The Deliberate Design difference and what this means for your SharePoint deployment

Transcription

1 The Deliberate Design difference and what this means for your SharePoint deployment SharePoint can be a game changer for your business if you get it right Approaches There are three common approaches to implementing SharePoint: APPROACH Ad-hoc: Just do it IT team install the platform but the design and configuration is left to individual teams, treating it like a MS Word update THE LIKELY OUTCOME Almost always ends in grief. SharePoint quickly gets out of control as different teams do things in different ways & don t have the time or deep skills to design & support it right. Deliberately Design Deliberately designed and centrally managed. Business teams don t design themselves they focus on getting the most from it Gets results. Deep information management & SharePoint skills are needed. Governance & control needs to be well executed, otherwise Just do it reasserts itself over time. Bespoke Platform Workflow & software development used to customise SharePoint for a particular need Great for the right requirements. However often the software developers & workflow designers don t appreciate what is possible out of the box biggest risk is large costs & complexity when it s not required. If you don t want to invest in a consistent design, then you are probably better to stick with Dropbox or the like. You won t get a digital workplace but at least you ll get your documents and other files into the cloud

2 What s possible with a deliberate design: You can, over time, create a full digital workplace for your teams and potentially external partners. Once you have the overall design and key design patterns then you can proceed safely. For businesses this means getting more efficiencies, cutting down the risk of information accidents and connecting people so the flow of work and ideas is smoother. When following a deliberate design the following is possible with SharePoint: FACET Deliver USE Document version control, check in, check out, locked down permissions where needed Sending/receiving s directly into SharePoint, as well as drag/drop from Outlook Managing case files with approval processes and complex permissions e.g. personnel files, contracts, jobs, incidents, product legal/other info Project Management Office through to sites for individual projects Managing compliance and technical information through concurrent editing, approvals, publishing and disposal/archive Working offline and auto synching when you return to internet coverage Collaborate Sharing intel, developing ways of working and sharing reference how to content Discussion board use to ask questions of others, where all the content is searchable after the event, creating a knowledge base

3 Putting Office documents, photos, audio and multimedia directly on web pages Simultaneous editing of MS Office Documents by more than one user Connect Mixing local, location based, role based and corporate news together for a person Knowledge registers that expose what information is available and who to contact without necessarily giving the user access to the content Integration with Skype for Business (previously MS Lync) displays individuals online presence wherever their name appears in SharePoint Process Managing multi-channel inwards correspondence, and directing and monitoring responses e.g. inwards mail, complaints Visually tracking job timeliness and KPI s in live/real time Online forms with checks on accuracy & completeness Control Making corporate, project & HSE templates widely available for creating documents, these are centrally maintained with any changes or updates immediately adopted Publishing single source of truth policies, how-to, key links, important contracts that are filtered to a particular audience, no matter where the content resides Search Powerful search with refinement by metadata as well as live previews Single view of a property, product or customer that brings back grouped sorted results from SharePoint and other SQL based systems

4 Five cornerstones of a deliberate design 1 Consistent Metadata Metadata is ways of describing what a document is about, so it is easier to find it and potentially take actions on it. Some of this is common to all organisations while others will be specific to you (e.g. document types, locations, functions and activities of your business, locations). In particular your design will usually hang on a business classification like the one shown on the right 2 Consistent structure This includes overall navigation, breadcrumbs and the same look, feel and functionality people can use wherever they are 3 Design Patterns These are standardised designs for doing common work activities. This includes team sites; project sites; knowledge bases; case file/job workspaces. The

5 standardisation means new sites are simple to create and training new people is easier. 4 Training & roles Setting up who is allowed and expected to do what to sponsor it, update designs, handle support calls, do training, help staff at their desks etc. Training needs to be geared to YOUR SharePoint, so generic courses are of limited value. Courses are usually aimed at users, super users and admin/ba people. 5 A plan that wraps all of the above together and helps get business buy-in. This deals with expectations, solution priorities and phases of your implementation. Here is a typical plan for a medium sized implementation: We regularly run in-house and public two day workshops on Getting SharePoint Right the next public one is rd September in Wellington. If you are interested in this approach or wish to talk to one of our experts, contact us to find out more.