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• one stop shop for business needs • set of tools where users can create different kinds of sites for their requirements• infrastructure that supports collaboration, sharing of information and knowledge• Can be a web content management tool – i.e. intranet.• one familiar system for all sites, whether team site for colleagues, business site for

corporate collaborative working, extranet site for partners, internet site for customers

• provides a familiar and consistent approach to storing and managing information• must have a good information architecture• can reduce duplications • can prevent/reduce re-work • can improve team productivity

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Important to put in place a formal governance plan to establish the critical elements of success and to ensure continuous delivery of business value.

Recommendations:

• Assemble a team to include an IT pro or developer as well as an information or records manager. The IT element will understand the technical aspects and how it will work, but you need an information manager or business analyst to get a good understanding of user and records management requirements. Present the requirements to the IT element to figure out the SharePoint functionality.

• Users must take responsibility for their own information.

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Important to implement roles and responsibility (information owners, information manager, executive support).

Recommendations for Executive support –• Public proclamation of support for the system and a vision for SharePoint based

initiatives.• At least one executive should have an active internal blog.• Have executives refuse to accept emails where the document is stored in SharePoint,

they should refuse it until they are sent a link. • Answer one submitted question per week on the front page of the portal.

Definitions:Power user -

An individual who uses advanced features of computer systems which are not used by the average user.

End user -“The individual who uses the product after it has been fully developed and marketed …. who require a bug free and finished product …. “

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Recommend:Display postersAwareness sessions on best practice methodsGuidance and weekly tipsBulletin announcementsTips and Hints on calendars

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Recommend:

• Build in support mechanism and customer service

• Name the Site Owner or Administrator on every site or page • Talk to the users, understand their needs and analyse, do a survey.• Enthuse and communicate with ‘bite size chunks’ and helpful tips • Mandatory training

o Initial kick off trainingo frequent awareness sessions (lunch and learn?)o guidance on retention rules, general best practice, structuring folders in a

document library, preventing duplicationso On demand quick help – tip sheets, video tutorial, reference documents, a

help siteo Provide an online knowledge portal

Select a reasonable time interval for your maintenance activities. For example, if you plan to conduct periodic user surveys, do not conduct them more than twice a year (and preferably, no more than once a year).

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Recommend:

Business Sites – for the corporate functions and activities.

Team admin sites – not for functional/activity work, purely team.

My Sites – for personal use, user profile, information about their role, contact information and other useful information.

REMEMBER:MySites have private and shared libraries – shared document library and recycle bin are viewable to others. If deleting from private documents – delete twice - once to recycle bin, twice to remove from there so it doesn’t show up in a search.

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A SharePoint system will have 1 or more site collectionsEach Site Collection can have 1 or more sitesA site may have sub-sitesA site or sub-site can have a number of libraries and lists (don’t exceed 20)A library can have folders or you can use ‘views’Libraries can hold documents, records, images ….

Use a good naming convention for documents and records in the folders/views

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Recommend:• Plan your site collections - Each site collection can operate with its own set of

features to meet different business needs.o There is a limit on the amount of storage in each site collection

(depends upon the version of SharePoint and storage mechanism – but can be 200 GB – may not be enough storage)

o Use a separate site collection for different applications or security/legal reasons

o Intranet site collectiono EDRMS site collectionso Project management site collection

• Archive obsolete content or sites. Ensure users understand that this will happen; publish a schedule of when you are going to archive content or delete unused sites.

• For accountability and a record of destruction, keep a site inventory to record site creation and site deletion.

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Team Sites provide a core foundation to enable the creation of bespoke business sites and team administration sites across the organisation.

Also • Meeting workspaces – tracking meeting information• Publishing sites – portal site such as intranet• document workspaces – area for document collaboration • Enterprise wiki – large central repository designed to store and share information on

an enterprise scale, allowing others to contribute information• Blog – providing regular communications and updates via a personal or team identity

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A site can contain:Document managementRecords ManagementPicturesLinks to other pagesCustom Lists and LibrariesContactsTask Lists or Issues LogsDiscussion BoardsRSS FeedsIntegration through Business Connectivity Services

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Recommend: • Set permissions at the highest level you can so that permissions cascade below – Site

/ Document Library / Folder / Document.

• Periodically review site permissions. For example, review the permissions quarterly to remove permissions for any users who have left the group or project.

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A site should not exceed 20 lists or libraries – Document ID stops working if you exceed this limit.

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• Get rules in place to manage content.• Documents in a library can have a number of properties associated with them. These

properties can be gathered together into a document Content Type – the content type is associated with the library. Lifecycle management or retention policies can be associated with a content type.

• A library can have many document content types• Bespoke content types can be configured to meet the business need with unique

requirements such as a set of columns, workflows and other behaviours - examples might be:

Case study, job description, lesson learned, policy, project plan.Content types are created from the Site Settings menu, can be grouped together for convenience.

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Screen shot of content management creation.

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Recommend:• If using folders, reduce levels to maximum of 3. • Views can allow more flexibility to filter and group content depending on the

metadata assigned to it.

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Columns allow you to keep metadata about an item consistently across libraries and lists and can be defined at site level, then inherited by ‘child’ sites or libraries.

Recommend:• Add columns to content types at the highest level for consistency when sending

documents to a records center. • Group information together in a site, providing document libraries with columns, try

to default metadata wherever possible at the Library setting.• Use a naming convention for columns.

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Site Settings Screen.

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Managed metadata is a specific type of column that looks up values from a term set. Term sets can be simple lists or they can contain hierarchies.Managed metadata is very flexibleMany uses for controlling lists

Can hold the business classification scheme for records managementWhen you enter a managed metadata field, you start typing and the type ahead feature will show values that match. Pressing the tab key selects the appropriate value.

A managed metadata field automatically appears as a refiner when searching. It can also be used for browsing via the (new for 2013) metadata navigation feature.

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Recommendation• Do not use spaces in the file name as the URL will translate a space to %20; this will

use more characters – there is a 256 character limit. Use a hyphen or underscore instead.

• Abbreviations may not be understood by others.• Long file names risk losing the important information amongst the trivial.• Some information (i.e. author) will be captured as metadata by the application.• Dates – use YYYYMMDD

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Check-out prevents any other user from editing a document until you check it back inYou can edit and save the document as many times as you like while the document is checked-out. Only you can see these changes.At any point you can discard the changes if you wish to.If you forget to check the document back in it may require an administrator to override your check out. Any changes made will be lost.Unless check out is explicitly required to edit a document, a document is checked out and checked in automatically.

Screen shot shows the check out icon.

Recommend:Add comments to explain any changes made which become part of the audit trail and version history.

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Recommend:Use major and minor versioning in a highly controlled library (e.g. library of published policies) where every document will need approval.

With major and minor versioning you can set a different level of security for drafts compared to approved versions.The latest version is always opened by default.Previous versions can be opened or promoted to become the latest version.

Previous versions can be automatically deleted by:Limiting the number of versions in the library settings.Applying an information lifecycle policy (e.g. 3 months after last modified).

Versioning is not necessarily a substitute for manual version control (in the file name)e.g. Example-Filename-v0-1.docx

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