What Every Administrator Ought to Know SUCCESSFUL ... · Errin O’Connor Founder of EPC Group.net...

SUCCESSFUL SHAREPOINT DEPLOYMENT STRATEGIES

What Every Administrator Ought to Know

By: Errin O’ConnorEPC Group.net

Architecting for Success: Optimizing Your SharePoint 2007 Deployment Strategy

Errin O’Connor

Founder of EPC Group.net

• One of the nation’s leading SharePoint

implementation and custom .NET development firms

Has Completed 60+ SharePoint Implementations

in the Past 6.5 years

Author of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

Inside & Out for Microsoft Press

Bio…

Architecting for Success

This session will discuss the importance of controlling the

deployment of operations and content across SharePoint

environments throughout your enterprise, and will cover

security management concerns and requirements.

Learn about key considerations for security and global

control, such as permissions deployment, and the need for

successful administration and management of SharePoint.

Session Overview…

Architecting for Success

Planning and designing your SharePoint rollout

Key considerations around architecture, environment, administration, governance, and security

How to manage site proliferation

How to ensure smaller, departmental SharePoint footprints can grow with the enterprise

Strategies around migrating your SharePoint 2003 environment to SharePoint 2007

Strategies around SharePoint data protection, backup, disaster recovery, and archiving

Recipe for Success – EPC Group – Planning a Best Practices Approach to Site Creation

Asking the Right Questions and Placing The Right Items On Your SharePoint Radar Screen This presentation should

help you ask the right questions and get you thinking…

Proper Planning…

What is Your Organization Trying to Accomplish with SharePoint?

Are you deploying a true Content Management platform?

Are you deploying a Knowledge Management solution?

Is this an Intranet redesign effort?

Are you trying to replace your existing Internet facing Web Site?

Planning & Designing Your SharePoint Rollout…

Why are SharePoint Implementations so Unique?

They cover so many different areas within your organization

They can be extremely high profile:

You don’t want to have an unsuccessful project that everyone in the organization has access to…

They can cover so many different systems…

You need a few of the key members of your team to be “Technical Business Analysts” who can talk the talk and walk the walk… This means they need to: Ask the right questions about enterprise systems Understand how databases and data repositories work Have an understanding of application development Understand what makes a successful intranet Understand Content Management (Web and Non-Web Based) Be personable to your User Base \ SharePoint Users


SharePoint Initiatives Should be Approached in Four Key Areas

1. Plan the Detailed System Design

2. Plan the High-level Design

3. Plan the Information Architecture Design

4. Plan and Design SharePoint Governance


WSS 3.0 or MOSS 2007 (Similar Approach)

When Planning a rollout of either technology, the core approach is

actually very similar

MOSS 2007 Projects can entail more Content Management

Specific Topics (i.e. Retention Schedules, more robust Content

Types, Custom Search, External Data Sources (BDC), etc…)

Don’t let the Information Management piece derail your project!

Keep it simple when ever possible – Phase 1 needs to be a success

as SharePoint almost sells itself if you set it up correctly the first

time!

To MOSS or not to MOSS…

Plan the Detailed System Design

The overall detailed server configurations of the deployment should take into consideration the overall user base, geographical considerations, and content and sizing. This is true regardless of whether the deployment is a single-server deployment or a large server farm.

It is very important to have an accurate architectural picture of your SharePoint deployment. This will help you to:

Acquire the necessary hardware to implement the physical architecture.

Have a good grasp of the best possible physical and logical configuration options.

Start designing and implementing a solid and highly available environment.

Efficiently plan the deployment of this new collaboration platform.


Plan the High Level Design

When designing your SharePoint hierarchy, you should take into

account the navigational requirements of your organization.

You should also start to consider the management of the content in

SharePoint once the portal is rolled out to the user community. This will

help you to:

Plan the overall portal and SharePoint approach.

Configure the navigational taxonomy.

Plan the Team/Departmental sites and subsites.

Gather the organization’s business requirements.

Plan the initial management and staffing of the environment.

Develop an implementation plan.

Reassess storage requirements and future scalability based on any new requirements.


Plan the Information Architecture Design

The planning of the logical architecture and information management side of SharePoint consists of identify the required metadata or content types as well as the tools that will be used to create and store content.

Planning of SharePoint search is important in this phase, as is presenting the

proper SharePoint terminology to the audience who will be using SharePoint

and participating in its deployment. This will help you to:

Present a common language to the Project Team and organizational audience that will use SharePoint.

Plan the logical architecture for features such as My Site pages and specific portal Landing Areas.

Plan Search and any specific search scopes, content sources, and scheduling.

Plan the Security Model in Relation to the Overall Logical Architecture.


Plan and Design SharePoint Governance

The Overall Governance of SharePoint is a critical piece of a SharePoint deployment.

Consider not only SharePoint’s branding and look and feel, but also quotas,

file type exclusions, appropriate content policies, My Site management, and

site provisioning. This will help you to:

Develop a governance model that includes the roles of the content owners and teams.

Develop an organizational communication plan.

Create portal standards, including development and security standards.

Set the organization’s operational and content management processes.

Identify end-user support processes and tools.

Plan monitoring and compliance policies and procedures.

Manage user requests (new sites and custom development).

Create a style guide as well as SharePoint branding and a distinctive look and feel.


Site Governance Best Practices

Site and Workspace Governance All pictures within a picture library should be periodically

reviewed for content.

Document libraries and lists should contain at least a few key content types (metadata fields) to assist the organization in managing enterprise content and improving search results.

Site quotas must be set within each site.

The utilization of Power users or Site Content Owners within your organization – on every site ensures that content stays relevant and monitored.

File upload limits should be initially set to 50 megabyte (MB). If there are specific requirements that require larger file uploads, the maximum allowable size is 2 gigabyte [GB].



Site and Workspace Governance Continued… All site content should be periodically monitored for your specific set of

banned words or phrases.

List views should be limited to 2,000 items per site.

Limit Web Parts to 50 per page.

A SharePoint Change Management Plan should be developed and implemented.

Top-level navigation should be vetted and agreed upon by all stakeholders to allow for easy navigation through the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 environment.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication)feeds should be limited to content related to the organization.

Blogs must not contain defamatory content about the company or employees within the organization.



Site and Workspace Governance Continued… Make sure all executive sites - (concerning the CEO, CIO, CFO,

and so on) and their related content are excluded from search except in public announcements or areas that are specifically set up to share their content (note that this could be relevant for human resources and legal as well).

Whenever possible, site templates should be developed for departments or projects sites to improve standardization.

SharePoint Designer 2007 customizations should be tightly monitored and controlled by specific groups within the organization.

Develop a policy to answer the questions, “How does third-party SharePoint-related software get introduced within the organization? Who will approve it and who pays for the cost of the software, its testing, and its implementation?”



Site and Workspace Governance Continued… A file-type exclusion list should be implemented within sites to avoid

non-organizational or possibly harmful files from entering the environment.

Custom search scopes should be identified and created to assist users to quickly find their data.

Version control should be turned on within all document libraries along with major and minor versions when the environment—for example, storage capacity—allows.

Avoid breaking inheritance whenever possible from all subsites, libraries, and lists. A broken inheritance should be centrally documented and tracked.

Site provisioning policies and procedures should be developed as well as consideration around a centralized site creation process or possible automated process.


Managing Sites and Subsites (New & Existing) Managing sites and subsites is a critical piece of the puzzle in a

successful SharePoint implementation.

Which Departments, Projects, or Teams will new Sites be created for?

How will the security model be aligned with those sites?

Once the new sites are created, who will manage the day-to-day content to make sure the sites stay relevant within the organization?

What support model will be setup to provide maximum availability of the environment and how will the organization’s site provisioning model be implemented and enforced within the organization?

How to Avoid or Manage Proliferation…

Managing Sites and Subsites (New & Existing)

It is important to consider and answer these questions as soon as possible, so that once sites are deployed and they begin to proliferate, the organization can keep up with the sites and their related content.

SharePoint gives site administrators the option of setting up self-service site creation, which enables users to create their own top-level web sites without requiring them to have administrator permissions on the server or virtual server. (However, this option is not viable within all organizations.)


Managing Sites and Subsites (New & Existing) Continued…

It is helpful if your organization puts site provisioning policies in place early on to answer questions such as who gets a new site and who has to utilize an existing site. This ensures that either an automated process like self-service site creation can be configured or a Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007 New Site Request Form can be developed for the Organization.

In most cases, a request process can be put in place so that a SharePoint Administrator or group of Administrators can handle new site requests by using organizational templates that are already in place.


InfoPath 2007 – Site Provisioning

A Useful Tool in Managing Site Proliferation within Your Organization

Your Organization’s SharePoint Security Model A proper SharePoint security model is critical in SharePoint site

management because administrators, designers, contributors, readers, and custom security groups should stay consistent within the organization.

The one-off addition of SharePoint users to sites should be avoided whenever possible.

However, there are always those situations in which a specific Active Directory group does not exist for the user or set of users who need to be added, and adding them individually to SharePoint is the only current option.

Once SharePoint administrators start giving individual users permissions to certain sites, or when permission inheritance is broken in a document library or list, the SharePoint administrator must separately keep track of these unique users, document libraries, and lists.

SharePoint Security…

How to Ensure Small, Departmental SharePoint Footprints can Grow within the Enterprise

Things that should be taken into consideration…

Navigation (Quick Launch, Top Link Bar) –

Inheritance…

Metadata \ Content Types

Branding \ “Look and Feel”

Security

Power Users or those that manage the content

Planning Growth…

Strategies Around Migrating Your SharePoint 2003 environment to SharePoint 2007

Things that should be taken into consideration:

How much customization does the 2003 environment have?

Does this have to be a “big bang” migration or can you migrate

groups of sites or content over in a scaled \phased approach?

Communication to the existing users (both standard and power

users)

Training around SharePoint 2007’s new functionality

Training Material or Videos

What improvement or “quick wins “ can we accomplish during

this migration to SharePoint 2007?

Migrating from 2003 to 2007…

Strategies around SharePoint Data Protection, Backup, Disaster recovery, and Archiving

With SharePoint’s growing popularity, it is quickly becoming the primary collaboration and content management solution for many organizations.

It is important that you put a disaster recovery plan in place and test it thoroughly. As a best practice, you should have a printed out a hardcopy of all mission critical policies and procedures.

You can go to the Recycle Bin to recover an item that a user has deleted, but this feature does not enable the recovery of entire sites. Out of the box, if you needed to recover an entire site, you would have to perform a restore operation from a previously successful backup of the content database. If a particular site was deleted at 4 P.M. and the last backup was made at midnight the night before, then your department or team may be out of luck regarding the work that they completed that day.

This only needs to happen once for your users to start loosing faith in SharePoint all together

Your organization should investigate in a third-party tool to restore more granular aspects of SharePoint

EPC Group – Planning a Best Practices Approach to Site Creation

User Consideration How many users will be using the sites, and will

they all be using the sites at the same time? What types of users are they, what permission

levels will they require, and who will be the users you can rely on to manage sites content (that is, who are the power users)?

What will be the users’ access requirements, and will all of them have a domain login account? Will any require additional offline capabilities?

Will Internet access to the site be necessary? Will there be multiple language requirements?

Recipe for Success…


Site Collection and Hierarchy Considerations

How many site collections will be required?

What will the root or top-level site’s path be, and what will the sub-sites’ paths be?

Will all sites use the same top-level navigation?

What will the Quick Launch bar display?



Site Content Considerations

What content types or columns (that is, metadata) should be configured within document libraries and lists?

What Web Parts should be displayed within the sites?

Will any custom lists need to be created?



Customization Considerations

Will there be a need for any custom workflows?

Do we need to plan for the development of any custom Web Parts?

Do we need any custom master pages?


EPC Group – Communication Best Practices A central communication area should be set up

for the entire SharePoint environment

All communications should contain the URL of the SharePoint site they are referencing

Who will own the organization’s communication to the overall SharePoint audience?

For SharePoint maintenance related items, communication is essential (Who, When, Where). You can loose the faith of your user audience quickly with unplanned downtime


Additional SharePoint Features Your Organization should Take Advantage of… (SQL Reporting Services)

Your Organization’s Reporting Solution

Does anybody really know what's going on? – Executive Dashboards have been something organizations have long been trying to accomplish

Develop one central report center for your organization – Some organizations can have several different reporting solutions (Crystal\Business Objects\SRS)

The usual buzz words (KPIs, Dashboards, “One Stop Shop”) – SharePoint can help you accomplish these

SQL Reporting Services

Additional SharePoint Features Your Organization can Take Advantage of…

The search solution for all your Data (including external data sources)

The Business Data Catalog \ Custom Search

The BDC Custom Search

Hurdles You May Face…

Building a business case for SharePoint 2007

Where do we even start?

How do we get SharePoint’s foot in the door?

A SharePoint –based Intranet is a quick win for your organization

Content Management requirements will quickly follow

Topics…

Hurdles You May Face…

Other Systems may already be in place for content management, the Intranet, the Extranet , and collaboration.

SharePoint can do all of these but people will drink the “SharePoint Kool-Aid” if its properly implemented

Try and Get It Right the First Time…

Thank You!

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Date post:	10-Jul-2020
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What Every Administrator Ought to Know SUCCESSFUL ... · Errin O’Connor Founder of EPC Group.net...

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