Quinsigamond Community College FACULTY EXTERNSHIP SUMMER 2013 FINAL REPORT

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1 Quinsigamond Community College FACULTY EXTERNSHIP SUMMER 2013 FINAL REPORT Obtaining Knowledge and Experience with Microsoft SharePoint and other Corporate Collaborative Technologies August 16, 2013 Authored by: Dean Polnerow, Assistant Professor Computer Systems Engineering Technology

2 Externship Overview This externship project for Summer 2013 is entitled Obtaining Knowledge and Experience with Microsoft SharePoint and other Corporate Collaborative Technologies. The knowledge gained from this project is required to improve our understanding of how these technologies are deployed and managed in typical corporate environments, and to allow us to assess how we might incorporate these technologies into our current CSET curriculum. This project's outcomes include the following: Obtain up-to-date knowledge of the technical details of on-premise SharePoint technologies Obtain knowledge of the cloud version of SharePoint (Office 365) to understand the transition of this technology to cloud based infrastructures Learn about how these technologies are used in live corporate settings, and understand the job skills necessary for working with SharePoint as an IT professional Determine how these skills fit within our CSET curriculum, and how new courses and labs might be developed that focus on enterprise applications such as SharePoint Externship Goals The ultimate goal of this project is to make students more employable by insuring that they are upto-date on the most popular enterprise applications being used in industry today. The collaborative technologies studied for this externship are not new, but they are much more popular recently as web based applications and social networking become increasingly common in the workplace. These technologies are very complex to deploy and manage, and the skills required have only been superficially covered in our CSET Program to date. The following is a list of areas within the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education "Core Indicators" that will be benefited by this project: Core Indicator 1P1 - Technical skill attainment demand for the skills to manage and deploy these technologies is increasing among IT professionals Core Indicator 2PI - Credential, certificate, degree - These skills will aid students in both two year Associate of Science degree and the one-year Network Associate certificate. Core Indicator 4P1 - Placement in employment, military or apprenticeship - By expanding the skills taught by the CSET Program, we will make our CSET students more valuable in the job market. All of our student populations would benefit from this addition to the CSET Program. Demand for skilled IT workers in the area of enterprise applications is increasing. Externship Milestones/Activities To achieve the above defined project outcomes, the following plan was developed: 1. Research and explore SharePoint on-premise technology Understand the details of each component of the SharePoint technology, and learn how to deploy and manage them 2

3 Activity Results 2. Research and explore SharePoint cloud based technology Microsoft offers a wide variety of their critical enterprise applications through the cloud, a network of computers managed by Microsoft. This concept relieves organizations from the complexity and expense of deploying the applications infrastructure (operating systems, networks, databases.) These organizations access the applications over the internet as if they were deployed on-premise. This concept has gained a lot of popularity among IT management, and SharePoint is one of the applications being used this way in many organizations. The purpose of this milestone is to learn differences between the cloud based and on-premise implementations, and create a trial version of a cloud based SharePoint site. 3. Interview IT managers that deploy and manage SharePoint technology Learn how businesses implement SharePoint technologies. Learn which features are most popular, and what management techniques are most often used. 4. Interview users of other enterprise collaborative technologies Learn about alternatives to SharePoint and learn some of the pros and cons of using them. 5. Evaluate products and licenses that could be used in new coursework we develop Learn about Microsoft s licensing approach to this technology, helping us to understand how we might deploy it in the CSET lab, and how students would deploy the software on their own individual server machines for their lab exercises. 6. Create a prototype outline of course topics and labs that would adequately cover this topic Identify and arrange the key topics that could be incorporated into a CSET course and lab. Milestone #1 - Research and explore SharePoint on-premise technology The following is a list of activities completed that are associated with this milestone: Studied several detailed publications and industry whitepapers to learn about the features and management tools available. Publications spanned topics such as: o Planning the information architecture o Understanding operational governance of the system o SharePoint administration techniques and components o Deployment options o Tools and techniques for implementing managed metadata o Enterprise search considerations o Social computing considerations o Planning for mobile access SharePoint is relatively easy to install and use, but the overwhelming sentiment is that without proper up-front planning, the system quickly spins out of control. Dead-end choices early on lead to expensive reimplementations, corporate disruption, and user dissatisfaction. 3

4 Understanding the subtleties of various management choices is time consuming but required. Further, the breadth of features available in SharePoint is impressive, but understanding them in detail has created a new management challenge, particularly for the IT staff. The choices are many, and some are either redundant or too costly relative to their resulting benefit. Installed a test version of SharePoint on both physical and virtual servers and implemented a mock SharePoint application that included: o Data tracking o File storage with meta-data o A secure, Web-accessible interface o Search capabilities Reviewed technical publications and case studies to develop insight into the challenges of administering a successful SharePoint implementation, insuring its adoption in the organization. Creating an administration plan - daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly is central to a successful implementation of this system. Organizations have discovered that broad usage of the system does not necessarily correlate to business improvement unless they carefully measure and regularly adjust how the system operates. Milestone #2 - Research and explore SharePoint cloud based technology The following is a list of activities completed that are associated with this milestone: Studied publications that detail differences between on-premise and cloud based installations. Installed a mock SharePoint cloud-based application using SharePoint 2013 Online Milestone #3 - Interview IT managers that deploy and manage SharePoint technology The following is a list of activities associated with this milestone: Interviewed the Director, Enterprise Content Management Systems at Sunovian Pharmaceuticals, a large worldwide company with over 3000 employees Interviewed President of Executive IT Strategies, an experienced IT consultant currently responsible for intranet definition and other IT responsibilities at HMFH Architects, a medium sized architectural firm The interviews involved acquiring insight into the following: o Features and functions most used o Difficulties and implementation issues o Long term architectural deficiencies identified o Curriculum recommendations for prospective IT students 4

5 These two firms have both intranet collaboration and document management needs. The large firm has a SharePoint implementation well established, and the small firm has an ad-hoc (and somewhat dysfunctional) alternative implementation that they are looking to possibly replace with SharePoint technology. Milestone #4 - Interview users of other enterprise collaborative technologies The following is a list of activities associated with this milestone: Researched Confluence Team Collaboration software, a wiki based product built by Atlassian, a worldwide software product developer Exchanged correspondence with experienced SharePoint users who are now using Confluence On- Demand, an alternative document management system, due to a corporate acquisition. Milestone #5 - Evaluate products and licenses that could be used in new coursework we develop The following is a list of activities associated with this milestone: Reviewed licensing requirements for on-premise deployment of SharePoint, and any free trial or educational licensing we can take advantage of Reviewed licensing requirements for cloud based SharePoint (SharePoint Online), and any free trial or educational licensing we can take advantage of Identified a set of SharePoint features that could be taught in a classroom and lab setting to CSET students Milestone #6 - Create a prototype outline of course topics and labs that would adequately cover this topic Created an outline that incorporates the features identified in milestone #5 above in a format similar to the one used by CSET to teach other important Microsoft enterprise applications. o CST 250, 251, and 252 are currently 1 credit classes that cover IIS, SQL Server and Exchange respectively The recommendation is to add SharePoint to the list of applications taught in this format. 5

6 Conclusions This project was very successful in achieving its goals - to learn more about Microsoft SharePoint and similar alternatives, and utilize the knowledge gained to enhance our CSET curriculum. Below is a summary of knowledge gained and brief discussions of various topics: Obtaining Up-To-Date Knowledge about SharePoint On-premise and Cloud Technologies SharePoint has a storied history and is a complex product. Most organizations only use portions of it. Some of the features of SharePoint overlap with other enterprise applications and organizations experience some confusion over which product should be used when. The most popular features seem to be: o Document and general information management o Enterprise wide information search o Intranet web sites for employees o Collaborative web sites for project teams SharePoint is very tightly integrated with IIS, Microsoft SQL Server and Exchange, and it uses Active Directory for identity management and security. In fact, it cannot be used without these products running alongside of it. This can make the installation a bit more cumbersome, but the benefits of a well-integrated system are very important to most customers. This is one of SharePoint s main strengths. Other alternative systems require customers to piece together a comprehensive system making the deployment and management of the system more difficult. The Confluence system that I reviewed is an interesting content management wiki based system. Content is viewed as editable web pages, and it is most effective as a tool for team collaboration. o Users are created within the Confluence system database, or alternatively, a site can integrate with Microsoft s Active Directory. As is true with many third-party applications, however, they usually work best when user and administrative management is contained within the native database. This unfortunately creates conflicts between the two user databases (native application database and the enterprise-wide directory) and makes security management more difficult. o People who are familiar with SharePoint but have used the Confluence system comment that the document management functions are not as robust as SharePoint and it is difficult to find information. Echoing sentiment from SharePoint users, it is the administration and organization of the content that makes all the difference. Both systems can work well if they are organized properly and people follow the rules. SharePoint works very well in a virtualized environment. In fact, SharePoint farms are often built upon virtualized servers making it easy to maintain and evolve the system as it grows. It is very easy to setup a prototype SharePoint environment and utilize many of the important features, including document management, managed meta-data, search, website construction (Web Parts). This creates a level of excitement around the product for customers. People can create powerful applications quickly without bringing in a programming staff. I believe we can accomplish this same level of excitement among our students in the lab. 6

7 A more in-depth look at the product reveals that although prototypes are simple, actual deployments are far more complex. Customers (and students) must learn the intricacies of information architecture and pre-planning, virtualized farm (multi-server) deployment, metadata management, security, storage management and operational monitoring. These are areas where IT professionals spend most of their time in SharePoint environments. Each of these areas can be covered in some detail in course material and lab work as part of a student s prototype implementation. Microsoft is making a strong push to the cloud and SharePoint Online is a big part of that push. In 2013, SharePoint Online is quite full functioned in fact one would be hard pressed to distinguish an online implementation from an on-premise implementation. Creating the same mock application in both environments was straightforward, and both worked well. It seems that most on-premise implementations are already running on virtual servers, making evolution and growth of the overall SharePoint environment easier and more cost-effective. This virtualization of the SharePoint environment has also made moving some functions to the cloud easier, so hybrid environments are likely to become more commonplace in the near future. Virtualizing SharePoint was straightforward in my mock deployment. How SharePoint is Used in Corporate Settings, and the IT Skills Required to Administer It Multiple skill sets are required to manage a typical SharePoint environment. While Microsoft touts the ease at which non-computer savvy business professionals can create complex applications without writing code, in real life this does not appear to be the case. Employment positions involved with a SharePoint environment include project managers, site administrators, information architects, backend administrators, master page designers, database administrators, and overall SharePoint architects. For some of these, programming and graphic arts skills are required. For others, IT administration skills (installation and upgrade, troubleshooting, helpdesk) are required. For all positions, there is a clear need for high quality communication skills because there is frequently a lot of design interaction and requirements gathering with the non-computer savvy business and content owners. For smaller environments, SharePoint can be used almost out-of-the-box. Microsoft has done a good job of creating default security schemes, configuration-less database integration, common metadata, and site templates. As usual, Microsoft technical documentation is comprehensive (overwhelming perhaps) and up-to-date. But for moderate or large deployments, it appears that the default setup is inadequate. Extensive work needs to be done to brand SharePoint sites with the organization s look and feel and to make the page layouts consistent throughout the organization. Master page designers and site/page administrators interact with business/content owners to get the job done. To accomplish this, the skills required include programming in Visual Studio and using graphic art software such as Photoshop. These are not skills that we incorporate into our CSET Program, but may provide opportunities for cross-curriculum work with the CIS and CS departments. Information governance control and permissions management, is a much larger and more important aspect of SharePoint than it appears at the onset. Understanding the interactions between Active Directory Identity Management functions and SharePoint governance is critically important to insure information security, and to protect the organization from inadvertent changes or unintended consequences of changes that could potentially affect all sites within a SharePoint environment. 7

8 For this reason, SharePoint governance is often managed centrally by a key SharePoint administrator, leaving only minor control points to the site administrators or line-of-business owners. That being said, it seems that many SharePoint installations do not take the necessary steps up front to create a suitable permissions scheme, and the result is a wild west environment where anything can be changed by anyone. This is a topic that is repeatedly warned against in the industry literature. Metadata management the ability to create tags and associate it with information content so that it can be searched more effectively - seems to be a very personal preference within organizations. It appears that it is usually split between some central management team that controls enterprise-wide tags that change infrequently, and business/content owners or team leaders that have a more dynamic need. SharePoint accommodates this with the permissions and management tools it provides. Versioning, control of archives, and monitoring and removal of obsolete or seldom-used information, is a function that is managed by a central SharePoint administrator typically. Some of the tasks become the responsibility of backend administrators people on the general IT staff of the organization that have some SharePoint specific expertise. These backend administrators deal with server deployment, virtual servers, upgrades and patches, and backup/recovery issues. SharePoint allows content to be tagged with a life expectancy to make the job of cleaning up old information easier. How SharePoint IT Skills Relate to our CSET Curriculum SharePoint is a comprehensive Microsoft enterprise class application. It is in the same class as Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft SQL Server in terms of administrative complexity, popularity, and breadth of functionality. It is becoming a highly popular enterprise application in mainstream corporations. SharePoint is far more popular than other content management and team collaboration systems, and is much more comprehensive and well integrated with other Microsoft products. For this reason, I believe it should be the focus of our efforts to incorporate this class of application into the CSET curriculum over other, similar open source or proprietary products. Currently, SharePoint is covered superficially in our CST 238 Enterprise Networking class. Students learn about it in one lecture session, and gain some minimal experience installing and working with it in the lab. Because of SharePoint s popularity, I believe additional exposure to this product would make our IT students more valuable as they seek employment in the IT field. The following features would be most beneficial to CSET students and can be taught in a course/lab setting: o SharePoint installation and setup, including Active Directory, IIS, Exchange, and SQL Server integration. o SharePoint information architecture, and document uploading o SharePoint search metadata management o SharePoint governance permissions model o SharePoint Web Parts and team website construction 8

9 SharePoint on-premise is a licensed Microsoft product. It is available in its complete Enterprise form for a free 180 day trial period. The product can be downloaded, installed and administered exactly as it would be when a customer purchases it. This could be useful if a SharePoint course and lab are offered as a full semester course (each student would begin a free trial, although this is probably not Microsoft s intent for their product). SharePoint Online is a licensed Microsoft product as well. It can be purchased stand-alone or as part of an Office 365 suite of applications including Exchange, Lync and Office. Office 365 has educational institution plans that could be useful for our purposes. There are three plans available. The first is free to faculty, staff and students and includes (not useful), web conferencing, shared file storage per student, SharePoint intranet websites, Active Directory integration, Office web applications (run Office products such as Word via a web browser), and mobile access to SharePoint newsfeeds. Other plans are priced per student user in the range of $2.50 to $4.00 per student. A complete version of SharePoint Online is available as part of a free one month trial of Office 365 up to 10 user licenses. This could be useful in a classroom setting if SharePoint is covered in a partial semester class format. The following is a prototype proposal for a partial semester course and lab for SharePoint. It follows the same model we have used for other Microsoft Enterprise applications (CST 250, CST 251, and CST 252 IIS, Exchange, and SQL Server respectively). o Given the importance of enterprise application administration in IT, my recommendation would be to further incorporate these courses into our CSET Associate Degree Program as required courses (they are not currently required). As part of an Enterprise Applications elective, we could offer five 1 credit courses the three listed above along with a SharePoint one credit course, and a Lync one credit course. Students would be required to pick three as part of their degree program. o The straw proposal on the following page incorporates the key elements of SharePoint into a five week course/lab (Note: this is a very preliminary proposal and it would need to be further developed): 9

10 Week Topic Project One Course Overview SharePoint Architecture Project: Install SharePoint on-premise software and integrate it with other enterprise application software Two Planning SharePoint Information Architecture Document upload to default site Personal profile development (MySite) Three Understanding SharePoint Metadata architecture Content types Columns Metadata and Search Create a metadata environment from uploaded documents and make them searchable in a variety of ways Four Five Understanding SharePoint sites Sites and Site Collections Site Templates SharePoint Governance Security considerations Permissions Create customized SharePoint sites Define and create SharePoint security groups and apply security permissions to SharePoint content and sites 10

11 Bibliography The following works were used in researching this topic: Gotz, Ruven. Practical SharePoint 2010 Information Architecture. Apress, Jamison, Hanley, Bortlik. Essential SharePoint 2013: Practical Guide for Meaningful Business Results. Addison-Wesley, Regan, Patrick. MCTS Windows Server 2008 Applications Infrastructure, Configuring. Pearson Education, AIIM. Aim: The Global Community of Information Professionals < >. CIO.com. SharePoint 2013 Challenges and Questions for CIOs. CXO Media Inc < >. Confluence Documentation Home, Atlassian Documentation. < >. KMWorld. KMWorld.com: Content, Document and Knowledge Management. Information Today, Inc < >. Microsoft. SharePoint. Microsoft Corporation < >. 11