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SUCCESSFUL SHAREPOINT DEPLOYMENT STRATEGIES What Every Administrator Ought to Know By: Errin O’Connor EPC Group.net Best Practices and Real: World Deployment Scenarios for SharePoint 2007
SUCCESSFUL SHAREPOINT DEPLOYMENT STRATEGIES
What Every Administrator Ought to Know
By: Errin O’ConnorEPC Group.net
Best Practices and Real: World Deployment Scenarios for SharePoint 2007
SharePoint 2007 Best Practices
Learn how to properly implement SharePoint to build enterprise-strength environments that grow with your needs, based on real-world customer deployment examples. Includes pros and cons of various SharePoint roll out strategies.
Session Overview…
SharePoint 2007 Best Practices
Discussions around customer case studies in different industries
What are organizations typical pain points?
Specific security, administration, and deployment
challenges
Pitfalls to Avoid
Master Pages and Governed Custom Branding
Session Topics…
Case Studies: Using SharePoint as the Organization’s True Content Management Platform
What Are They Currently Using?
OR
OR
OR
Case Studies: Using SharePoint as the Organization’s True Content Management Platform
Who is Doing This?
•Most the Major Oil & Gas Companies•United States Armed Forces•Educational Institutions
Case Studies…
Case Studies: Using SharePoint as the Organization’s True Content Management Platform
Who is doing this? (United States Navy)
The United States Navy’s Distance Support Portal
• This Portal is key to helping the US Navy deliver on its mission to continually improve operational efficiency and safety procedures for its Fleet.
• The Distance Support portal serves as a central source for information-sharing, a fleet-wide procedural documentation store, as well as a video conferencing center.
• The US Navy’s Intranet is a massive SharePoint solution!
Case Studies…
Case Studies: Using SharePoint as the Organization’s True Content Management Platform
Who is doing this? (The Major Oil & Gas Companies)
Chevron is rolling out SharePoint to all 80,000 of its users
Exxon is rolling out a new massive SharePoint 2007 deployment
Marathon Oil has a large SharePoint collaboration environment
ConocoPhillips uses SharePoint as well!
For more SharePoint case studies, go to:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointserver/HA102066081033.aspx
Case Studies…
Case Study: External Facing SharePoint Environment Using SharePoint as an Extranet \ Internet Site for your
organization is becoming very popular
Case Studies…
Case Study: External Facing SharePoint Environment Forms Based Authentication \ Centralized Security Model
Case Studies…
Typical Pain Points for Organizations
Keeping Content Up-to-Date and Relevant
Its a New Way to Manage and Render Your
Content (Utilize SharePoint's Publishing Features)
Proper Site Management Delegation
Pitfalls…
Keeping Content Up-to-Date and Relevant
To ensure that your organization’s SharePoint content is kept up-to-date, you will first need to identify the resources responsible for performing this task.
Will you be the primary resource for updating your site, or will this task be delegated to others? In large organizations, one individual cannot possibly be
responsible for ensuring all SharePoint sites are up-to-date at all times, so power users or content owners must be identified to perform these tasks.
Pitfalls…
Adding the Right Web Parts to Your SharePoint Sites
What Web Parts would my users like to see on the page?
How would my users like to see them on the page?
Which Web Part zones should specific Web Parts go into?
What should the names of these Web Parts be?
Which Web Parts would encourage collaboration on my site?
Which Web Parts would lessen the load on my user base or help them to finish some of their day-to-day tasks and activities?
What type of toolbar should I use for the Web Parts on the page?
Pitfalls…
Delegating Site Management to Power Users
Power users are key to the success of your organization’s SharePoint implementation.
Site update tasks must be assigned to a specific power user or users so that site content stays up to date and relevant.
A power user should be very familiar with how SharePoint works and have either Full Control or Design permissions (or their equivalent) for the site they will manage. Note: Site Deletion Permission is usually restricted from Power
Users
Pitfalls…
Best Practices for Power Users in Your Organization
As a best practice, your organization should create a dedicated power users security group. It is also a good idea to have a power users SharePoint site so that all the power users can share best practices and lessons learned with one another. This can also allow them to support each other if a specific power user is going to be out of the office or unavailable.
You may also want to empower your power users to train new SharePoint users to use their sites. Giving them the proper training materials, videos, or similar training vehicles to hand off to new users will also lower the costs involved with having IT train new users.
Power Users…
Delegation of Site Management Tasks to Power Users Tasks that should be delegated to power users include:
Managing Web Parts within a site
Updating the List View Web Parts on the page to make sure the content that is displayed within them—which is what is most visible to the user base—is updated and accurate
Managing all existing lists and libraries and their content within the site
Creating new lists or libraries based on new requirements or user requests
Additional Tasks that could be delegated: Creating subsites within existing sites
Managing the user base of the SharePoint site
Customizing the navigation (that is, the Quick Launch and Top Link bars) of a site
Creating new workflows & managing site content types
Planning Content Administration
Your organization’s power users should be empowered and proactive about content administration.
Proper content administration planning can drastically reduce the time and cost involved in site content administration.
If you can count on your power users to manage the majority of user requests and keep site content up to date, you will have a much more efficient and successful SharePoint environment within your organization.
Power users will also lessen requests and calls into an organization’s help desk, allowing IT to focus on supporting other systems within your organization.
Power Users…
Pitfalls to Avoid
Don’t let the information management piece of your SharePoint initiative cause your project to fail
To many organization’s get bogged down on the information management piece which can cause major delays and risks to your project –You need to put a stake in the ground and start somewhere!
Allow your organization’s metadata\content types to evolve over multiple phases but make sure all changes are uniform throughout your implementation
Pitfalls…
Pitfalls to Avoid
The branding of your SharePoint environment is important but it should not jeopardize the deployment schedule – This can mature over time!
Do not forget to communicate to the largest internal audience possible regarding your initiative! SharePoint can be very high profile so make sure as many people feel included as possible
SharePoint projects are very agile and fast pace – Don’t jeopardize your schedule by getting bogged down on items that are not critical –You have to start somewhere
Pitfalls…
Is My Site a Potential Pitfall?
SharePoint Server’s My Site functionality enables users to have a dedicated personal site to manage all of their documents, content, and tasks.
It also provides enhanced circles of collaboration with users that have similar skills and interests within the organization. My Sites in SharePoint really – have two sites: a public site and a private site.
My Sites can be an extremely powerful tool that organizations can take advantage of to vastly improve collaboration, but it is important to have policies and procedures in place to govern these sites.
The nature of SharePoint is to encourage users to venture out into the organization and find important and relevant information as well as to help others find the content they are looking for in a timely manner.
MySite Governance…
My Site Governance is Critical!
My Site templates and custom site definitions can be created to minimize these risks, but organizations should adhere to the following standards during their My Site rollout: All My Site Public View content must contain only work-related material. This
includes work-related documents, discussions, pictures, links, calendar events, and related content.
No My Site Public View content can contain any confidential or private data. If the organization would not allow all users within the company with a domain login to view this information, consider whether it should be on your My Site Public View.
Content pertaining to human resources or legal is typically considered confidential and should not be listed on My Site Public View.
Financial data must be reviewed prior to its posting on My Site Public View.
Content on the private site must not contain personal audio files, inappropriate pictures, or other materials not allowed within the organization.
All discussions or blogging done within a My Site must follow company policies and must not contain sensitive company material or defamatory comments about any person within the organization.
MySite Governance…
What Can Work:
SharePoint Designer 2007
Session Topics…
SharePoint Designer 2007 has powerful features for creating and designing SharePoint sites as well as built-in tools to automate business processes with Workflow Designer.
Microsoft FrontPage 2003 gave users the ability to customize SharePoint sites but in many cases it causes them to become unghosted and causes an assortment of other issues around performance, governance, and future upgradability.
When a site becomes un-ghosted, it basically means that a copy of the actual page is no longer generated dynamically from the site template.
What Can Work: SharePoint Designer 2007
(Continued…)
Session Topics…
With SharePoint Designer 2007, users can create SharePoint sites that meet the exact requirements of the organization while being monitored and controlled by site administrators to enforce governance policies and site standardization.
The access model for SharePoint Designer 2007 enables administrators to set up contributor settings for each SharePoint user role within a site and control the specific actions each role is allowed to perform in SharePoint with SharePoint Designer 2007.
What Can Work: SharePoint Designer 2007
No Code Solutions…
What Can Work: SharePoint Designer 2007:
Defining Your New Custom Workflow
No Code Solutions…
1.
2.3.
What Can Work: “The Fabulous 40”
Build off What Is Available…
Microsoft has also developed at least 40 additional application templates to address the needs of different organizations and their initiatives.
These templates can be downloaded from Microsoft.com and come ready to use, but they also work great with SharePoint Designer 2007 as a starting point for your SharePoint administrators and developers to build very sophisticated sites.
These application templates are separated into site Admin templates (*.stp files) for SharePoint administrators, and Server Admin templates (*.wsp files), which are site definitions.
What Can Work: “The Fabulous 40”
Build off What Is Available…
What Can Work: “The Fabulous 40”
Build off What Is Available…
What Can Work: “The Fabulous 40”Use these templates as a building block for what you are
trying to accomplish!
What Can Work: Master Pages
Master Pages | Governed Branding…
A master page contains the page design and layout elements that you want to repeat on multiple pages in a site.
Using master pages for these common elements will allow your organization to implement a more consistent “look and feel” throughout the SharePoint environment. It will also allow your organization to create and update these elements in one place, rather than changing them on each Web page.
You can use master pages to position items that must be shared by all pages, such as navigational controls, company logos, and copyright notices.
What Can Work: Master Pages
Master Pages | Governed Branding…
https://www.ocps.net/Pages/default.aspx
What Can Work: Master Pages
Master Pages | Governed Branding…
http://www.lha-asra.org.uk/Pages/default.aspx
What Can Work: Daily SharePoint
Administration Task List
The following tasks should be performed as frequently as
possible for each and every SharePoint site: Review the content in the Web Parts that are within your site’s Web
Part zones. Review the documents in each library to make sure they are relevant
to the site. Review the items in each list on the site. Make sure that all old or expired content no longer displays on your
site. Review the users and groups on the site and their associated
permissions levels. Review any open requests that users have submitted about the site. Update any graphics on the site that may be old or no longer
appropriate, which can give the site an updated look.
Administration…
E-Mail Enabling SharePoint: Add content to Sites by Sending E-Mail
You can add content — such as e-mail discussions, documents, pictures, and calendar items — to a SharePoint site by sending the content in e-mail to your site. If your list or library is set up to receive e-mail, this may be a more convenient way to work.
Suppose you want to send a document to your team and add it to your team's document library. You can perform both tasks at once, instead of sending e-mail and then switching to SharePoint to add the document to the site.
Populate content in one quick step.
MOSS Is Ready…
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 is ready for prime time! Make sure and let people in your organization know that!
Thank You!
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