Email Cell Twitter Blog [email protected]425.246.2823 @buckleyplanet http://buckleyplanet.com Cleaning Up Information Architecture in SharePoint and Other Jedi Mind Tricks Christian Buckley [email protected]@buckleyPLANET NYC SPUG December 7 th , 2011
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Cleaning Up Information Architecture in SharePoint and Other Jedi Mind Tricks
Presentation given at the NYC SharePoint User Group on December 7th 2011 on the importance of information architecture and governance planning in a successful SharePoint deployment or migration.
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Christian Buckley, Director of Product Evangelism at Axceler
• Most recently at Microsoft
• Microsoft Managed Services (now Office365-Dedicated)
• Advertising Operations, ad platform API program
• Prior to Microsoft, was a senior consultant, working in the software, supply chain, and grid technology spaces focusing on collaboration
• Co-founded and sold a collaboration software company to Rational Software. Also co-authored 3 books on software configuration management and defect tracking for Rational and IBM
• At another startup (E2open), helped design, build, and deploy a SharePoint-like collaboration platform (Collaboration Manager), managing deployment teams to onboard numerous high-tech manufacturing companies, including Hitachi, Matsushita, Seagate, Nortel, Sony, and Cisco
• I live in a small town just east of Seattle, 4 kids. Co-authoring ‘Creating and Implementing Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Real-World Projects’ (MSPress)
Improving Collaboration for 17+ Years Mission: To enable enterprises to simplify, optimize, and
secure their collaborative platforms Delivered award-winning administration and migration
software since 1994 Over 2,000 global customers
Dramatically improve the management of SharePoint
Innovative products that improve security, scalability, reliability, “deployability”
Making IT more effective and efficient and lower the total cost of ownership
Focus on solving specific SharePoint problems (Administration & Migration)
Coach enterprises on SharePoint best practices Give administrators the most innovative tools available Anticipate customers’ needs Deliver best of breed offerings Stay in lock step with SharePoint development and market trends
Information architecture is a specialized skill set that interprets information and expresses distinctions between signs and systems of signs. More concretely, it involves the categorization of information into a coherent structure, preferably one that the intended audience can understand quickly, if not inherently, and then easily retrieve the information for which they are searching. The organization structure is usually hierarchical, but can have other structures, such as concentric or even chaotic
Overview / introduction How to Successfully Move to 2010
Before / Now – clean up your 2007 environment Challenges with SharePoint Administration How Axceler ControlPoint can help
During – right tools to reduce risks, errors and ensure successful move Challenges with SharePoint Migration / Upgrades How Davinci Migrator for SharePoint can help
After – ongoing management and administration Customer success stories About Axceler
Information architecture is sort of like the young Jedi padawan: As you build it, you learn and grow and get stronger over time.
Governance is more like the Force: it's everywhere, some people ignore it or don't feel its influence, but those who know it and sense it can harness it to become stronger, more powerful.
What is on my system today? What am I trying to achieve? What are the business needs? What are my priorities? What are my restrictions? What is the process or methodology for moving
these things forward? What is my organizational culture?
Think about how the business will use the environment
Think about it from the web app, the top level portal experience, and then build out your sites based on the business drivers of your teams/business units
Enforce structure and policies through site content types, which may require certain metadata to be applied for any new uploads
Add site columns consistently across all sites, such as an external connection to a customer list, or use MMS
You can also design and use workflows
Define information management policies, apply retention policies
Know what is out there How many farms do we have? How many web applications? How many site collections? Who manages all of them? How do people navigate those sites, and find their
Understand the scope of what you are building, as many solutions are limited to the site collection Permission inheritance and all the child sites within them Out of the box navigation control and other web parts Content type retention policies, site columns, and list templates Know where you are going to use these things, which may dictate
how you organize your environment
Think about how you are going to provision your sites and manage this process ongoing, which may also dictate how you design your environment
Map out the existing environment Understand the business priorities Model your planned environment Run a detailed discovery of what should be
migrated Conduct detailed capacity planning Identify roles and responsibilities Understand your audience and topology Analyze usage and activity Know your storage needs Track and plan for each customization Create a detailed migration schedule Organize granular requirements by team Plan to migrate or index file shares Replace third party tools with out-of-the-box
functionality Create or refine your metadata and taxonomy Map content to new information architecture Cleanup permissions Optimize information architecture for search Stage your platform for migration Coordinate with your operations team Roll out new features Plan for where and when to involve the users Develop and track key performance indicators Train your end users on new functionality
Where should you focus?• Update the look and feel• Create an audit process for ongoing
maintenance• Develop a back up and disaster recovery plan• Update systems to latest builds and service
packs• Establish a sound governance model• Identifies throttles and limitations• Understand and plan for new functionality• Focus on functionality, then look and feel• Develop a communication strategy• Create a governance website• Run PreUpgradeCheck a few dozen times• Have an anti-virus and maintenance plan• Plan for migration from other ECM platforms• Consolidate or reduce the number of SharePoint
versions supported• Understand performance metrics for the system• Know your stakeholders• Assign metadata to the new information
architecture• Develop a detailed test plan• Get signoff on all major design and architectural
decisions• Decide where and when to use end users• Establish strong change management policies• Expand the footprint to mobile or the cloud• Understand and focus on the organizational
Identify existing sites and sub-sites Plan for new site collections and sites Plan out site navigation Define your site templates Plan out content deployment strategies Design the end-user collaboration experience Plan for team, business unit variations Plan for content approval and scheduling Plan for unique geographical needs (language, performance) Identify roles and responsibilities, and figure out permissions needs Plan for customizations and line of business app integrations Plan your social strategy Plan your communication and training strategy
In Biology, taxonomy is the science dealing with the description, identification, naming, and classification of organisms. “however, the term is now applied in a wider, more general sense and now may refer to a classification of things, as well as to the principles underlying such a classification.”
“Metadata provides context for data. Metadata is used to facilitate the understanding, characteristics, and management usage of data. The metadata required for effective data management varies with the type of data and context of use.” Wikipedia.org
• Ad-hoc content migration leads to junk in portal• Legacy content gets migrated slowly, if at all • Inconsistent taxonomy across farms and site collections• People author locally - multiplies problems globally• Authors don’t apply metadata= “shotgun” approach to search
OR Authors apply metadata without common classification = better search, but worse authoring experience
• Portal lacks high fidelity search• User can’t find the right content• As a result, poor portal adoption and low user satisfaction
Get organized: Understand what is out there Who owns the content? Does it need to be moved? Does it need to be indexed/searchable? Is the folder structure important? Do you need to maintain historic metadata?
Site Templates Group Work Site Visio Process Repository Assets Web Database Charitable Contributions Web Database Contacts Web Database Issues Web Database Projects Web Database Business Intelligence Center Enterprise Search Center Basic Search Center FAST Search Center Enterprise Wiki
Standardize site structures and templates
Which SharePoint 2010 Site Template is Right for Me? Todd Baginski, http://bit.ly/6ENap9
Team Site Blank Site Document Workspace Blog Group Work Site Visio Process Repository Basic Meeting Workspace Blank Meeting Workspace Decision Meeting Workspace Social Meeting Workspace Multipage Meeting Workspace Assets Web Database Charitable Contributions Web Database Contacts Web Database Issues Web Database
Sub-sites templates
Projects Web Database Document Center Records Center Business Intelligence Center My Site Host Personalization Site Enterprise Search Center Basic Search Center FAST Search Center Enterprise Wiki Publishing Portal Publishing Site Publishing Site With Workflow
Contact me at Christian Buckley, [email protected], 425-246-2823 On Twitter at @buckleyplanet www.buckleyPLANET.com
Check out SharePointProMag.com article
How SharePoint 2010 Stacks Up to Your End-User Social Media Requirements On The Importance of Metadata, Craig Mullins http://bit.ly/cOWp2F Enabling Social Media through Metadata http://slidesha.re/gdjoaz Managed Metadata in SharePoint 2010, Scott Singleton http://slidesha.re/hNPeAQ The Battle for Metadata in SharePoint 2010, Michal Pisarek http://bit.ly/g7vFWN 5 Steps of a Successful SharePoint Site Transformation http://bit.ly/eB6qbN Creating Passionate Users, Kathy Sierra http://headrush.typepad.com/