Share point in the cloud and best practices

Successful SharePoint delivered fast

Webinar

SHAREPOINT BEST PRACTICE

AND THE CLOUD

[email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]

Twitter: @appperf


SHAREPOINT IN THE CLOUD AND

BEST PRACTICES

• Building Intranets and applications in Office 365 – benefits, challenges and potential pitfalls.

• Simon Hudson

• Director, Cloud2 Ltd

• See the webinar on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXEYa4ZqeBU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXEYa4ZqeBU


Why: the old ways

Go to the office


Why: Mobile staff

• The old way

– Needs

• secure token such as RAS

• Remote servers such as Citrix

– More passwords to remember

– Slow

– Often expensive


Why: Better IT at home than office

VS


Why: Benefits of the cloud

Work anywhere on any device

Lower risk of data loss or leakage

Flexibility

• ability to procure on demand,

• reduced provisioning time

• Days vs months

Lower support

• Automatic patches and updates; fixes and DR

New ways of working

Better ways of working

Future proof

Staff productivity


WATCHOUTS AND CONSIDERATIONS


Is it safe?

Cloud has matured

• In reality most organisations use physical and network security that is, at best, no better than cloud solutions

• Microsoft are considered to be particularly strong

The single greatest threat is the action of staff

• Cloud doesn’t change that

There are few reasons to reject cloud solutions out of hand on the basis of security

• Financial institutions, multinationals and other organisations with commercially or legally sensitive information are committing their content to the cloud

• Safeguards available, e.g. tools which can monitor what is being uploaded

Due diligence and research


Security myths“The cloud isn’t very secure”

“I wouldn’t trust my data to the cloud”

Reality

• Restricted physical data centre access - authorised personnel only

• Multiple layers of physical security - biometric readers, motion sensors, 24-hour secured access, video camera surveillance, and security breach alarms

• Encryption of data both at rest and in transit

• Data Protection Act and keeping data in Europe

• Dublin and Amsterdam

• Singapore, USA

• Password policy

• 2 factor?

How secure is the Microsoft infrastructure?The physical storage devices are housed in shipping units with cables and water pipes for cooling running into and out of them. These units are almost never opened. Personnel at the facilities are tracked with RFID, and restricted to authorized parts of the building with biometric controls. Data is backed up in separate parts of the storage units. And if the whole facility goes down, there are still more layers of redundancy in datacenters located in far-off regions of the US and beyond.

Standard cloud security measures include:•At-rest and in-transit encryption (ISO 27001 grade)•Remote wipe capabilities (in case device is lost or stolen)•Two-factor authentication (sends you a text with a passcode after you put in your password)

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=26552

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=26552


Risks

Dynamically changing platform

Loss of control of process

Supporting business change

• Tenant name vs. Org name

Culture and resistance to change


Potential pitfalls

Moving tenancies

Account management

• Joiners and leavers

• Synchronisation

• SSOLoss of control

Still need some 3rd party tools

Much more dependent on internet connection and connection speed

Perceived performance

• File access is generally slower

• Productivity is generally higher

• But user need reminding of the benefits


Changing your organisation name

Things that are easy

Tenant migration

How easy is tenant migration


BEST PRACTICE

And top tips for Office 365


Planning, Planning and more planning

Changing things down the line is not so easy

• Tenancy name

• Username

• Account management

• Storage planning and migration

• Information Architecture

• Awesome technology, poor processes

Not doing things now will hurt later

• Information architecture

• Metadata

• Content Types

• Governance

• Strategy, focus and purpose

• Migration

• Feedback


Vanity Names

• [email protected]

– Change to

• [email protected]

– > My Site etc. reflects first UPN, so get vanity names right first

mailto:simon@???.onmicrosoft.com

mailto:simon@???.onmicrosoft.com


Other considerations

SharePoint Online alerts

• Need to ensure user email addresses are set up in advance or alerts, workflows etc. won’t work

User login

• Discrete sign in

• Vs

• Dsync with password sync

• Vs

• ADFS


Search Centre

Search Centre is a separate Site Collection in Office 365

• It’s good, is being updated and improved so:

• Use this rather than your own search site

• Be aware of limitations

• Doesn’t inherit your branding

• No easy navigation back to Home site collection


Content Query

Need to avoid this in most cases

• Microsoft don’t like it and may issue throttling notice

Use Content by Search instead

Note: Can still use XSLT to style and transform

• But can’t use Audiences or AJAX

• Unless you write javascript


Publishing Features

Can’t save templates that have Publishing turned on

•But they are valuable, so develop work arounds


Test and development?

You don’t have test and dev. environments in O365

• Even if you spin up a devtenancy you have no means to deploy solutions between tenants

Set up additional site collections for dev. and test

• No real risk of having your dev. environment here as there is no code to break the tenant

• You can easily exclude the Site Collection from Search

• Note that you can’t easily remove index results if needed


Large Libraries

Any very large libraries should be a separate Site Collections

•E.g. 5GB per library with 200 libraries exceeds the 1TB site collection limit

•Large, dirty libraries better in segregated Site Collections


Site Admin

On premise, User Profiles are generally managed via AD

In Office 365 you need to manage this in the Site Admin panel

Site administration and user administration are problematic in any version of SharePoint.

• We recommend a 3rd party administration tool such as those from AvePoint and Metalogix


Fast Adoption

Decide whether you want early visibility or slow availability of new features

•It’s a dynamic platform

•New features appear almost weekly

•Changes can confuse users

•Make your choice…


Term Store

Site Collection vs Tenant wide term store option

•Plan for which kind of term store you want

•Unlike on-premise, it’s hard to move taxonomies etc. between these


InfoPath for eForms

•InfoPath is being deprecated, but will be available until past 2020

•List forms etc. are useful

Don’t Panic!


INTRANETS IN THE CLOUD

And especially Office 365


Features and uses

eForms Excel Surveys Extranets

Meetings, conferences and events

•Event planning

•Meeting centre

•OneNote

•Lync integration

Projects and PMO

Sales and Marketing management

•CRM integration

•Collateral creation and managementWebsites Mobile access

Remote access Guest access Phone Memo

External Content

•3rd party apps (Twitter, Monitis etc)

•3rd party data


The best intranets are those which are considered to be a broad business solution and platform and not the pet project of a particular

department…


What is an intranet /is it just about SharePoint?

Collaboration Intranet

Enterprise Social

Network

Document Management

Centre

Business Process solution

Comms. Intranet Enterprise

Intranet SharePoint

OneDrive

Office

Exchange

Lync

Yammer


More things coming…

Sway Video Portal

Delve

Roadmap Features

• E.g. Clutter

• Yammer +

• Skype for Business


Best Practice

• Never send documents internally

• Don’t use Check in/Out– Multi-authoring

– Version Control

– Approval

• Replace documents with OneNote

• Stop emailing people – Lync

– Alerts

– Yammer

– Discussions

• Replace File Shares completely– Migrate

• Use Personal Sites/OneDrive

• Take content offline

• Go Paperless

• Smart document templates

• Save to SharePoint

• Meetings

• Mobile

• Ownership

• Strategy


More Myths

It's too expensive

It's not flexible enough to fit my organisation

It's overkill for a smaller business

It’s not an enterprise solution

You can’t brand it

It’s not Google/Apple/Oracle/IBM

It’s unreliable

It’s slow

It doesn’t work on Apple/Android/Linux/ Windows XP

Users don’t like it

I don’t understand it

We don’t need it

It's too complex

It doesn't work with my browser

Users don't understand it

http://portal.cloud2.co.uk/cloud2/sales/Lists/Microsoft license pricing/By Technology.aspx

http://nep.cloud2.co.uk/Pages/home.aspx


THE REALITY GAP

Understanding who wants what


Top things a company wants

Corporate branding and ‘exciting’ UI

Flashy animations and

imagesFantastic Search

Document ‘Management’

Corporate Communications

(News etc)

Department Sites

Discussions & Social

HR processes Project Sites

Engaging home page/good UX

Simple navigation/ease

of useFindability

Their stuff and somewhere for all their stuff

Insight into what’s going on

Team Sites

Instant Messaging

Staff Directory/social

Project Sites

Users


Top things actually used on an intranet

Business Applications

Faceted Search AdministriviaReally strong

metadata

Corporate alerts

An easy way to sweep ‘dirty’

content into the intranet

Integration with Office and the

desktop

Remote, Offline and Mobile access

Personal profilesStaff directory and

profilesCollaboration OneNote


Things you really need (but didn’t think to pay for)

Intranet management

Adoption programme

Clear security model

Tablet/touch Workflow eForms

AD and staff profile update

process

Go Live plan & sufficient staff

training breadth

SharePoint Admin,

infrastructure etc.


The needs onion

Corporate features ‘sell’

it

User features drive adoption

What’s used is what makes it

a success

Hidden needs make it

sustainable


Some takeaways

• It’s really bigDon’t eat the

elephant as the entrée

• It’s really broad and flexibleWith great power comes complexity

• Invest in Admin coursesEnsure key users

are trained

• Gatekeepers block progressEmpower users

and delegate

• Evangelise, promote, supportDon’t launch

without a go live plan

• Stick, carrot, crowbarUsers don’t like

change

• But don’t mistreat the developers

Writing code should be a last resort not a

first instinct

• Define what is sensitive, issue a policy, educate users

Don't assume security

• But configure it to your needs

Use standard functionality

wherever possible

• It’s so easy to replicate the mess seen on file systems

Develop and maintain the IA

• And everything elseKeep the

permissions model simple


Risks – A reminder Confusion• Options, costs,

constraints

Supporting business change

• Tenant name vs. Org name

• Restructuring

• Dynamic updates vs. Control and stability

Security

• Snowden, DPA, Patriot

• Remote access

• Governance

The future

• Changing vendors

• Losing vendors

• Changing technology

• Changing laws

Performance

• End user experience

• Network performance

• Platform performance

User perception• What do users do now?• What are their expectations?• What is the current performance?

Ensure your baseline is understood- What is the benchmark for performance


THANK YOU FOR LISTENING

AND NOW…