take responsibility for it.  So the actual process, of arriving at decisions is the most important part.

 

Governance Details for SharePoint 2010

• Social Computing Implications
  • Rating of documents (especially a low rating) may cause people to shy away from loading documents.  Note that changing the wording of the rankings may be able to help in this regard.
  • MySites – Posting information that people will judge you on within the organization, or you may shy away
• Managed Metadata
• • Managed Keyword vs. Managed Term
    • Managed Keywords – Allow users to key in phrases or key words (that have edit rights) on an item – they can type in whatever they want. 
    • Managed Terms – Based off of the master hierarchy/taxonomy values
    • Social Tags – Even though you do not have edit rights to this content, anyone can “socially tag” this content
    • NOTE: The distinction of these terms is confusing and will need to be better understood by the SharePoint owners, so that it can be explained to end users, and what access an end user will be able to utilize.
• Records Management
  • In-Place Records vs. Records Archive
    • Organizations will probably use both
• Resource Governor
  • More than 5,000 items in list, SharePoint won’t return
  • Need to communicate / educate users about this
• Content Organizer
  • Used to partition/route documents based on metadata
  • Need to communicate / educate users where their documents are going
• SharePoint Customizations
  • SharePoint Designer – On or Off
  • SODA – SharePoint On-Demand Applications
  • Excel and Access Solutions – Turn this on or off?
  • Sandbox Solutions

Source: SharePoint 2010 Governance Planning and Implementation

Office 2010: The Movie

10 SharePoint deployment challenges

SharePoint is one of the most flexible server applications available today. But because of its highly dynamic nature, a SharePoint deployment can quickly get out of hand. Here are some of the most common challenges in managing a SharePoint deployment.

1: Enabling Office integration

SharePoint 2007 is designed to interoperate with Office 2007 to a high degree. If you have users in your organization who are still using older versions of Office, you may find that those legacy versions become a barrier to productivity. So you may want to consider deploying the latest version of Office to all SharePoint users.

2: Preventing site sprawl

One of your primary goals must be to prevent site sprawl. You can use several techniques for this. One of the most effective is to limit the number of people who allowed to create SharePoint sites. Experience has shown that if you allow users to create new SharePoint sites on a whim, some users will create sites they don’t even need, just because they can or because they’re curious. It’s better if site creation is handled by a dedicated group of people within the IT department. I also recommend establishing clear guidelines as to who is allowed to request a new SharePoint site, and under what circumstances.

3: Site lifecycle management

Unlike typical Web sites, many SharePoint sites have a limited useful shelf life. For example, it’s common for users to create SharePoint sites that are dedicated to a specific project. When the project is complete, the site is no longer needed. So it’s important to have a procedure in place for determining which sites are still in use. When a user requests that a new site be created, you should document the name and contact information of the person making the request, as well as the URL of the resulting site. This allows you to contact site owners on a periodic basis to find out whether the site is still needed.

4: Locating documents

After deploying SharePoint, some organizations eventually begin replacing file servers with SharePoint document libraries. The idea behind this move is that SharePoint contains powerful indexing features that can make documents easier to locate than they would be if they were located on a file server. Although SharePoint has a decent search engine, document libraries can and do become overloaded. It can therefore be tough for users to find the information they need within a large document library.

One way to make it easier for users to locate SharePoint documents is to enforce the use of metadata. SharePoint contains options that allow you to define individual content types and to create custom metadata fields for each one. You can require users to enter relevant metadata for each document they create. This metadata goes a long way toward helping SharePoint return relevant search results.

5: Information overload

Providing good metadata for the documents stored in a document library improves the relevancy of search results, but it will get you only so far. Another thing you can do to improve search results is to implement a policy for document lifecycle management.

While some business documents may need to be retained indefinitely, other types probably have limited usefulness. For example, the odds are good that nobody in your organization cares about a marketing proposal from 10 years ago. By working with the managers in your company, you can find out which documents are really important and come up with a plan for automatically purging other documents after a specific length of time. Doing so reduces resource consumption and helps to de-clutter search results.

6: Governance

The subject of governance seems to come up more often in regard to SharePoint than just about any other application. There is a reason for this. Without proper governance policies, a SharePoint deployment can quickly spiral out of control and evolve into something that doesn’t even remotely resemble the organization’s original SharePoint vision.

The only way to prevent your SharePoint deployment from getting out of hand is to make some tough decisions up front about how the deployment should be used and who has permission to do what. In other words, you need to decide things such as who has the authority to create a site, what types of data are allowed to be stored within SharePoint libraries, and what types of customizations you want to allow.

7: Disk space management

Disk space management is something of an art form. Most network administrators are used to dealing with file servers that store data on dedicated volumes. SharePoint, on the other hand, stores its data within a SQL database. While you can use quota management to ensure that users don’t consume an excessive amount of disk space, it is important to realize that multiple lists or libraries can be linked to a common database. Therefore, you must design your quota structure to take into account possible growth of other lists or libraries that may exist.

8: Web part management

SharePoint sites are built around the use of Web parts. This approach make site creation easier, but it also means that any changes to Web parts result in changes to every site that uses them. You’ll want to take measures to prevent Web part customizations from being made in a haphazard manner. A modification that enhances a Web part’s functionality on one site may wreck havoc on other sites that are using that Web part.

9: Service level agreements

Many organizations discover that it doesn’t take long for a SharePoint deployment to grow from being something of a novelty to becoming a mission-critical application. As with other mission-critical applications, administrators are often pressured into accepting service level agreements for SharePoint deployments.

My recommendation has always been to use the quest for service level agreements as a bargaining chip. For example, you could explain to the managers in your company that for you to be able to deliver the level of service they are requiring, you need additional server hardware or other IT resources.

10: Disaster recovery planning

I have seen a few real-world situations in which administrators verified that their backup software supported SharePoint but never really looked at what was required to perform a restoration. Unless you’re going to be performing a total restoration, most backup applications require SharePoint data to be restored to a recovery farm.

A recovery farm is a separate, dedicated SharePoint farm. Although a recovery farm does not require the same hardware resources as your production SharePoint servers, it does have to be configured with the same features, templates, patches, and software versions as your production farm. That being the case, a recovery farm isn’t really something you can just throw together at the last minute when you have to perform a restoration. You will need to have it in place in advance.

Source: TechRepublic.com 10 SharePoint deployment challenges

SharePoint Social Computing

Social computing with SharePoint

Bring your people together

Social computing gives information workers new ways to create value together. Blogs, podcasts, and other social media help them capture and share knowledge, enhancing innovation and teamwork. Social networks make it easy to find expertise and stay connected to key contacts. People can self-organize to solve problems and meet customer needs. Microsoft^® SharePoint^® delivers the power of social computing in the context of a complete collaboration solution—right alongside the tools that people already use every day to get work done and move your organization forward.

This demo delivers the details on how social computing features in Microsoft^® SharePoint^® can help your organization become more agile, innovative, and connected. Beginning with a general introduction to the rise of Enterprise 2.0, it walks you through key social technologies, including social networking with My Sites, finding experts with People Search, and capturing and sharing knowledge with social media including blogs and podcasts. You will learn how SharePoint delivers social computing in context, working closely with the Microsoft Office system and other technology as part of a complete collaboration solution. And, you will see how SharePoint provides social technology without the need to buy, integrate, or manage additional software, delivering maximum value for your investment.

View the demo Social Computing in Action >>

The Blog >>

 

Explore the enterprise social computing features of SharePoint

Enterprise 2.0 made easy

Microsoft^® SharePoint^® provides rich features for enterprise social computing, from social networking tools like My Sites to social content technologies such as blogs, wikis, RSS and more. Because SharePoint and Microsoft Office are applications that people use every day, you can begin connecting, conversing, and innovating right away. Social computing is a natural extension of the total SharePoint collaboration solution—once you have SharePoint, you have the foundation of Enterprise 2.0, with nothing additional to buy, manage, or integrate into your IT infrastructure. Explore the social features of SharePoint and discover how easy it is to get the benefits of social computing in your organization.

Look for more >>

Microsoft to Rename Groove as SharePoint Workspace

Is Microsoft loosing its Groove? No, but they are changing the name of it. Microsoft Groove 2007 - the collaboration and document sharing software for small teams working online and offline — is getting a new name. The new name? Why it will become Microsoft SharePoint Workspace 2010.

Lees meer >>

Source: CMS Wire

The Next SharePoint .. It’s Official !!!

It's Official - A New Name and Delivery Date for the Next Version of SharePoint

SharePoint 2010

http://www.cmswire.com/cms/enterprise-cms/its-official-a-new-name-and-delivery-date-for-the-next-version-of-sharepoint-004361.php

A New Unified Communications Family

The news comes as a sidebar to the public beta release of Exchange Server 2010, part of the new unified communications family. Exchange Server 2010 is the first of the new Office-related products to be available for public beta. The others that will follow include MS Office 2010, SharePoint 2010, Visio 2010 and MS Project 2010.

What's so special about this next wave — or version — of Office related products? Microsoft says they are the first to be built "from the ground up" to serve both the on premise and software as a service (Saas) crowd.

And the Timeline Is…

Exchange Server 2010 is expected to arrive in the second half of this year. That's the first of the new product versions to go public. All the others, including SharePoint 2010 should be available for technical preview sometime in the third quarter, with an expected public release in the first half of 2010 — hence the name.

Wonder What's Coming in Next Version of SharePoint?

http://www.cmswire.com/cms/enterprise-cms/wonder-whats-coming-in-next-version-of-sharepoint-004121.php

Microsoft Releases SharePoint Designer 2007 for Free

Microsoft has released their SharePoint Designer 2007 package for free to the public!

Office SharePoint Designer 2007 provides the powerful tools you need to deliver compelling and attractive SharePoint sites and quickly build workflow-enabled applications and reporting tools on the SharePoint platform, all in an IT-managed environment.

Here’s the details on the letter they sent out advising of the change:

Dear Valued Customer:

One frequent comment from you to us here at Microsoft is that a significant part of the capabilities of SharePoint Designer are seen as just an extension of what SharePoint already does. In addition, we hear more and more that you want to be able to create increasingly dynamic web sites on SharePoint.

In response to this feedback, we are implementing a number of changes to promote and facilitate even more customization efforts on top of our platform:

• Starting on April 1, 2009, we are making SharePoint Designer 2007 available as a free download.
• Customers with SharePoint Designer 2007 Software Assurance (SA) current as of April 1, 2009 will receive upgrade rights to Expression Web for the lifetime of their SA agreement.

We believe that these changes will help you enable more users in your organization to create customizations that increase the value of your investments in SharePoint products and technologies now and in the future. We are making SharePoint Designer even better in its next version, which will ship simultaneously with our next release of SharePoint. While the current version of Expression Web does not directly support SharePoint, we are also making significant investments to ensure that future versions of Expression Web become an excellent choice for page customization of SharePoint sites.

You can expect our future investments in this area to be focused on ensuring that each relevant role within your organization has the right tools to work on SharePoint while allowing different roles to collaborate. To this end, Expression Web and the full Expression Suite will empower professional designers with page customization capabilities on SharePoint, while SharePoint users can continue to use SharePoint Designer. Our goal is to continue helping customers just like you use SharePoint to deliver custom portal solutions, extranets, intranets, internet-facing sites, collaboration solutions, social networking sites, and internal applications on top of the extensive capabilities of SharePoint.

This is an exciting time for SharePoint and we at Microsoft are confident that you will be impressed by our continued commitment to providing you with the right tools to support the investments you have made and continue to make with us. Your account team or your Microsoft partner are there to assist you and can provide you with any additional information, which is also available at http://www.microsoft.com/spd.

On behalf of Microsoft, thank you for your continued support.

Sincerely,
The SharePoint Team
Microsoft Corporation

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Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 Service Pack 1 (SP1)

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