SharePoint Administrative Communications Planning:Dynamic User Notifications forUpgrades, Migrations, Testing, …PRESENTED BYROBERT FREEMAN (HTTP: / /RRFREEMAN.BLOGSPOT.COM)SHAREPOINT SOLUTIONS ARCHITECTVOTEMATRIX CEO (HTTP: / /WWW.VOTEMATRIX .COM)

Communications Plan Overview

• Project Communication• Executive summary

• Project schedule

• Maintenance Information site• Info page

• User feedback lists

• Training site

• User Notifications• Site level notifications

• Email notifications

• Other notification options

Project: Executive Summary• Inform management • What is the need for administrative action?• Costs and benefits of patch, upgrade, migration, or solution rollout

• What is your plan for implementation?• Downtime• Data lock / check-in requirements

• Test Plan• Project Schedule– Next slide• User Experience Summary – New URLs, Interface, Capabilities• Training and Support Plan

• Keep it short (1-2 pages)

• Highlight impacts to each department/group

• Deliver at least one month prior to downtime • Schedule meetings to address concerns and modify plan accordingly

Project: Calendar / Schedule

• Calendar – Provide iCalendar (Outlook appointment) links for each

• Notifications

• Downtime schedule• Include disaster recovery and troubleshooting buffer

• Testing windows

• Training sessions

• Team member tasks• Identify team members for each task and necessary support

personnel required to be on-call• Setup Outlook meetings for these tasks

Info Site: Info Page• Intranet facing team site with all user read access to host

the Landing page and all Info Pages and Lists• Ex: http://intranet/SPGovernance or http://intranet/Maintenance

or http://teamsites/ (root site)

• Info pages should begin with executive summary information and modify for general user information• You may have several info pages if the admin plan is phased by

department, group, or stage

• Project Calendar / Schedule should be hosted on the landing page

• Navigation should include • User feedback lists

• Training links

• Link to Search Center and Team Site scoped quick search box

Info Site: User Feedback Lists

Any user feedback should be submitted to lists on the Info Site. All users must have add item permissions on these lists.

• Examples• Site Retention Requests

• Testing Feedback / Bug Submission

• Architectural Review Requests

• Site Creation Requests

• Help Desk

• These may link to other systems

Info Site: Training Site

Training sites may be necessary when implementing a new solution or upgrading the farm.

• Training material• Videos• Basic user training videos already available at

Office SharePoint Training Site• Or for SharePoint 2010

• Wiki articles• Should focus on features / configurations specific to your

organization• Quick reference card information available from videos above

• Scheduled Training• A SharePoint team member can provide in-person training

sessions which may be more valuable than self taught training alone

User Notifications• Site level notifications• Announcement lists – configured per site and only on certain

pages

• Master page mods– admin overhead and possibly many variations

• RRFreeman SharePoint Migration and Administration Notification Tool

• Email notifications• Must have for users who don’t regularly visit the site• They may be opening documents directly from the Office client or from a

SharePoint client tool like OneDrive for Business

• Other notification options (aka overkill)• Giant banner in parking lot

• Bullhorn / megaphone

• Call bot

Dynamic Notification Tool

• Uses SharePoint’s out of the box notification bar to display messages on every page in a site.

• Configured via one list per Site Collection.

Notification Tool: Configuration

• Configured via one list (template provided) added to the site collection root site.

• One list per site collection.

Notification Tool Feature List: Part 1

• Site Collection Deployed full trust solution (Currently designed for SharePoint 2010+)

• Client object model exclusively used for notification processing in order to support future releases on the SharePoint 2013 app model and Office 365 environments

• Drop down selection of common notification scenarios

• Migration notification list definition• Must be added to the root site collection

• Configurable notification text with wiki-like syntax for inserting hyperlinks or a date from the Migration Notification List• More Info URL• New URL• Migration Date

• SharePoint client object model property bag caching to reduce server load and increase performance

• Supports the standard notification color selections

• Include all sub-sites (notification can be overridden at the child site level)

Notification Tool Feature List: Part 2

• New / test site URL replacement including the full path to the current page/form

• Notification disable flag

• Automatic population of the title field from the New Site URL wiki when sent to a ".../NewForm.aspx?source=..."  page (Using "New URL Set Title" syntax)

• Permission based notification visibility (security trimming)• MultiSelect choice field in the list called "Display To"• Based on the SP.PermissionKind Enumeration

• Notification dismissal option (cookie based)• 1 day dismissal duration

• Automatically delete sites from the migration notification list by selecting Auto Delete or Auto Recycle in the Old Site Status field• This capability is enabled through a separate Site Collection feature and requires

the user to have permissions to delete the site• This feature is especially useful for retention policies that require you to post a

notice of deletion before deleting the site.• If you use Auto Delete instead of Auto Recycle, you should backup the site first if

there is any possibility of needing a restore

Q&A

SharePoint Administrative Communications Planning:

Dynamic User Notifications forUpgrades, Migrations, Testing, …

PRESENTED BYROBERT FREEMAN (HTTP:/ /RRFREEMAN.BLOGSPOT.COM)SHAREPOINT SOLUTIONS ARCHITECTVOTEMATRIX CEO (HTTP:/ /WWW.VOTEMATRIX.COM)LINKEDIN: HTTPS:/ /WWW.LINKEDIN.COM/IN/RRFREEMAN