Using SharePoint to Create a Blog

A blog is a Web site that enables you or your organization to quickly share ideas and information. Blogs contain posts that are dated and listed in reverse chronological order. People can comment on your posts, as well as provide links to interesting sites, photos, and related blogs.

Blogs posts can be created quickly, and they often have an informal tone or provide a unique perspective. Although blogs are frequently used for commentary on the Internet, they can be used in several ways in a corporate environment. For example, one of my clients used SharePoint blog for facility maintenance notes.

SharePoint Services provides a blog template that makes creating a blog easy. A blog is a site that contains lists and libraries, such as a list of blog posts, a list of other blogs, and a library for photos. Once you create a blog, you can set up categories, and then customize the blog settings.

When you create a blog, you need to decide whether you want the blog to inherit permissions from the parent site or set up unique permissions manually. In most cases, you should set up unique permissions for the blog to ensure that you can manage its site settings, lists, and libraries independently of its parent site. For example, you might want to grant less restrictive permissions on your blog than on the parent site, such as enabling all authenticated users on your intranet to read and comment on the blog.

Before you start adding content to your blog, you will want to make sure that your site, lists, and libraries are set up the way that you want. For example, you may want to edit the description of a list to help your readers understand its purpose, change permissions for the blog or the Other Blogs list, or track versions of your blog posts so that you can restore a previous version of a post if necessary.

Once you've customized the settings for your blog, then you can set up categories to help you organize your posts. Categories are especially helpful if you create blog posts about different subjects or for different purposes, such as current events, brainstorming for a special project, or a technology or hobby. When posts are organized by categories, people can more easily find the posts that fit their interests by clicking the appropriate category in the Categories list.

To create a blog, you must have permission to create sites. Click "View All Site Content", and then click "Create" on the "All Site Content" page. You can use the "Site Actions" menu to complete this step.

Next set up categories. You can add more categories or edit the category names later. If you don't want to use categories, you can choose "None" for the category when you create a post.

Under "Admin Links", click "All content". Under "Lists", click "Categories". The Categories list appears. If you have not set up categories on the blog before, the list contains category placeholders, such as Category 1 and Category 2. In the "Categories" list, click the "Edit" button to the right of the category placeholder that you want to change. Select the placeholder text, type the new text that you want, and then click OK. Repeat steps 3 through 5 to replace the existing placeholder categories with your own categories. To add additional categories, click "New on the list toolbar, and then type a name for the category in the "Title" box. To delete a category, point to its name, click the arrow that appears, and then click "Delete Item".

Once created, you may want to customize settings for your blog, or for its lists and libraries. In your blog, under "Admin Links", do one of the following:

• to customize the Posts list, click Manage posts;
• to customize the Comments list, click Manage comments;
• to customize the Other Blogs list, click All content. Under Lists, click Other Blogs;
• to customize any other lists or libraries in the blog — such as the Links list or Photos picture library — click All content, and then click the list that you want to change.

On the Settings menu, click "List Settings" or click the settings for the type of library that you are opening, such as "Picture Library Settings". Click the type of setting that you want to change, such as "Versioning" settings or "Permissions" for this list, and then make the appropriate changes. Repeat this procedure for any other settings, lists, or libraries that you want to change.

SharePoint - Project Management Features

SharePoint has project management features to manage projects and keep track of project information on a site. You can track team events with a calendar, manage a list of tasks, and log and respond to issues.

A team can use a calendar to track team events, vacations, and conferences, and other events. Team members can connect this calendar to Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, where they can overlay it with their personal calendars to avoid scheduling conflicts. They can copy events back and forth between the calendars.

The team can use tasks lists to manage the work for large projects, such as planning a convention and managing a marketing campaign. Tasks can be set up with a standard list view or as a project tasks list. A project tasks list provides a visual overview, known as a Gantt view, of the tasks and their progress. Templates are available for creating lists in either format — a standard list view or a project tasks list.

The team can use an issue tracking list to track logistical problems that are related to the conference planning, such as registration database issues. A team member logs the issue, and then people record any updates and fixes until the issue is resolved.

Working with lists

When you create a team site, several lists are created for you. These default lists range from a discussion board to a calendar list. You can customize and add items to these lists, create additional lists from templates, and create custom lists with just the settings and columns that you choose.

Lists can include many types of information, ranging from text to dates to pictures. Lists can also include calculations, such as totals or a calculated date, such as a week from today's date.

By using lists, you can do the following:

Track versions - You can track versions of list items, so that you can see which list items have changed, as well as who changed them. If mistakes are made in a newer version, you can restore a previous version of an item.

Require approval - Your organization can specify that approval for a list item is required before it can be viewed by everyone.

Integrate e-mail with a list - If incoming or outgoing e-mail is enabled on your site, some lists can take advantage of e-mail features. Some types of lists, such as calendars and discussions, can be set up so that people can add content to them by sending e-mail. Additionally, Office Outlook 2007 integrates with calendar, tasks, and contacts lists.

Customize permissions - Your organization can specify custom permissions for a list or even a single list item. This feature can be useful, for example, if a specific item contains confidential information.

Create and manage views - Your group can create different views of the same list. The contents of the actual list don't change, but the items are organized or filtered so that people can find the most important or interesting information.

Keep informed about changes - You can subscribe to RSS Feeds of lists and views to see updates to lists in your RSS viewer, such as Outlook 2007. If your organization has set up incoming e-mail, you can receive e-mail alerts when items change.

Manage lists and work offline with lists in Microsoft Office Access 2007 - You can manage lists with database tools and take lists offline with Office Access 2007.

View lists on mobile devices - You can view many lists, such as tasks lists and calendars, and document libraries on mobile devices. To view a mobile list, type /m after the Web address of the site. Mobile views are not available for some list types, such as discussions, and may not display all column types.

Common types of lists for collaboration

The following are some of the more common types of lists your organization can use:

Calendar - Use a calendar for all of your team's events or for specific situations, such as a project calendar or company holidays.

Tasks and project tasks - Use a tasks list to track information about projects and other events for your group. You can assign tasks to people, as well as track the status and percentage complete as the task moves toward completion. A project tasks list displays the tasks with progress bars, known as a Gantt view.

Issue tracking - Use an issue-tracking list to store issues, their status, and resolution. This is a common type of list for tracking support issues or incidents, such as customer service, quality assurance, or technical support.

Discussion boards - Use a discussion board to provide a central place to record and store team discussions that is similar to the format of newsgroups.

Announcements - Use an announcements list to share news and status and to provide reminders.

Contacts - Use a contacts list to store information about people or groups that you work with.

Links - Use a links list as a central location for links to the Web, your company's intranet, and other resources.

Surveys - Use a survey to collect and compile feedback, such as an employee satisfaction survey or a quiz.

Custom - Although you can customize any built-in list, you can start with a custom list and then add just the settings that you want. You can also create a list that is based on a spreadsheet, such as a Microsoft Office Excel 2007 workbook for managing contracts.

SharePoint Libraries for Content Management

A library is a place on a site where team members can work together to create, update, and manage files. Each library displays a list of files and key information about the files.

Why work with libraries?

Storing your documents in a central location can help your team work on files together, especially if your files tend to be scattered among people's computers or in multiple shared folders on your network.

For example, the Marketing team uses a document library named Marketing Documents for managing its press releases, budget files, contracts, and other types of files. The library stores information that is relevant to the type of file, such as the name of the project that the file is associated with. The Marketing team also uses a slide library to share and reuse slides for presentations.

The Shared Documents library is created automatically when your team creates a new site. You can start using this library right away, customize it, or create other libraries. Your team can also create more specialized libraries, such as slide libraries, picture libraries, and form libraries.

The Marketing team tracks versions in its libraries, so the team has a history of how files have evolved and can restore a previous version if someone makes a mistake. Team members check out documents when they work on them, so that no one else can overwrite their changes.

If you want a workspace where you can coordinate work on a document or a small number of related documents, you can create a Document Workspace site. A Document Workspace site includes a document library in addition to a tasks list, schedules, and a list of workspace members. For storing your team's primary set of documents, which your team uses on a routine basis, use your team's Shared Documents library.

By default, people in the Members group can add files to and edit files in a library. If you don't have permission, contact the person who owns your site or library. If you are a site owner or designer, you can customize the library by changing how the files are displayed and managed.

Some key advantages of working with libraries

The following are some key features of libraries that enable your team to manage its files and work more efficiently. Advanced features for managing content, such as policies on how documents are used and shared, are explained in other topics.

Central location - a library is a central location where your team can update and manage documents. If your team members struggle to keep up with files stored on individual shares or sent in separate e-mail messages, a library can help reduce the chaos.

Checkout - you can check out a file to reserve it for your use so that others cannot change it while you are working on it. If you are using the 2007 Microsoft Office system, you can work with files on your computer, and even take them offline, when you check them out.

Versions - a library can track versions, which provides a version history and enables previous versions to be restored.

Alerts and RSS - you can set up e-mail alerts or subscribe to RSS Feeds so that you are updated on changes to files.

Views - your team can create views that show content in multiple ways that may be especially relevant or meaningful. For example, the Marketing team has views of files grouped by department and contracts that expire this month.

Search - libraries are searchable. For example, you can search on a title or property of a document, such as the document author.

Client integration - If you are running some 2007 Office release programs, such as Microsoft Office Word 2007, you can work with server features directly from the client, such as checking out files, updating server properties, or viewing a version history.

Approval - your library can be set up to require someone to approve files before they are displayed to others. This feature can be helpful if your library contains important guidelines or procedures that need to be final before others see them.

Content types - your team can set up content types for the types of documents it uses most often, such as marketing presentations, budget worksheets, and contracts. The content types include templates as a starting point, for formatting and any boilerplate text and for properties that apply to the documents of that type, such as department name or contract number.

Workflow - your group can apply business processes to its documents, known as workflows, which specify actions that need to be taken in a sequence, such as approving or translating documents.

SharePoint and Collaboration

Most people spend the greater part of their work day involved in collaborative tasks. They share information, they work together in teams, and they manage projects. It can be a challenge to collaborate effectively if you do not have tools to easily communicate, share information, and coordinate projects details and deadlines among a large group of people.

SharePoint can help you get your work done more efficiently because it provides organizations with a platform for sharing information and working together in teams. A SharePoint site offers specific kinds of tools and workspaces that you can use to communicate with team members, track projects, coordinate deadlines, and collaboratively create and edit documents.

Manage Projects More Efficiently

Users can create a site from the Team Site template to manage a range of team projects and document related tasks. They would use their team site every day to create and manage documents, track issues and tasks, and share links and contacts. Because they have one location for these activities, members of a team can save time and enjoy increased productivity.

The site template for a team site includes:

• Shared documents library;
• Announcements list;
• Calendar;
• Team discussion list;
• Tasks list;
• Links list.

The site can store long term routine information for a single department or short term information for a special project that spans several departments. By creating a team site to use as a collaborative workspace, your team can become both more efficient and more productive and ultimately achieve better business results. You can also customize your site to meet the needs of your team or project by adding lists, libraries, or other features to the site. Calendar can be used for tracking events, meetings, etc. Users can link the calendar to their personal calendars in Microsoft Office Outlook so that they can view this information along with their personal calendar information. Users can create a Project Tasks list to visualize and track the key phases of projects.

There are several different ways you can use a team site to manage projects more efficiently:

• use built-in features such as the Project Tasks list template, which enables you to visualize task relationships and project status with automated Gantt charts;
• coordinate the team's work with shared calendars, alerts, and notifications. You can connect a calendar on your SharePoint site to your calendar in Office Outlook 2007, where you can view and update it just as you do your personal calendar;
• create Meeting Workspace sites to gather materials and documents related to a meeting.

Create, Review, and Share Documents

Groups of people can create and edit documents collaboratively. For example, team members save general documents to a shared Documents library, where other team members can easily read them or check them out and edit them or team can use slide or picture libraries to save and reuse slides and pictures for various presentations, etc. For special projects that involve only a few people, team members can create Document Workspace subsites on their team site. Document Workspace sites help users to coordinate work on a single document or a group of documents.

There are several different ways to save and work on documents and other files on a team site:

• use document libraries to store and manage important documents. Features such as versioning and check-out help you keep track of revisions to a document and to prevent multiple people from making changes at the same time;
• create Document Workspace sites to coordinate the development of specific documents;
• use Slide Libraries to share and reuse slides in a central location;
• take document libraries offline to enable people to view and edit documents while they are not connected to the network;
• use workflows to manage collaborative tasks such as document review or approval.

Capture and Share Team Knowledge

SharePoint provides organizations with a central location to capture best practices, share information, and promote standardized business processes. Teams can use both a wiki site and a blog site to capture and communicate information of interest to the team. A team can use a wiki to compile general information about company and team processes that will be helpful to new team members. Any member of the team can add information to the wiki or update the wiki posts. A team can also routinely post industry-related or marketing-related information to a blog site, where other team members can read the posts and comment on them. The blog provides team members with a forum to share new ideas, opinions, or inspiration.

Here are some ways you can use SharePoint to capture and share collective team knowledge or important information:

• track updates and information with alerts or Really Simple Syndication (RSS);
• use blogs to share or promote information;
• Capture community knowledge or document internal processes by using a wiki;
• use surveys or discussions to gather information or encourage dialogue.

SharePoint - Lists and Libraries Management

When a SharePoint list or library has a large number of items, you must carefully plan its organization, taking into account how users need to access documents or data. By planning and using a few key list and library features, you can ensure that users can find information without adversely affecting the performance of the rest of your site.

SharePoint contains a Document Center site template that you can use when you want to create a site that is optimized for creating, managing, and storing large numbers of documents.

Manage large numbers of documents using Document Center site

A Document Center is a specialized site designed to serve as a centralized repository for managing documents. You can use a Document Center site as an authoring environment or a content archive.

In an authoring environment, users actively check files in and out and create folder structures for those files. Versioning is enabled, and 10 or more earlier versions of each document can exist. Users check documents in and out frequently, and workflows can help automate actions on the documents.

In contrast, very little authoring occurs in a content archive. Users only view or upload documents. The Document Center site template supports creating knowledge base archives.

You can also create another type of large-scale archive by using the Records Center site template. The Records Center site template contains features for managing the retention and disposition of records.

Document Center Features

Tree View Navigation

The tree view should be a familiar navigation element for most Microsoft Windows users. A documents library can have folders so you can use the tree view to quickly browse to the document that you want. Be careful when you create folders. It is not advisable to create sub-folders, i.e. folders inside folders because users have to click many times to get to documents. If you need to separate documents inside the folder, perhaps it is the time to create a new library to create more space.

Major and Minor Document Versioning

You can turn on versioning for any document library. Versioning lets you track changes to documents, and it helps you manage content as you revise it. Versioning is especially helpful when several people work together on projects, or when information goes through several stages of development and review.

With versioning turned on, you can restore an earlier version as your current document, or view an earlier version without overwriting the current document.

Check-in and Check-out

The default settings in the Document Center require users to check out and check in files. Requiring check-out helps prevent conflicts and confusion over changes, because only one user can change a file at a time. When you require check-out, a file is checked out automatically when someone opens it for editing, unless another user already has it checked out.

While you have a file checked out, your changes are not visible to others until you check the file back in. This is true whether you are working on your hard disk or on the server. When you check in a file, you are prompted to enter comments about your changes, and the comments become part of the version history. And because the Documents library tracks major and minor versions of a file, you are prompted to choose which type of version you are checking in. Minor version is usually still a draft document, and a major version is a completed version of this document.

Content Types

A content type is a reusable group of settings for a category of content. You can use content types to manage the metadata, templates, and behaviors of items and documents consistently. See my post on SharePoint content types for more details on how to work with content types in SharePoint.

Create Specialized Views

You can create specialized views in libraries which will allow users to see only one set of items at a time. Views are based on metadata fields assigned to documents or data. When you create these views, choose only those metadata fields that you want to see in these views. You can also specify the order in which metadata will appear. You also will be able to filter these views to see only specific items.

Workflows

You can create workflows to automate movement of documents. SharePoint has the following workflows: approval, review, collect signature. You can also set up a workflow to flag obsolete documents - it is called three-state workflow. You can create specialized workflows using SharePoint Designer. See my post on SharePoint workflows for more details on how to set up and manage workflows.

Content Approval

If you set up content approval, you can control the publication of new content. This will help to ensure that only completed documents are uploaded, that documents are uploaded into correct locations, and metadata is populated correctly.

Taxonomy and CMS

Any information system should have two access points - search and browse. When users know exactly what they are looking for, they are going to use search. If you have enabled metadata search in your system, this search is going to be precise and will retrieve documents that users are looking for.

If users do not know what they are looking for, they are going to use browse to navigate to documents. Somewhere, some time during their browsing they may switch to search and then back to browsing.

In order to enable browsing or navigation in your system, you must create taxonomy and organize your documents according to this taxonomy.

But how do you apply the taxonomy that you created to your content management system (CMS)? Each CMS has a hierarchical structure. For example, SharePoint has the following structure: site collection --> site --> sub-site (optional) --> library --> folder, Vasont has collection group --> collection --> content type. And so each CMS has a hierarchical structure which could be adopted to your taxonomy.

Let's look at a specific example. Your taxonomy may look something like this: department --> unit --> content type --> subject --> date.

If we take SharePoint as the CMS you use, then: department = site collection; unit = site; content type = library; date = folder (for some content types) or subject = folder (for other content types).

In other words, each taxonomy unit is the same as a unit in the hierarchical structure of your CMS.

So, our example within CMS would look like this:

Engineering Department Site Collection --> Electrical Engineering Site --> Drawings Library --> Building Electrical Wiring Folder

or

Engineering Department Site Collection --> Electrical Engineering Site --> White Papers Library --> 2012 Folder

So, if somebody tells you that a CMS does not have a functionality to create taxonomy, ask them what is the hierarchical structure of this CMS and adopt this structure to your taxonomy.

SharePoint - Site Content and Structure

Site Content and Structure page is used to manage both the content and structure of your SharePoint site collection. In SharePoint, navigation is dynamically generated from the site collection hierarchy. This means that when you change the structure of the site (for example, if you move a subsite), that change is carried through to the site navigation. Where the item now appears in the site navigation reflects the new location of the underlying subsite.

The actions you can take on this page include more than changing the structure of the site. You can manage content by performing other actions on lists and list items. For example, you check out or check in, publish, and copy items.

To ensure that the interface for the Site Content and Structure page is familiar to you, it was designed to be similar to Windows Explorer. You can see the site collection hierarchy in the navigation pane as a tree view on the left of the Site Content and Structure page. On the right, items are listed in the list pane. To access the Site Content and Structure page, you must have a minimum of Contribute permissions.

You can go to the Site Content and Structure page through the Site Actions menu. If you are at the top level of your site, you will see the menu item listed on the Site Actions menu. If you are in a subsite, you can navigate to the Site Settings page and then navigate to the Site Content and Structure page.

You can use features such as check-out, discard check-outs, submit for approval, or publish items. In addition, you can restructure the site collection by moving, copying, or deleting content items. When content is copied, moved, or deleted, the links associated with that content are also updated.

The actions that are enabled for an item in the Site Content and Structure page are context sensitive and depend on the status of the item. For example, if an item is checked out, the check-out action is not enabled. The actions that are enabled depend on the security context of the current user. Beyond whether an action is enabled for a feature, actions that are enabled or even displayed depend on other factors such as the type of list an item is contained in or if certain features, such as publishing, are enabled in the site collection.

The discard check-outs action, which enables you to undo the check-out action for a different user on either a single item or multiple items, restores items to the state that they were in when they were last checked out. A typical scenario is if an employee forgets to check in files before going on vacation. The manager can use the discard check-outs action to release the files. This action is only available from the Manage Content and Structure page and only if you have the appropriate permissions.

On the Site Content and Structure page, any action that you can perform on a single item you can perform on multiple items by first selecting the items and then selecting an action.

You can copy entire subsites or lists to another subsite in the site collection hierarchy or you can copy individual content items to any compatible library. However, it is not possible to use the copy action to duplicate a library item in the same library.

After you perform the copy action, the site navigation is updated for all navigation components, and the site navigation will reflect that the subsites, libraries or library items are in both locations.

You can move individual library items or entire subsites to another subsite within the site collection. A subsite can be moved to be directly under the top level in the site collection hierarchy or under another subsite in the site collection hierarchy. When you move a subsite, all of the content in the subsite is moved. However, you cannot move only a library (for example, only the socuments library) to another subsite.

When you move a subsite or an item, because the navigation is generated dynamically from the site collection hierarchy, the navigation components are automatically updated so that the new location for the item or subsite is reflected in the navigation.

You can use the move action to efficiently re-architect your site. For example, you might need to rebuild the navigation for your site or move the subsite for a department because they have been reorganized to be under a different group.

This feature enables a site administrator to reorganize a site without forcing site administrators to delete each item individually. Entire subsites or individual items can be deleted from the site collection hierarchy.

If the recycle bin is enabled for the site, list items can be recovered after they have been deleted. However, deleting a subsite is a drastic action: the entire branch is permanently deleted even if the recycle bin is enabled.

You can use the feature "Show and Hide Related Resources" to determine the resources that are called by an item. Resources are any elements used by the page, including page layout, images, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), links from the page to other pages, links to the page from within the site collection, and links to or from this page. Identifying the related resources for an item is especially useful if, for example, you need to delete an image. By determining the dependencies for that image, you can update the links or resources as necessary.

This feature only shows the related resources for one item at a time. If you do not have an item selected when you click Show Related Resources, the first item in the list pane is selected. Whenever you select a different item in the list, resources are displayed for that item.If your objective is to not display a subsite or page in the site navigation, you should not delete the site; instead you must go to the Navigation Options page and use the Hide function.

There are reports in the Site Content and Structure page. Seven reports are available. When you select a report, all the items that match the filter in the current site and any subsites under the current site are returned. To determine the container for the item in a report, you can point to the name column, and the path is displayed in the browser status bar.

If you have the appropriate permissions on your site, you can create or edit reports to make them specific to your situation or environment. For example, authors might have difficulty locating all of the pages that they are working on throughout the site collection. By running a report, they can find all the items and then, from the report view, they can perform actions on the items in the same way they can in the All Documents view.

Because reports are items in a list, after you create a new report, it is automatically deployed. Also, because reports are list items, they can be version-controlled so that they must be checked before they can be edited.

Enhancing SharePoint Through Information Governance

According to Microsoft, every day for the past five years 20,000 new SharePoint users have been added. As one of the most popular departmental content management solutions, SharePoint silos are now littering the organizational landscape with little or no centralized control. Enterprises are seeking to do more with less, leverage what they already own, and take advantage of SharePoint 2010 functionality.

Technologies are available to tag content, classify it to organizational taxonomies, preserve and protect information through the automatic identification of records and privacy data, and as a migration tool. These building blocks work well in the SharePoint environment and add functionality transparently to the end user.

Building Block #1: Metadata

An enterprise metadata repository is the primary building block in the framework, enabling the proactive management of content. This component is tightly integrated with the management of content life-cycle. Enterprises struggle with managing content, stemming from the end user's inability to accurately and consistently tag content for search, storage, records identification and archiving purposes. Most organization still focus on relying on the end user for appropriate tagging. Only by eliminating the human factor can enterprise metadata management be achieved and subsequently the content life-cycle management.

Through automatic semantic metadata generation and auto-classification as content is created or ingested, the taxonomy component integrates well with Term Store to seamlessly manage the metadata. Eliminating end user tagging, a comprehensive metadata repository can be easily developed, deployed, and managed.

Building Block #2: Search

For many organization, content exists in numerous locations, on diverse repositories and replicated across various silos. Most end users are unable to find relevant information to support business objectives resulting in the inability to re-use and re-purpose content. This leads to impaired decision making and decreased organizational agility.

Whether the enterprise search is SharePoint or FAST, the delivery of meaningful results depends on the ability to effectively index and classify content and utilize taxonomies to better manage the content. The search engine provides the features, functions and interface, while the technologies provide the tagging and classification structure to deliver relevant results.

Building Block #3: Governance

The enterprise governance structure allows employees to work in the most efficient and effective way possible by giving them access to information in a controlled and secure manner. This building block consists of tools that ensure information quality, maintain content life-cycle, address the retention and disposition of records, secure and protect privacy, and establish standards when dealing with information.

Building Block #4: Policy

The application of policy must be deployed from an enterprise perspective and address the entire portfolio of information assets. The technology generates the identification of concepts, records, and privacy of data. Assignment of custom content types and workflows can be initiated for disposition making user involvement much less. This solution ensures consistency, improves record-keeping and enables the establishment of monitoring and auditing processes to ensure proof of compliance and data protection.

Building Block #5: Privacy

The demarcation of who is responsible for the protection of privacy data is becoming blurred. Each business function may have a unique view of what is confidential, such as legal, human resources, and product development. It remains the responsibility of the organization to set the policies and the stakeholders to protect and hold confidential certain information.

Leveraging content types to drive information rights management coupled with automatic semantic metadata generation and organizationally defined descriptions, unknown privacy exposures can be identified and processed automatically to the appropriate repository for disposition.

Building Block #6: Enterprise and Web 2.0

SharePoint provides technology to implement collaboration tools. These tools encourage collaboration and link employees, partners, suppliers, and customers to share information. Adding structure to chaos provides more control of collaboration, while encouraging the audience with ability to interact and share information. Adding control via classification and providing an integrated view of organized content through the taxonomy structure, end users still have the ability to freely contribute and the enterprise can more effectively use these tools as a business advantage.

Case Study - Autodesk - SharePoint Deployment

In the "Case Studies" series of my posts, I describe the projects that I worked on and lessons learned from them. In this post, I am going to describe the project of SharePoint deployment at Autodesk.

Autodesk is a software engineering company with worldwide presence. Autodesk worldwide marketing produced a lot of marketing assets. On many occasions, marketing produced assets which either was duplicate of what was already created in the past or assets that were not needed. Marketing assets were stored in a digital asset management system. This digital asset management system did not have a way to track marketing assets.

Marketing decided to use SharePoint which already was deployed at Autodesk as the tracking system for their marketing assets. This would be a tool where they would log an asset they would like to create and it would go through a workflow to vote, review, and approve this asset before it would be produced. After this asset was produced, it would be tracked in this system.

I started the project with identifying major stakeholders, gathering their requirements for this system, and writing use cases. It was decided to add BrightWork software in order to be able to create forms, reports, and templates in SharePoint. SharePoint features such as lists, workflows, discussion forums, blog were used for this project.

The project was approved by the company management. I created functional requirements which were submitted to IT. I have reviewed the document with the IT staff so that we would be in agreement about functional requirements and users’ needs.

A consulting company was identified for custom development of SharePoint and to integrate it with BrightWork. After this was done, I defined and created the information architecture, taxonomy, metadata based on users requirements. I created sites, lists, and workflows and set up information governance processes. I have also created advanced search and configured metadata for it. IT has configured the metadata and the crawler on the server level. IT has also set up all applications functions on the server.

Based on department managers’ decision, security permissions for documents were set up.

User acceptance testing of the system was performed. Users were satisfied with the system set up and functions and it was deployed. Information governance was set up from the very beginning. Group and individual training was conducted on ongoing basis.

After the SharePoint was deployed, users started tracking marketing assets creation in this system.

The project was a success. Company management and users were very cooperative in helping to make this project a success.

SharePoint deployment helped to increase efficiency and productivity of worldwide marketing and thus saved Autodesk cost because employees did not waste any time on recreating marketing assets that already exist. The system was adapted by multiple users.

Lessons learned

1. User-centered design is paramount to the project success. When you design and build the system based on users’ requirements, they are going to use it. Users have the sense of ownership of the system which provides excellent starting point. They know that the system you are building will be what they need.

2. Top-down support is critical for the project success. Management support is a huge factor in employees' encouragement to use the system and in setting up and enforcing procedures for information governance.

3. Assurance of users from the very beginning that they will not be left alone with the system provided their cooperation.

4. User acceptance testing helped to encourage employees to start using the system. When they participate in this process, this gives them the feeling of ownership of the system.

5. Ongoing training after the system deployment made user adoption smooth.

SharePoint - Blog Sites

A blog is a Web site that enables you or your organization to quickly share ideas and information. Blogs contain posts that are dated and listed in reverse chronological order. People can comment on your posts, as well as provide links to interesting sites, photos, and related blogs.

Blogs posts can be created quickly, and they often have an informal tone or provide a unique perspective. Although blogs are frequently used for commentary on the Internet, they can be used in several ways in a corporate environment. For example, in one of companies I worked, maintenance employees were using a SharePoint blog to document their findings during the site visit and their supervisor to respond by posting comments to their posts.

A SharePoint blog is a site that contains lists and libraries, such as a list of blog posts, a list of other blogs, and a library for photos. Once you create a blog, you can set up categories, and then customize the blog settings.

To create or customize a blog, you must have permission to create a site. When you create a blog, you need to decide whether you want the blog to inherit permissions from the parent site or set up unique permissions manually. In most cases, you should set up unique permissions for the blog to ensure that you can manage its site settings, lists, and libraries independently of its parent site. For example, you might want to grant less restrictive permissions on your blog than on the parent site, such as enabling all authenticated users on your intranet to read and comment on the blog.

You can also create and customize a blog by using Microsoft SharePoint Designer.

Before you start adding content to your blog, you will want to make sure that your site, lists, and libraries are set up the way that you want. For example, you may want to edit the description of a list to help your readers understand its purpose, change permissions for the blog or the Posts list, or track versions of your blog posts so that you can restore a previous version of a post if necessary.

Once created, you may want to customize settings for your blog, or for its lists and libraries. Once you have customized the settings for your blog, you can set up categories to help you organize your posts. Categories are especially helpful if you create blog posts about different subjects or for different purposes, such as current events, brainstorming for a special project, or a technology or hobby. When posts are organized by categories, people can more easily find the posts that fit their interests by clicking the appropriate category in the Categories list. If you don't want to use categories, you can choose None for the category when you create a post.

You can change the image and description that appear under "About this blog" by modifying the web part that contains this information.

To create a blog, follow these steps:

1.Click Site Actions, and then click New Site.

2.In the Create dialog box, click the Blog site template.

3.In the Title box, type a name for your blog site. The title appears in the navigation for every page in the site, such as the top link bar.

4.In the URL name box, type the last part of the Web address that you want to use for your blog site.

To create a blog according to the default settings, including the same permissions as the parent site, click Create.

To customize some of the site settings, such as set unique permissions or change whether the site appears in the Quick Launch or the top link bar, select More Options.

To create, edit or delete categories, follow these steps:

1.Click All Site Content.

2.Under Lists, click Categories.

The Categories list appears. If you haven't set up categories on the blog before, the list contains category placeholders, such as Category 1 and Category 2. Here you can create new categories, edit current categories, i.e. give them meaningful names or delete categories.

Have fun with your blog!

Document Management in SharePoint

Document management in SharePoint includes documents life cycle from their creation to archiving. The system allows to store and organize documents so that they can be easily found and shared by users thus enabling collaboration.

When organizations do not have any kind of formal document management system in place, content is often created and saved in an unmanaged and decentralized way on scattered file shares and individual hard disk drives. This makes it hard for employees to find, share, and collaborate effectively on documents. This also makes it difficult for organizations to use the valuable business information and data.

SharePoint supports your organization's document management needs by providing a broad set of document management capabilities that enable you to do the following:

• store, organize, and find documents;
• ensure the consistency of documents;
• manage metadata for documents;
• help protect documents from unauthorized access or use;
• ensure consistent business processes (workflows) for how documents are handled.

SharePoint sites are optimized for creating, using, and storing large numbers of documents. Documents are located in libraries which are part of SharePoint sites. Libraries include folders which contain documents. The structure of libraries and folders need to be carefully constructed to ensure that it is easy to navigate to documents.

You can sort and filter items in libraries and create customized views.

Version Control

A library usually has versioning turned on. Versioning lets you track changes to documents, and it helps you manage content as you revise it. Versioning is especially helpful when several people work together on projects, or when information goes through several stages of development and review. With versioning turned on, you can restore an earlier version as your current document, or view an earlier version.

Versioning requires users to check out and check in documents. Requiring check-out helps prevent conflicts and confusion over changes, because only one user can change a file at a time. When you require check-out, a file is checked out when someone opens it for editing, unless another user already has it checked out.

While you have a file checked out, your changes are not visible to others until you check the file back in. When you check in a file, you are prompted to enter comments about your changes, and the comments become part of the version history. And because the documents library tracks major and minor versions of a file, you are prompted to choose which type of version you are checking in.

Minor revision is designated as a number with a decimal - 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, etc. It is a draft document. Use minor revision when you continue to work on the document. If you finished working on the document, choose major revision which is designated as a whole number - 1, 2, 3, etc. In other words, drafts are the minor versions of files or list items that have not yet become major.

By performing check out and check in functions the system keeps track of the document versions and assigns the next consecutive version with the check in function. This makes it possible to view previous version of the document or restore the document to the previous version.

If you set up a library to require content approval, then documents are not published until someone with the appropriate permissions approves the document for publication.

Content Types

A content type is a reusable group of settings for a category of content that describe the shared behaviors for a specific type of content. You can use content types to manage the metadata, templates, and behaviors of items and documents consistently. Content types enable organizations to organize, manage, and handle content in a consistent way across a site collection. You can define a content type for each type of document that your organization creates to ensure that these different types of documents are handled in a consistent way.

For example, two content types called User Manual and Product Specification. When team members go to the Document Center to create a new document, each of these content types appears as an option on the New button in the document library. Each content type specifies its own template, so that all user manuals and product specifications share a common format.

Each content type also specifies its own custom columns, so that, for example, all user manuals contain metadata about which product models the manuals apply to. Each content type even contains its own workflows, so that the team can be confident that every user manual follows the same feedback and approval processes. And because product specifications are contained in a different content type, those documents can follow different processes and have columns that require different metadata.

Document Metadata

Each document has metadata associated with it. This metadata in SharePoint is called columns. One of the primary ways that users find documents that are uploaded in a SharePoint library is by browsing or searching using metadata.

When you open or edit a document, you can edit the document metadata. If custom columns are added to the content type for that document or to the library where that document is saved, these column values are displayed as metadata fields.

Workflows

To support common document-related business processes, SharePoint offers built-in workflows that organizations can use to manage tasks such as document review, approval, and signature collection. Workflow is defined as the automated movement of documents or items through a sequence of actions or tasks that are related to a business process. Workflows help organizations manage document-related business processes more efficiently, because they automatically track and manage the human tasks involved in these processes.

For example, instead of sending e-mail to reviewers, a writer can start a workflow on the current document right from Microsoft Word document. The workflow takes care of managing the process, including sending notification messages to reviewers, creating tasks for them, and tracking the status of those tasks. Reviewers can complete their tasks in Word 2007 or in SharePoint.

Additionally, by using SharePoint Designer or Microsoft Visual Studio organizations can develop custom workflows that manage business processes that are unique to their organizations.

Documents Protection

SharePoint offers several ways for organizations to help protect documents that are saved to a SharePoint site from unauthorized access or use. Organizations can apply Information Rights Management (IRM) to an entire document library to protect an entire set of documents. IRM enables you to limit the actions that users can take on files that are downloaded from SharePoint lists or libraries.

IRM encrypts the downloaded files and limits the set of users and programs that are allowed to decrypt these files. IRM can also limit the rights of the users who are allowed to read files, so that they cannot take actions such as printing copies of the files or copying text from them. IRM can thus help your organization to enforce corporate policies that govern the control and dissemination of confidential or proprietary information.

Another way to protect documents is by configuring permissions for individual sites, libraries, or folders. If there is a document library to which you want to restrict access, you can edit the permissions for this library to define who has the permission to view or edit documents in this library.

Content Management Systems Reviews - Documentum - Documentum for SharePoint

Documentum has few products for SharePoint users. These products are: Documentum Repository Services for SharePoint, My Documentum for SharePoint, Documentum SourceOne for SharePoint. In this post, I am going to describe these products.

Documentum Repository Services for SharePoint

Documentum Repository Services for SharePoint allows organizations to manage SharePoint Content and leverage it by re-routing content automatically to the EMC Documentum repository. Repository Services for SharePoint aggregates content from disparate SharePoint sites, providing centralized management and the ability to apply compliance, business, and operational control to SharePoint content without impacting the end user. SharePoint does not show that content is being managed by Documentum and SharePoint users and tools are not affected.

These repository services has platform for secure content including common policy enforcement across systems, utilization of existing retention and records processes, and structured disposition.

Unstructured content is not stored in SharePoint and so SharePoint SQL repository is not being overwhelmed by unstructured content thus providing organization with the substantial cost savings associated with hierarchical storage management, de-duplication, and reduced SQL server backup costs.

Repository services stores content in dynamically created folder location where policies and rules can be applied automatically. All of SharePoint related properties are stored in an accessible XML file for future use.

Once stored in Documentum, the content can be managed in the same way as any other Documentum object – retention policy can be applied to the content and it can be categorized as a specific type of content, routed through a workflow, published to a web site, etc.

This capability improves overall content manageability, enhances performance and scalability across organization’s information architecture, and reduces storage costs.

My Documentum for SharePoint

My Documentum for SharePoint provides native access to the EMC Documentum Content Server through the SharePoint user interface. Users can access their Documentum library through SharePoint interface while maintaining control and security over their content through Documentum.

Documentum includes integrated web parts that can be easily used with any existing SharePoint site. These web parts provide direct user access to content that is being managed within a Documentum Content Server repository through the SharePoint user interface.

Users can easily configure SharePoint to include Documentum specific functions such as view, and edit the content, lifecycles, and renditions as well as leverage advanced search capabilities in Documentum libraries.

It also has the following features:

• It provides advanced content protection through a single security model applied to all content, regardless of application. My Documentum for SharePoint is a Documentum client that emulates the SharePoint user experience.
• It provides the appropriate level of centralized document control and policy management to SharePoint users.
• It preserves project information that could be re-used in future.
• It leverages single sign-on using either Documentum or SharePoint credentials.
• It provides virtual document creation capabilities with multiple nested documents in multiple formats.
• It provides renditions management to allow rendition of documents in a variety of popular formats. View all renditions in the repository even those created by other content transformation applications.
• It leverages the full capabilities of Documentum content management platform for secure content including common policy enforcement across systems, utilization of retention and records management processes and structured disposition.
• It supports critical data management requirements, including regulatory compliance, data retention, and document lifecycle management throughout the enterprise.
• Define specific sequence of lifecycle as content passes through specific phases of the lifecycle such as creation, review, and approval.
• Use Documentum tools to customize the display of attributes within web parts providing consistency across all applications. A separate configuration mode affects only the Documentum web parts.
• It provides quick, out-of-box deployment with no customization required.

SharePoint makes content widely accessible while Documentum enhances protection of content. Documentum enables content security and provides solutions for encryption, access control, and fraud protection. This way users can leverage the full capabilities of Documentum content repository while providing easy to use, widely accessible solution for SharePoint users.

Documentum SourceOne for SharePoint

Documentum SourceOne for SharePoint helps organizations to improve performance of SharePoint environment, reduce backup times to meet service level agreements and reduce operational costs.

By externalizing active content, the burden of SharePoint servers can be reduced resulting in quicker search and retrieval times and lower primary storage costs. Storage utilization monitoring ensures that current investments in storage resources are fully optimized.

Inactive content can be moved out of SharePoint environment. By archiving inactive content to a centrally managed archive, your organization can employ proactive information governance strategy and benefit from centralized content archiving. This enables the consistent application of retention, disposition, and overall lifecycle management policies and ensures that the right data is retained and managed according to industry and corporate regulations. By archiving SharePoint content into the same central archive as other unstructured content search and discovery is simplified. Organizations can ensure that critical content is retained and quickly find and produce content when required to do so in audits, investigations, and litigations.

Documentum SourceOne for SharePoint allows user to continue their work in the environment of their choice. It ensures user transparency and maintains complete content accessibility to both active and archived content from within SharePoint. This product leverages Microsoft recommended APIs, maintain native Microsoft integrations, existing workflows, and explicit document links.

Documentum SourceOne for SharePoint enables organizations to manage the explosive growth of information and proliferation of inactive or orphaned SharePoint sites and all the content kept within them. Proactive removal of SharePoint content from supported Microsoft SQL databases and archival them into EMC SourceOne can be automated based on rules and policies.

This product would help to reduce IT costs associated with information retention and disposition by leveraging tiered storage and deduplication capabilities, and driving efficiency in archiving applications. It also enables common policy management and information access across many applications, delivering integrated archiving and compliance.

SharePoint User Interface

In my last post on SharePoint architecture, I mentioned that there are few parts in SharePoint architecture: farms, web applications, site collections, service applications, administration and security. User interface is represented by site collections. In my today's post, I am going to describe SharePoint user interface.

Site collection is the top-level SharePoint site which contains children sites which are organized in a hierarchy. When you create a site at the root of a Web Application, you create a site collection. In other words, a SharePoint site collection is a hierarchical set of sites that can be managed together. Sites within a site collection have common features, such as shared permissions, galleries for templates, content types, and web parts, and they often share a common navigation. Creation of site collections usually performed by a system administrator.

Site collection has hierarchical structure. When a site collection has been created, next step is to create a site. A site is a single SharePoint site within a site collection. Creation of sites can be delegated to users of a site collection. A site can inherit permissions and navigation structure from its parent site collection, or they can be specified and managed independently.

There are times when it is appropriate to create an entire site collection, and there are times when it makes more sense to create a single site. For instance, if you have many projects that fit within a larger context, it makes sense to create a single site collection for that context, and create sites to manage each project. For example, it makes sense for the engineering department to have a separate site collection from the legal department. An engineering department might have one site collection and use that site collection to house multiple sites, one site per engineering project.

A site may contain sub-sites, and those sub-sites may contain further sub-sites. Typically, sites need to be created from scratch, but sites can also be created according to pre-defined templates that provide previously set-up functionality. Sites have navigation, themes/branding, custom permissions, workflows, and have the ability to be configured or customized in a number of ways.

If the site is used for the document management, next step after the site in the SharePoint hierarchy are libraries and lists. A SharePoint Site is a collection of lists, libraries, pages, and web parts.

A list is a collection of similar items. A list contains columns that define the item metadata. Each item stored in a list shares the same metadata. For instance, you can have a list of links called "my links", where each item has a URL, a name, and a description.

Lists resemble database tables in structure and behavior. Lists support various field or data types, and can have triggers that react to list events such as creating, updating or deleting items. In addition lists can be configured to filter, sort or group items based on item data or properties.

Lists can be based on list templates, such as calendars, contact lists, tasks, announcements. You can create multiple lists based on a single list template. Lists can include workflows.

A library contains documents. In a library a document is the item with library metadata supporting the document. Each item in the library refers to a file that is stored in SharePoint database. A library is a location on a site where you can create, collect, update, and manage files.

You can customize libraries in several ways. You can control how documents are viewed, tracked, managed, and created. You can track versions, including how many and which type of versions, and you can limit who can see documents before they are approved. You can use workflows to collaborate on documents in libraries. You can specify information management policies to manage the handling and expiration of documents within libraries.

There are few types of libraries:

Document library is used for all types of documents.

Picture library is used to store digital pictures or graphics. Although pictures can be stored in other types of libraries, picture libraries have several advantages. For example, from a picture library you can view pictures in a slide show, download pictures to your computer, and edit pictures with graphics programs. Consider creating a picture library if your team reuses many graphics, such as logos and corporate images, or if you want to store pictures of team events or product launches.

Wiki page library is used create a collection of connected wiki pages. A wiki enables multiple people to gather routine information in a format that is easy to create and modify. You can add to your library wiki pages that contain pictures, tables, hyperlinks, and internal links. For example, if your team creates a wiki site for a project, the site can store tips and tricks in a series of pages that connect to each other.

Form library is used to store and manage electronic forms.

Reports library helps organizations create, manage, and share information contained in business data web parts, key performance indicator (KPI) web parts, and Excel web access web parts used for business intelligence analytics. The Records Center site template has a reports library by default, but anyone who can create document libraries within a site collection can create a report library. The reports library includes a version history for each report, and archives previous versions. Users can create new versions of reports for special events or milestones, and later revert to a previous report.

Translation management library - helps organizations create, store, and manage translated documents by providing both views and specific features that facilitate the manual document translation process. The translation management library is designed specifically to store documents and their translations. The library tracks the relationship between a source document and its translations, and it groups all of these documents together to make them easy to find. Additionally, the library can be configured with a special translation management workflow that is designed to help manage the manual document translation process.

Data connection library is used to centrally publish connection files to make it easy for users to find and use the data sources they need. Data connection files are easy to create and update, and solution designers can easily reuse them from within the Microsoft Office system client applications.

Slide library is used to share individual slides from a presentation, reuse slides, track the history of a slide, compile individual slides into a presentation, and receive notifications when a slide in a presentation has changed. Users can publish slides to a Slide Library from PowerPoint.

SharePoint has three primary page content-types: Wiki pages, Web-part pages, and Publishing Pages. The default page type is a Wiki Page, which enables free-form editing based on the ribbon toolbar. It is possible to insert Web-parts into any page type.

Web parts are sections that can be inserted into Pages in SharePoint sites. Their typical uses are displaying content defined in the web-part's settings, displaying items from lists and libraries, providing access to features in the SharePoint.

SharePoint site can also be created as Wiki site, blog site, project management site, etc. I described Wiki sites in one of my previous posts on SharePoint, In my future posts, I will describe other site types.

SharePoint Architecture

The SharePoint platform is a flexible, n-tier service-oriented architecture (SOA). It can be scaled down to operate entirely from one machine, or scaled up to be managed across hundreds of machines.

There are few parts in SharePoint architecture: farms, web applications, site collections, service applications, administration and security.

Farms

A SharePoint farm is a group of SharePoint servers that share common resources. A farm can operate stand-alone or it can also subscribe to functionality from another farm, or provide functionality to another farm. Each farm has its own central configuration database, which is managed through a either a PowerShell interface, or a Central Administration website (which relies partially on PowerShell's infrastructure).

Each server in the farm is able to directly interface with the central configuration database. Servers use this to configure services (e.g. Internet Information Services (IIS), windows features, database connections) to manage the requirements of the farm, and to report server health issues, resource allocation issues, etc.

Web Applications

Web Applications (WAs) are top-level containers for content in a SharePoint farm, and are typically the interface through which a user interacts with SharePoint. A web application is associated with a set of access mappings or URLs which are defined in the SharePoint central management console, then automatically replicated into the IIS configuration of every server configured in the farm. WAs are typically independent of each other, have their own application pools, and can be restarted independently in IIS.

Site Collections

A site collection is used to provide a group of SharePoint Sites. Each web application will typically have at least one site collection. Site collections may be associated with their own content databases, or they may share a content database with other site collections in the same web application.

Service applications

Service Applications (SAs) provide granular pieces of SharePoint functionality to other web and service applications in the farm. Examples of service applications include the User Profile Sync service, and the Search Indexing service. An SA can be turned off, exist on one server, or be load-balanced across many servers in a farm. SAs are designed to be as independent as possible, so depending on the SA, restarting an SA, experiencing an SA failure, or misconfiguring an SA may not necessarily prevent the farm from operating.

Each SA enabled on the farm typically has its own process that requires a certain amount of RAM to operate, and typically also has its own configuration database and Active Directory (AD) service account. SharePoint Server and SharePoint Enterprise include all the SharePoint Foundation SAs, as well as additional SAs.

Administration and security

The modular nature of SharePoint's architecture enables a secure least-privileges execution permission.

SharePoint Central Administration (the CA) is a web application that typically exists on a single server in the farm, however it can also be deployed for redundancy to multiple servers. This application provides a complete centralized management interface for web and service applications in the SharePoint farm, including AD account management for web and service applications.

In the event of the failure of the CA, Windows PowerShell is typically used on the CA server to reconfigure the farm. The structure of the SharePoint platform enables multiple WAs to exist on a single farm. In a shared (cloud) hosting environment, owners of these WAs may require their own management console. The SharePoint Tenant Administration (TA) is an optional web application used by web application owners to manage how their web application interacts with the shared resources in the farm.

In my next post on SharePoint, I am going to describe the SharePoint parts that a user interfaces with: site collections, sites, libraries, lists.