G M SHAREPOINT PRACTICAL IT STRATEGIES FOR ENTERPRISE COLLABORATION / / / DECEMBER 2008 IMPLEMENTATION Document version control goes deeper in SharePoint 2007 MOSS 2007 has the ability to differentiate between major and minor versions, but that adds to its complexity. BY BRIEN M. POSEY MANAGEMENT Can Lotus Notes/Domino and Microsoft SharePoint play nice together? There are a few ways to integrate Lotus Notes/Domino with Microsoft Office SharePoint Services 2007. Here are some ideas for successful coexistence. BY MICHELLE BOISVERT GOVERNANCE SharePoint search gets big boost from governance planning Enterprise search can be improved with help from a knowledgeable SharePoint governance committee. BY PAUL GALVIN I
Transcript
G
M
SHAREPOINTPRACTICAL IT STRATEGIES FOR ENTERPRISE COLLABORATION /// DECEMBER 2008
IMPLEMENTATION
Document version controlgoes deeper in SharePoint 2007MOSS 2007 has the ability to differentiate between majorand minor versions, but that adds to its complexity. BY BRIEN M. POSEY
MANAGEMENT
Can Lotus Notes/Domino andMicrosoft SharePoint play nicetogether?There are a few ways to integrate Lotus Notes/Dominowith Microsoft Office SharePoint Services 2007. Here are someideas for successful coexistence. BY MICHELLE BOISVERT
GOVERNANCE
SharePoint search gets big boostfrom governance planningEnterprise search can be improved with help from a knowledgeableSharePoint governance committee. BY PAUL GALVIN
I
WITH SHAREPOINT DOCUMENT libraries, several versions of documents can bereviewed to see how each document has been changed over time.The good news for end users is that versioning has gone through some big
improvements since SharePoint 2003. In Microsoft Office SharePoint Server2007, end users can for the first time distinguish between major and minorversions of a document.The bad news for SharePoint administrators is that the new versioning
settings can make SharePoint a bit more complicated.In this month’s cover story, “Document version control goes deeper in Share-
Point 2007,” Microsoft MVP Brien M. Posey walks readers through the processof controlling versions in MOSS 2007.Any IBM shops out there? For enterprises that use only Lotus Notes/Domino
and Lotus Quickr, sharing information is relatively straightforward. But whathappens when SharePoint enters the picture?In “Can Lotus Notes/Domino and Microsoft SharePoint play nice together?,”
you’ll learn how some companies are choosing between a third-party tool or adeveloper to help bridge the gap between the collaboration platforms.And finally, don’t forget about governance. Read how end users, developers,
analysts and administrators can work together on a governance committee toenhance search functionality in “SharePoint search gets boost from governanceplanning” by SharePoint MVP Paul Galvin.
What are your plans for SharePoint in 2009? I want to know. Send me anemail at [email protected]. �
ONE OF THE nice things about Share-Point document libraries is that theyallow you to retain multiple versionsof documents so that you can go backand review how a document has beenmodified over time.Although SharePoint Portal Server
2003 supported versioning, Micro-soft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS)2007 goes a step further—offeringthe ability to differentiate betweenmajor and minor versions of a docu-ment. This new feature can maketracking down changes in earlier ver-sions of a document a lot easier.The process of controlling versions
is relatively simple once it’s set up inMOSS 2007.Document version history is
controlled through SharePoint’s Doc-ument Library Versioning Settingspage. You can access the page bygoing to your SharePoint site’s defaultpage.Once there, click the Document
Center tab. You’ll see that the Docu-
ment Center page contains a list ofthe various document libraries andlists in the Site Hierarchy windowon the left side of the window.Click on your document library,
and then choose the Site Settingsoption from the Site Actions menu.When you arrive at the Site Settings
page, click the Site Libraries andLists link, followed by the Customize“your document library” link. Finally,click the Versioning Settings link. Youwill now be taken to the DocumentLibrary Versioning Settings page,
Document version controlgoes deeper in SharePoint 2007MOSS 2007 has the ability to differentiate between majorand minor versions, but that adds to its complexity. BY BRIEN M. POSEY
MOSS 2007goes a step further—offering the abilityto differentiate betweenmajor and minorversions of a document.
shown in FIGURE 1.The first part of the Document
Library Versioning Settings page isthe Content Approval section. Thissection asks you if documents shouldremain in draft form until they havebeen approved. SharePoint allows youto configure workflows through whichdocuments can receive any numberof approvals prior to being posted ina document library.If you require approval for submit-
ted items, then any new or modifieditems remain in draft form until the
approval process is complete. Thisusually means that the document istreated as a minor version until it hasbeen approved.The Document Version History
section allows you to control howversioning is implemented and howmany versions are retained from eachdocument. Versioning is not enabledby default, but you have the optionof creating a new major version of adocument each time it is edited. Oryou can create major and minor ver-
Five tips to improveSharePoint doc managementTHE FOLLOWING IS an excerpt from a SearchWinIT.com interview with SharePointexpert Bill English, founder and an instructor at Mindsharp, the SharePoint eventhost and Minneapolis-based company that specializes in SharePoint training.
qDefine a document’s lifecycle. This includes determining where a documentwill be incubated, what metadata will be in the document, who owns the docu-ment and when it should expire.
q Be cautious of how you bestow access permissions to individual siteadministrators. Not every site administrator should be privy to all corporateinformation. With that in mind, when there is a different relationship between adocument’s security, security nodes and site collection ownership, you need adifferent site collection. A site collection is a group of sites built on SharePointthat exist under a top-level site. Individuals have permission rights for sites andcontent within a site collection, among a number of other important details.
qMatch the findability architecture with the metadata that is applied to thedocument. If people are going to find a document using the Advanced SearchWeb Part tool, the document’s metadata needs to be exposed to that tool. Ifyou know that a document is in a particular department, with a particular secu-rity clearance and the author’s name and the topic, it’s more easily found in theAdvanced SearchWeb Part than in simple search. Other methods of finding thedocument can help too. Pairing up how a document is described with the find-ability tools is imperative to helping achieve a fully functioning collaborationsystem.
qMake sure IT managers set the document library security settings beforethe document is put into the library. Some document library security settingsare applied to the document when it is created and uploaded. The settings can’tbe changed on documents that exist in the library.
q If you are doing bulk imports of documents, turn versioning off. Turnversioning on after documents are in the library. Otherwise, you will have to gothrough each document and check it in manually. —SEARCHWINIT.COM
sions of the document throughout theediting process. Creating a new majorversion is the MOSS 2007 equivalentto the versioning option implementedin SharePoint 2003.Just beneath the options to enable
versioning are options that allow youto specify how many major versionsof a document you want to retain andhow many drafts you want to keep foreach major document version.Although it might be tempting to
shoot for the moon and use reallyhigh numbers, keep in mind whendeciding how many versions of a doc-ument to retain that the documentsare stored within a SQL Server data-base. Any time you create a new ver-sion of a document, an entirely newcopy of the document is stored in thedatabase. In other words, SharePointdoes not just store the deltas fromone version to the next. You'll con-sume a lot of disk space in a hurryif you get carried away with thenumber of document versions youretain.MOSS 2007 can also define drafts
as either minor versions of docu-ments or documents that are await-
ing approval. The Draft Item Securitysection allows you to decide who canview draft documents. The defaultsetting makes drafts visible to anyonewith permission to read them. You do,however, have the option of makingdrafts visible only to those who havepermission to edit them. If a docu-ment requires approval, you have theoption of making the document draftvisible only to the person who createdit and to people who have the author-ity to approve the document.The last decision on the Document
Library Versioning Settings screen isthe Require Check Out option. As thename implies, this option simply asksyou if you want to require users tocheck out a document before they areallowed to edit it. Requiring a docu-ment to be checked out prevents twodifferent users from making contra-dictory modifications to a documentat the same time.Versioning has come a long way
since SharePoint 2003. Althoughthe new versioning settings in MOSS2007 add to SharePoint’s complexity,it is really nice to be able to distin-guish between major and minordocument revisions. �
Brien M. Posey has received Microsoft's Most Valuable Professional award five times forhis work withWindows Server, IIS, file systems/storage, and Exchange Server. He has servedas CIO for a nationwide chain of hospitals and healthcare facilities and was once a networkadministrator for Fort Knox.
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AS COMPANIES TRANSITION fromemploying Generation X workersto employing Generation Y workers,use of collaboration software suchas Lotus Quickr and Microsoft Share-Point is beginning to gain steam forproject and document management.For enterprises that rely solely
on Lotus Notes/Domino and LotusQuickr, the ability for individualsto share information is relativelystraightforward and seamless. Buteven in Domino shops, new applica-tions are cropping up virally thatadministrators must deal with.Windows SharePoint Server (WSS)2003 is one such example.Because Microsoft Office 2003
hasWSS built in, a department orgroup often creates a SharePoint sitebecause they had access to the tech-nology. When this occurs, Notes/Domino administrators must decide
which is more important: maintaininga single platform enterprise or findinga coexistence strategy.“The coexistence strategy comes
into play if, for whatever reason, it’stoo difficult to rebuild or there’s aheavy-duty influencer who has somepolitical swing and insists on usingSharePoint,” said Bill Pray, an analystfor the Burton Group. There alsomight be some value to the Share-Point implementation that makes itdifficult for an organization to stan-dardize on a single platform.
LOTUS NOTES/DOMINOAND MOSS 2007Bringing Microsoft Office SharePointServer 2007 (MOSS 2007) into aNotes organization is a consciousdecision, rather than one that hap-pens virally via Microsoft Office. In
Can Lotus Notes/DominoandMicrosoft SharePointplay nice together?There are a few ways to integrate Lotus Notes/Dominowith Microsoft Office SharePoint Services 2007. Here are someideas for successful coexistence. BY MICHELLE BOISVERT
fact, some organizations have chosento implement MOSS 2007 instead ofQuickr. From a collaboration stand-point, “SharePoint architecture andfunctionality is better,” said AdwaitUllal, an enterprise architect withAumSoft Consultants. AumSoft isworking with a client in the financialmarket that uses Lotus Notes for itsemail and MOSS 2007 for enterprisecollaboration.Although some companies run
both Lotus Notes and MOSS 2007peacefully within their environmentswithout integration, AumSoft’s clientis currently using Notes and Share-Point separately. “There were no usecases or scenarios where integrationbetween email and collaboration wasnecessary,” said Ullal.In other instances, integrating Lotus
Notes and Microsoft SharePoint canhelp create a seamless flow for file-sharing and document repository/
management. Conversely, organiza-tions using both without integratingcan struggle with several incompati-bility issues related to document shar-ing and calendars, contacts and paths.Because there’s no way to easily
share documents from SharePoint toNotes or Sametime, users must copyand paste documents from one to theother. Another issue is that calendars,contacts and paths in Lotus Noteshave no relation to a user’s calendars,contacts and paths in the SharePointworkspace. Not only do these issuescreate additional steps for users, butthey also diminish the effectivenessand ultimate reason for using anydocument management solution.
CHOOSING BETWEEN A THIRD-PARTY TOOL OR DEVELOPMENTThere are basically two ways to getLotus Notes/Domino and Microsoft
IBM’s offerings for collaborationFOR ORGANIZATIONS COMPARING communication and collaboration plat-forms, IBM’s offerings include Lotus Quickr, Connections and Same-time instant messaging, with Lotus Notes/Domino serving primarilyas an optional underlying collaboration platform and email infra-structure. Quickr, Connections and Sametime can also be used inconjunction with the IBMWebSphere platform, which supplementsthe enterprise messaging features not available with Notes/Domino.
—SEARCHDOMINO.COM
SharePoint to play nice in order toreap the full benefits of collaboration:Use a third-party tool or turn to yourdeveloper. “If you do it on your own,you’re going to invest significantdevelopment time,” said Pray. “If youhave good developers that are skilledin .NET, you can do it.”Third-party integration tools, such
as Mainsoft Corp.'s SharePoint Inte-grator for Lotus Notes/Domino,Quest Software Inc.’s Notes Integra-tor for SharePoint and the LongitudeNotes Connector from BA–Insight.netconnect MOSS 2007 with LotusNotes/Domino.Boca Raton, Fla.-based Champion
Software Group tested both MOSS2007 and Quickr before deciding onMOSS 2007 for its collaboration soft-ware. But because the company wasalready heavily invested in Sametime,it needed something that could inte-grate Lotus Notes and Sametime withMOSS, said Bill Phelps, ChampionSolution Group’s chief technologyofficer.The company said it plans to deploy
Mainsoft’s SharePoint Integratorfor Lotus Notes to take advantageof functionality that lets users initiatea Sametime chat with a SharePointdocument creator or other peoplelisted in SharePoint document fields.Users can also drag and drop docu-ment links into Sametime instantmessaging windows. In addition, thetool allows users to open SharePointdocument libraries via a Notessidebar.If your Lotus Notes/Domino shop
has just a fewWSS 2003 sites thathave cropped up virally, then full-onintegration may not make sense, Praysaid. Small SharePoint implementa-tions can remain in existence or easilybe rebuilt in Lotus Quickr if it’s select-ed as the collaboration software ofchoice. But it’s difficult to move dataand recreate spaces for several usersfrom SharePoint to Quickr, he added,so be sure you know what collabora-tion software you need before youdecide that a full Lotus Notes/MOSS2007 integration strategy is the bestfor you. �
Michelle Boisvert is the Features Editor for SearchDomino.com and SearchExchange.com. Priorto joining TechTarget, Boisvert was managing editor for SMT magazine, a business-to-businesspublication serving the electronics assembly market. She has eight years of experience as awriter and editor for high-tech electronics trade publications. Boisvert holds a B.S. in journalism
from Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
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ALTHOUGH NEARLY EVERY aspect ofSharePoint can benefit from a stronggovernance plan, SharePoint’s searchfunctionality benefits most of all.Like all parts of SharePoint, there is
good news and bad news about gov-ernance. For many organizations, thebad news is that it’s extremely diffi-cult to incorporate a governance planwhere none existed.But here’s the good news: You can
quickly configure and improve onenterprise search at almost any time.And when you implement a gover-nance plan for enterprise search,you can see immediate results.No successful governance plan
is written in stone. However, as itrelates to search, governance is espe-cially fluid. Live SharePoint implemen-tations change a great deal over time,and this can have a positive impacton search.Don’t have a governance plan yet?
What are you waiting for? Here aresome of the criteria that a SharePoint
governance plan needs to address:
qManaging scopes
qDefining content sources
qDefining and managing contenttypes
q Identifying best bets and key-words
qUsing third-party tools or customfunctionality to extend search,such as a wildcard search
q Training end users
A successful search governanceplan should call for the formation ofa search committee to help identify,analyze and properly respond to gov-ernance issues, such as enterprisesearch.When forming a search committee,
SharePoint search gets boostfrom governance planningEnterprise search can be improved with help from aknowledgeable SharePoint governance committee. BY PAUL GALVIN
most people who define and config-ure search in SharePoint are light-weight users at best. Almost allsearch administration is managed bySharePoint administrators, who donot represent the primary audienceof the product.Of course, the ones who are actual-
ly searching for content on SharePointare the end users. This is not to saythat the search committee shouldexclude SharePoint administrators. Itdoes mean that the SharePoint searchcommittee should include a variety ofother user types.
WHO IS ON THEGOVERNANCE COMMITTEE?Governance committee membershipfor SharePoint search will vary fromcompany to company. However, con-sider the following guidelines:
qOne or two rotating positionsfilled with a knowledgeable enduser—or power user
qOne or more business analysts
q Server farm administrator
qDeveloper familiar with Share-Point’s programming options—specifically, the search API
End users give feedback that isvital, but it tends to be anecdotal.
End users speak with the authenticvoice of real world experience, butthey don't have a technical under-standing of search. As a result, their
experience—negative or positive—must be carefully interpreted by theother committee members.Business analysts are trained to
interpret end user business require-ments and map those requirementsto existing functionality or new func-tionality. Analysts may recommendchanges to search from an adminis-trative perspective—such as creatingnew scopes—or even recommendcustom solutions such as developingnew searchWeb parts.SharePoint administrators are
masters of the current environment.If they don’t know the details of a par-ticular configuration—such as howmany records are included in a partic-ular search scope—they can quicklyfind out. Administrators provide theempirical evidence. They run Share-
End users speakwith the authenticvoice of real worldexperience, but theydon't have a technicalunderstanding ofsearch.
Point’s search reports and distributethem to the committee. Administra-tors typically implement the searchcommittee’s search configurationdecisions.SharePoint developers absorb all
of this information and work with thebusiness analysts to implement cus-tom tools as needed. For example,many organizations want some kindof wildcard search tool. Althoughsome vendors offer these types ofproducts, a company may decideinstead to develop its own internally.Developers should participate insearch governance committee meet-ings so that they can offer advice onbest practices for meeting end usersearch requirements. However, gover-nance meetings do not take the placeof standard systems developmentlifecycle practices. They simplyenhance those practices.Committees should meet at least
monthly. A company that is justbeginning with SharePoint may wantits committee to meet more oftenduring the initial rollout.
WHAT HAPPENS AT AGOVERNANCE MEETING?After covering a previous meeting’saction items, the meeting would con-tinue with end user feedback. Keep inmind that in most cases, this wouldbe anecdotal in nature. The end usersanswer open-ended questions such
as: Is search working overall? Has itimproved, gotten worse or is it justabout the same? Does it work betterfor some groups than others?
This discussion is peppered withspecific examples. The end-usermembers should execute somesearches for the committee, demon-strating a set of successful and failedsearches. The rest of the committeediscusses these results, each fromhis or her own perspective.Next, the systems administrator
provides search reports. The commit-tee reviews these results.Depending on the details, some of
the following specific action itemswill result:
qDefine, modify or delete searchscopes.
q Identify commonly misused key-words and consider using Share-
Developers shouldparticipate in searchgovernance committeemeetings so thatthey can offer adviceon best practices formeeting end usersearch requirements.
Point’s thesaurus to automatical-ly correct those searches for endusers behind the scenes.
q In line with common keywords,configure SharePoint’s “bestbets” functionality to give usersguidance at search time on morebusiness-appropriate terms.
q Identify opportunities to improveend user training. SharePointsearch provides a certain obviousGoogle-like keyword search,which end users find intuitive.But SharePoint search also pres-ents a more comprehensive solu-tion above and beyond simplekeyword searches.
q Identify weaknesses in informa-
tion architecture. For example,assume users search for a term,“invoice number.” At the sametime, content type defines thatcolumn. This kind of searchpoints to a need for that content.
The committee will find a numberof opportunities to improve searchthrough this process.SharePoint search can work reason-
ably well out of the box, although itworks best with a carefully definedinformation architecture and a wellconsidered site taxonomy. True—it isbest to address search from the verybeginning. But if it was missed in thebeginning—and this happens fre-quently—it’s never too late to start.A properly functioning search com-mittee will lead the way. �
Paul Galvin is a Microsoft SharePoint MVP and a SharePoint solutions architect at EMC Corp.Galvin has worked in the IT industry for more than 15 years in areas such as software develop-ment, consulting and SharePoint solutions design, where heworkswith clients to create businesssolutions using the SharePoint platform. He contributes to the SharePoint community throughMSDN forums and his blog at http://paulgalvin.spaces.live.com.
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