M I G SHAREPOINT PRACTICAL IT STRATEGIES FOR ENTERPRISE COLLABORATION / / / SEPTEMBER 2008 MANAGEMENT Planning global enterprise SharePoint deployments Not all SharePoint deployments are created equal. Learn what the deployment options are and when to use them. IMPLEMENTATION Create custom global search scopes in SharePoint Find out how to customize global search scopes and target searches to specific SharePoint content for better enterprise search functionality. GOVERNANCE Top tips for harnessing Microsoft SharePoint governance When planning a SharePoint implementation from scratch isn't possible, experts say that setting up rules for usage is a step toward better governance.
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M
I
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SHAREPOINTPRACTICAL IT STRATEGIES FOR ENTERPRISE COLLABORATION /// SEPTEMBER 2008
MANAGEMENT
Planning global enterpriseSharePoint deploymentsNot all SharePoint deployments are created equal. Learn whatthe deployment options are and when to use them.
IMPLEMENTATION
Create custom globalsearch scopes in SharePointFind out how to customize global search scopes and target searchesto specific SharePoint content for better enterprise searchfunctionality.
GOVERNANCE
Top tips for harnessingMicrosoft SharePoint governanceWhen planning a SharePoint implementation from scratchisn't possible, experts say that setting up rules for usageis a step toward better governance.
THINKING OF UPGRADING or expanding your SharePoint installation? In our recentcollaboration survey of Windows and Domino IT and messaging managers,we found out that roughly one-third of 1,500-plus respondents are eitherevaluating Microsoft Office SharePoint Services 2007 or planning to deploynew or additional sites.So what’s the best strategy for deploying SharePoint globally across the
enterprise?In this month’s issue, SharePoint expert Joel Oleson says that cost is only one
factor—and not necessarily the determining factor—when choosing a deploy-ment model. Learn what the pros and cons are for a distributed deployment andwhich tools can help improve SharePoint usability.For those not growing your SharePoint installation this year, we found out
from our survey that a lack of governance policies is a major reason holding youback. Are your existing SharePoint sites a little unwieldy? Read this issue’s “Toptips for harnessing Microsoft SharePoint governance” for pointers on how toregain control and establish Microsoft SharePoint governance within yourorganization before making any plans for a full-blown expansion.Finally, we learned from our survey that enterprise search was an important
technology for SharePoint users. In this month’s article, “Create custom globalsearch scopes in Microsoft SharePoint 2007,” find out how to improve Share-Point 2007’s native enterprise search functionality.Got SharePoint challenges? Drop me a line at [email protected]. �
TO DISTRIBUTE OR not to distribute?The more centralized your SharePointdeployment is, the better it works—but your remote users might not bevery happy.Before making any decisions about
deploying your enterprise SharePointglobally, consider the priorities andpreferences of your stakeholders.And, as always, evaluate the costversus usability for every deploy-ment scenario.One of the early challenges when
planning a global SharePoint deploy-ment is determining how many farmsare needed and where they should belocated. The next challenge is under-standing what might be lost by pro-viding regional or distributed farms.Keep in mind that cost shouldn’t
always dictate the SharePoint deploy-ment model you choose. Finding theright answer for your deploymentmay take some testing.That said, the three main distribu-
tion models for deploying MicrosoftOffice SharePoint Server (MOSS)
2007 are the following:q Centralizedq RegionalqDistributed
q Centralized deployment. The cen-tralized model is the utopia of Share-Point Server deployments from anoperations and usability perspectivebecause it consists of a single loca-tion (See Figure 1, page 4). Becausethere is just one site, users in a cen-
tralized deployment have a commonoperations team, a common service-level agreement and a common site-provisioning model for collaborationsites. Users might also prefer going to
Planning global enterpriseSharePoint deploymentsNot all SharePoint deployments are created equal. Learn whatthe deployment options are and when to use them. BY JOEL OLESON
Keep in mind thatcost shouldn’t alwaysdictate the SharePointdeployment modelyou choose.
FIGURE 1
a single place for enterprise search.Remote users across the globe can
make a centralized deployment a littleless desirable, however, with slow orsaturatedWAN links. A poorWANlink has more than 150 millisecondsof latency, but it can vary as band-width is increased and usage isdecreased. Although latency is thegreatest challenge, bandwidth andutilization do have a significantimpact on speed of downloads.There are a number of tools avail-
able to overcome the effects of laten-cy. The most popular tools—which
come from companies from Ciscoto Citrix and even F5—areWANaccelerators andWAN accelerationdevices. Common features foundin these tools include compression,differencing and various proprietarynetwork optimization techniques. ITmanagers will see these devices andtheir distinct network optimizationadvantages leveraged across plat-forms as they become more com-monplace.
q Regional deployment. Some net-works are designed with a hub-and-
Centralized deployment In this deployment option, all Microsoft Office SharePointServer components and portal site farm services are hosted at the central site. Users accessall services across theWAN.
SOURCE: MICROSOFT
spoke configuration (See Figure 2).Usually it’s companies and organiza-tions that drive IT shops to providemultiple data centers as networkequipment becomes cheaper, leasedlines become dedicated and fibergets more common. Offices can’t livewithout fast access to the Internetor without fast access to their Webapplications. IT drives consolidation,but companies have to decide whatto do with their data storage and con-solidation strategies.Companies that are distributed
across the globe often find some
“regional hub” as the answer to pro-viding a consolidated solution forMicrosoft Exchange, Active Directoryor even line-of-business applications.Looking at these other solutions canprovide an example—if not a model—for how to lay out your regionalSharePoint deployment.Crawling and indexing becomes
the challenge with multiple WANlocations. With limited bandwidthbetween locations, finding the utiliza-tion to do recurring indexing withoutsaturation issues can be accom-plished with careful planning and by
Centralized deployment with regional sites This deployment model includes onecentralized site plus regional sites that each run MOSS. Users collaborate with their localteams on the local server farm. Users access all enterprise-wide features across theWAN.
SOURCE: MICROSOFT
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working closely with the networkteam doing monitoring. But as thedata increases on either side of theWAN, the time it takes to crawlcontinues to increase.Even with the incremental crawl
and the crawl based on the changelog—both of which really help to min-imize crawl time—the most recentanswer is federated search. Firstintroduced with search server, feder-ated search is now available in theinfrastructure update and is sure tobe included in Service Pack 2 ofSharePoint Server.
qDistributed deployment. If everyoffice had a SharePoint deployment,then companies would have hundredsof SharePoint farms. Some businessesdo dictate that each affiliate shouldhave its own data that’s separatefrom another. In businesses wherespeed is the key factor, replacing fileservers with SharePoint servers is thefirst step to empowering the busi-ness. In reality, there may be a dozenreasons why businesses find it easierto simply provide SharePoint to eachdepartment or each affiliate (SeeFigure 3).
Distributed deployment A number of regional sites are included in this deployment, andeach of them operates independently from the other regional sites. This option also in-cludes a centralized portal site, but it's not optimized for collaboration across regional sites.
SOURCE: MICROSOFT
It’s easy to do a simple deploymentin each location, but a distributedSharePoint deployment model is themost difficult to support. By far, a dis-tributed model is the most difficult tooperate from a backup, maintenance,and storage allocation and optimiza-tion perspective.What are the most important con-
siderations when deciding on a topol-ogy for any SharePoint deployment?Know your network—especially itsbandwidth, latency and utilization.Keeping these in mind, even those thatstart with a centralized deploymentby default and move onto a regionalor distributed deployment will findthat their hard work does pay off. �
RESOURCES: Need more help with yourSharePoint deployment? Check outthese downloadable SharePointresources from TechNet:
q Globally deploying multiple farms
q Deployment for OfficeSharePoint Server 2007
q Planning and architecture forOffice SharePoint Server 2007
Joel Oleson is an independent consultant involved in training, speaking, technical evangelismand product management for a variety of companies including Nintex. As former senior techni-cal product manager for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, Oleson focused on topics relatedto enterprise deployments of SharePoint, such as performance, scale, backup/restore and highavailability. His blog is SharePoint Joel’s SharePoint Land.
Microsoft Search Server 2008 pro-vides two approaches for processingqueries to return search results:
Content crawling: Results arereturned from the search server’scontent index based on the user’squery. The content index containscontent that is crawled by the searchserver and includes text content andmetadata for each content item. Thisis the same process described forenterprise search in Microsoft OfficeSharePoint Server.
Federated search: Users can displaysearch results for additional contentthat is not crawled by the searchserver. With federation, the query canbe performed over the local contentindex, or it can be forwarded to anexternal content repository where it isprocessed by that repository’s searchengine. It then returns the results tothe search server. The search serverformats and renders the results fromthe external repository within thesame search results page as theresults from search server’s owncontent index. SOURCE: MICROSOFT
COMPANIES OFTEN ACQUIREMicrosoftOffice SharePoint Server 2007(MOSS) for its enterprise searchcapabilities. The problem with Share-Point 2007’s enterprise search fea-ture is that it doesn’t, by default, pro-vide granular search results. It filtersall possible SharePoint contentsources, thereby returning a largenumber of search results.If you want to isolate your query
to a specific SharePoint documentlibrary or extranet site from withinthe portal, set boundaries to specifywhich portion of the SharePoint portalshould serve as the search source toprovide a more granular result set.In SharePoint vernacular, this is calledSearch Scopes.
Along with enterprise search,SharePoint is also known for its docu-ment management capability. Fre-quently, companies set one or moreSharePoint sites to serve as a docu-ment repository and traditionallyrequire that a search scope be limitedto a specific document site or adocument library.To achieve this functionality, you
will need to create custom searchscopes. Because search in Share-Point is a shared service, the abilityto create custom global searchscopes is offered only through aShared Services Provider (SSP)administrative site. The SSP admin-istration site is available throughCentral Administration.
Create custom globalsearch scopes in SharePointFind out how to customize global search scopes and targetsearches to specific SharePoint content for better enterprisesearch functionality. BY NATALYA VOSKRESENSKAYA
THE TYPE OF search scope described here is often referred to as a global search scope. Scopes creat-ed within Shared Services Provider, or SSP, are available for all SharePoint site collections.Users can also create a custom search scope within a specific site collection. The steps for creat-
ing a site collection search scope are identical to those used to create a global scope at the SSP level.
NOTE: You must have administrativerights to the Shared Services Provideradministrative site to create a globalcustom search scope in SharePoint.To do so:
e Click Search Settings under theSearch section. Then click on ViewScopes. You will notice under theShared group that two search scopesalready exist: All Sites and People.These two search scopes are provid-ed by default after creating the SSPadministrative site.
r Click on New Scope and enter ameaningful name for your customsearch scope in the Title field. Thename should indicate where thescope search results are set (e.g.,“Document Libraries”). The defaultcontact for the search scope is theperson creating it, but a different
account can be specified as well.ClickOK.You will see the new search scope
name appear in the list of searchscopes. The search scope is emptyand will remain this way until youspecify a set of rules for the popula-tion of items for this scope.
Click on Add Scope Rule. SelectWeb Address as the rule type andset the URL to point to the SharePointdocuments library or site to whichyou want to limit the search scope.You can also specify file folders inyour file system by using UNC namewith “file” prefix in the URL. In theBehavior section, the Include optionis selected by default to include allitems that match this rule (SeeFigure 1). ClickOK.The new search scope will be pop-
FIGURE 1: Add a scope rule to the new custom search scope in SharePoint 2007.FIGURE 1
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process completes. To trigger anupdate manually without waiting forit to run on its schedule, click StartUpdate Now under Scopes on thesearch settings page.Custom scopes are not available
within site collections until the sitecollection administrator adds themmanually. This gives administratorscontrol over which scopes are avail-able for use within searchWeb partsin sites within the site collection.To add a search scope to a Share-
Point site collection:
e Go to Site Collection -> SiteSettings.
r Under Site Collection Admini-stration, click on Search Scopes.You can now add your custom searchscope to this site collection and makeit available to any SharePoint sitesas well as in the global search box.Grouping scopes is another way toorganize them.Search scopes can also be set
to specific content sources suchas SharePoint websites, managedproperties, system file folders andExchange public folders. �
Natalya Voskresenskaya, MCTS, is SharePoint Architect at Conchango, a consultancy andsystem integration company. She has been working in the IT field for 10 years. With experiencein design, architecture, development and deployment of Web-based applications, Voskresen-skaya has been developing portal solutions since 2000 and started working with SharePointsince version 2003. For more information, check out her SharePoint blog.
A search scope in SharePoint Server2007 is used to narrow the searchresults returned to users executing asearch query. Search scopes can beshared or locally defined. Differentrules can be used in the definitionof a search scope. Microsoft OfficeSharePoint Server 2007 introducesnew types of rules to guide the searchscopes exposed by different types inthe object model:
AllContentScopeRule class: to repre-sent a scope rule that includes allitems in the index.
PropertyQueryScopeRule class: tocreate a scope rule that matches con-tent items based on a property-to-value comparison.
The UrlScopeRule class: to representa scope rule that matches contentitems based on the display URL of theitem.Search scopes must be compiled
before they can be used. To compilesearch scopes, flag each item in theindex that matches the rules as theyare defined for the search scope.
AS MICROSOFT SHAREPOINT becomesincreasingly popular, IT managersstruggle to get a handle on existinguser sites. Once people begin doingtheir own thing with SharePoint, theoutcome can be bleak —from losingcentralized administration and infor-mation redundancy to increasedbandwidth and serious security risks.Properly planning an implementa-
tion for Windows SharePoint Services(WSS) or Microsoft Office SharePointServer (MOSS) 2007 from scratch isthe best way to manage the collabo-ration platform’s growth. When that’snot possible, experts say that settingup rules for usage is a step towardbetter governance.But when developing any type of
rules involving governance, rememberto think ahead. “The idea is to antici-pate the kind of arguments people aregoing to get into and pre-decide whois going to win them,” said Craig Roth,vice president and service director,collaboration and content strategies
at the Burton Group, an IT researchand consulting firm in Midvale, Utah.Here are some tips to help regain
control and establish SharePoint gov-ernance within your organization:
qDetermine howmany SharePointsites already exist. Do you reallyknow howmany individual or groupSharePoint instances exist within yourcompany? If not, Matt Passannante,director of implementation servicesat SharePoint Experts Inc. in Denver,said that using a third-party toolmight be the solution. “There arethird-party tools out there that willscour yourWSS network and tellyou that there are these other portalsandWSS site instances within yourorganization,” said Passannante.One such tool from Aliso Viejo,
Calif.-based Quest Software is SiteAdministrator for SharePoint, whichidentifies all SharePoint servers, sitesand site collections within a network.Quest Software also has a free tool
Top tips for harnessingMicrosoft SharePoint governanceWhen planning a SharePoint implementation from scratchisn't possible, experts say that setting up rules for usage is a steptoward better governance. BY MICHELLE BOISVERT
called DiscoveryWizard for Share-Point that automates the search forall SharePoint servers on a network.Based in Jersey City, N.J., AvePoint
Inc. also has a free SharePoint Discov-ery Tool that gives administrators ablueprint of their SharePoint farmsand servers as well as real-time dataon components and services hostedon each server and the status ofthose services. The tool’s search fea-ture helps locate SharePoint sites.
qAppoint a SharePoint champion.After uncovering all SharePoint siteswithin your organization, designate aleader for the entire implementation.“The issue of governance alwaysbecomes a political one instead ofa technical one,” said Roth. AlthoughIT managers can easily look at thesesites and figure out how to combinethem, getting buy-in from the differ-ent departments that created themmight be tricky.Often it’s the CIO who has the
authority to make the decision for allsites or can delegate authority to apoint person. After designating a lead,involve others within the company.
q Create a corporate SharePointpolicy. Stakeholders must collectivelycreate a high-level statement ofdirection for SharePoint, which cantake the form of a corporate Share-Point policy. That all-encompassingpolicy should include specific compo-
nents, such as a usage policy thatoutlines how to use SharePoint and adesign policy that outlines your com-pany’s standard SharePoint naviga-tion look and feel.Other components might include
a technology policy that determineswhat SharePoint features, such aswikis, blogs or workspaces, shouldbe used for and by whom. “SharePointcan do a zillion different things, butthat doesn’t mean you want it to doall those things,” Roth said. Althoughmost policy-making decisions fall onmanagement, you may want to getusers involved in some usage anddesign policy planning, he added.
qOutline the processes needed toimplement the policy. Develop Share-Point processes as if they were how-to documents on setting up specificsites. Create pointers to technicalmanuals on how to do things, wherepolicies exist on the intranet andwhat they are.Each process may have a different
lifecycle, requiring updates at differ-ent times. Having pointers to docu-mentation means that technical man-uals can be maintained without anyimpact on usage or design policies.
qDevelop a technical SharePointmanual.Much of the informationout there tends to treat SharePointgovernance as maintenance. Howev-er, that’s just one link in the chain of
command. IT managers should getinvolved in formulating a technicalmanual to answer questions on howto combine SharePoint directories,set delegated administration levels,grant user permissions, add anddelete users, lock down SharePointand create and manage a singlecontent repository.When dealing with content reposi-
tories, SharePoint user contentshouldn’t be treated any differentlythan other mission-critical content,according to Carl Frappaolo, vicepresident of market intelligence atAIIM, a nonprofit market researchand consultancy group. After estab-lishing all of these guidelines androles, be sure to point to the technicalmanual online so that users haveaccess to them when needed.
qMeasure your SharePoint success.To gauge success, it’s important tounderstand how SharePoint is helpingyour company to advance.For example, if you anticipated
that your SharePoint implementationwould decrease company travelexpenditures, Roth said, then you
must compare travel expenses beforeand after deployment. Measure busi-ness outcomes, he said, as opposedto the number of hits a particular sitegets. Statistics that attempt to meas-ure site-use frequency, for example,don’t necessarily give the whole story.Establishing SharePoint governance
doesn’t have to be a tedious task thatIT managers must tackle alone. Cre-ating a solid governance plan thatpulls upper management into theprocess early is key and can givecompanies that are new to contentmanagement the upper hand. Oftenthese companies seemmore likely toaddress governance up front, saidDan Keldsen, director of market intel-ligence at AIIM.On the contrary, companies trying
to fit SharePoint content into an exist-ing governance infrastructure mayexperience challenges. “For compa-nies that have implemented any sortof content management, once usagepatterns are established, and in theabsence of any formal governance, itcan be much more difficult to thinkabout how to stick the genie back inthe bottle,” Keldsen added. �
Michelle Boisvert is features editor for SearchExchange.com. Prior to joining TechTarget,Boisvert was managing editor for SMT magazine, a business-to-business publication servingthe electronics assembly market. She has eight years of experience as a writer and editorfor high-tech electronics trade publications. Boisvert holds a B.S. in journalism from IndianaUniversity of Pennsylvania.
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