the four facets of sharepoint productivity

The Four Facets of SharePoint ProductivityChristian BuckleyAxcelercbuck@axceler.com

About

Christian Buckley, Director of Product Evangelism at Axceler

• Microsoft MVP for SharePoint Server

• Most recently at Microsoft, part of the Microsoft Managed Services team (now Office365-Dedicated) and then Advertising Operations

• Prior to Microsoft, was a senior consultant, working in the software, supply chain, and grid technology spaces focusing on collaboration

• Co-founded and sold a collaboration software company to Rational Software. At another startup (E2open), helped design, build, and deploy a SharePoint-like collaboration platform (Collaboration Manager), onboarding numerous high-tech manufacturing companies, including Hitachi, Matsushita (Panasonic), and Seagate

• Co-authored ‘Microsoft SharePoint 2010: Creating and Implementing Real-World Projects’ link (MS Press, March 2012) and 3 books on software configuration management.

• Twitter: @buckleyplanet Blog: buckleyplanet.com Email: cbuck@axceler.com

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Delivered award-winning administration and migration software since 1994, for SharePoint since 2007Over 2,000 global customers

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Coach enterprises on SharePoint best practicesGive administrators the most innovative tools availableAnticipate customers’ needsDeliver best of breed offeringsStay in lock step with SharePoint development and market trends

Axceler Overview

Agenda

The Business Dilemma1 – Taxonomy2 – Workflow3 – Forms 4 – Social Change Is HardOOTB and Beyond

Topic

The Business Dilemma

How productive are your end users on SharePoint?

Email Cell Twitter Blogcbuck@echotechnology.com 425.246.2823 @buckleyplanet http://buckleyplanet.net

Online tools and the social platforms help teams work together more collaboratively

While at the same time, supporting the introverts among us, asynchronously

Social networking platformsWikisWorkflowsEmailMySites

Tools that overtly manage and manipulate content and social interactions are becoming more integrated and seamless

Enterprise platforms are increasingly looking not just at solving core workstreams, but in ensuring productivity in moving between workstreams

Email Cell Twitter Blog

cbuck@axceler.com 425.246.2823 @buckleyplanet http://buckleyplanet.com

Email Cell Twitter Blog

cbuck@echotechnology.com 425.246.2823 @buckleyplanet http://buckleyplanet.net

Business ROI for improving productivity

Faster employee on-boarding and training

More business output

More usage of the platform

Faster realization of the financial investments you’ve made in SharePoint

What are you doing to make your end users productive?

Taxonomy

Workflow

Forms Social

4 Ways to Improve Productivity

Are you optimized for search?

Have you adopted a metadata strategy?

Have you developed a social strategy?

Have you prioritized feature and solution requests?

Have you established a cycle for continuous improvement on what you’ve already built?

Areas for initial focus

Topic

Taxonomy

What is metadata?

Email Cell Twitter Blog

cbuck@axceler.com 425.246.2823 @buckleyplanet http://buckleyplanet.com

Email Cell Twitter Blog

cbuck@echotechnology.com 425.246.2823 @buckleyplanet http://buckleyplanet.net

Case StudyU

sers

TeamsCorporate Departments

Empowerment

My Site

The Role of Metadata

Scott Singleton, Managed Metadata in SharePoint 2010 http://slidesha.re/hNPeAQ

Govern

ance

Metadata

Taxonomy Ad Hoc

Social Media

Search

End Users

The metadata stack

Metadata is the fundamental building block of every SharePoint solution

Taxonomy adds structureFolksonomy refines the modelApply governance, as needed (Hint: its always needed)

Why taxonomy is important(a very realistic scenario. really)

1. When you don’t have a plan for metadata, it impacts the quality of your taxonomy

2. When your taxonomy is weak, it impacts your overall information architecture

3. When you don’t have a plan for metadata, it also impacts your ability to utilize the full potential of social

4. A weak information architecture impacts your ability to properly govern your environment

5. Without proper governance, you open up your environment to site sprawl

6. If you allow site sprawl to take hold, people begin to undervalue their roles, and the value of the platform within the company

7. When people undervalue the value of the platform, they begin to question other decisions being made by the management team

8. When people question management, a general feeling of apathy and corporate malaise begins to fester

9. When people start not caring about work, they tend to call in sick or avoid any real accountability

10. As worker productivity slides, management looks for other opportunities to automate and drive down costs and increase productivity

11. In the search for increased productivity, management will begin replacing basic functions with complex systems, including robotics

12. As the robots improve productivity and increase output, management spends more to build even bigger and better robots

13. As the robots increase in intelligence and capability, they then begin creating their own kind

14. As the robots slowly take over, humans begin to revolt and fight back against the machines

15. Just as the humans begin to turn the tide, that’s when the aliens attack

16. Unlike the movie War of the Worlds (with Tom Cruise), the aliens have been living among us for many years (Tom most likely one of them), adapting to our biological ecosystem

17. After several more hundred years, the aliens will use up all of our natural resources, and depart from earth, leaving us with a damaged shell of a planet

18. As humans begin to sort through the alien and robot trash that covers 90% of our planet, they create a basic form of government for the few who remain

19. The new government strings together from the wreckage a few old computer systems in an effort to better catalog remaining supplies and coordinate with remote human outposts

20. The first order of business of this new system?

Defining the system’s taxonomy

Topic

Workflow

Why use workflow?

Most commonly used automation of end user interaction with SharePointReduces “hunt and peck” by simplifying interactionsAllows enforcement of process and governance rules“Pushes” action rather than relying on end users to do the right thing

Out of the box

Third party

Topic

Forms

Why build out your forms?

Simplify the interface to SharePointBreak down complex tasks into natural languageGives people step-by-step instructionsCapture more complete dataCapture richer metadata

Vijai Anand, Customize SharePoint List Forms using InfoPath 2010, http://bit.ly/RwR1ky

Customize the list forms using InfoPath 2010

Topic

Social

Email Cell Twitter Blogcbuck@echotechnology.com 425.246.2823 @buckleyplanet http://buckleyplanet.net

Email Cell Twitter Blogcbuck@echotechnology.com 425.246.2823 @buckleyplanet http://buckleyplanet.net

They surface data

They provide context

They extend the search experience

They are increasingly being viewed as the way in which people communicate

Why are social tools important?

Why SharePoint needs social

Noteboard is a micro-blog where users can post short notes on MySites and aggregate the notes of colleagues they are following.

Social Tagging allows end users to provide context to content through use of “I Like It”, comments, ratings and keyword tagging.

• Blogs got a major facelift, including the addition of comments, ratings, and the ability to present calendar-based archives of older posts.

• End user-generated keywords• Personally applied tags of pages

and objects to content you discover and consume

• Generally applied through social interactions

What is folksonomy?

• A folksonomy is a taxonomy (or set of terms) that arises as a result of people applying their own tags (metadata) to content objects.

• People use the tags that make sense to them, so over a period of time as more people tag, the folksonomy becomes more and more appropriate for the audience by associating content objects with the words and concepts people use to think about them.

• Unlike metadata terms, keywords aren’t organized into a hierarchy that users select from. Instead, users can enter any value into a keyword field.

• The primary value of a folksonomy is that it uses your own vocabulary

• May come from your intimate knowledge of a subject

• A way to correlate discovered content (through search or social interactions) to your understanding

Why use folksonomy?

Taxonomy• Paper• Airplane• White• Toy

Folksonomy• Paper• Flight• Airplane• Design• White• Toy• Origami• Techniqu

e• Distance

taxonomy

folksonomy

Opportunity to improve global search

How end users add tags

Email Cell Twitter Blogcbuck@echotechnology.com 425.246.2823 @buckleyplanet http://buckleyplanet.net

Email Cell Twitter Blogcbuck@echotechnology.com 425.246.2823 @buckleyplanet http://buckleyplanet.net

Email Cell Twitter Blogcbuck@echotechnology.com 425.246.2823 @buckleyplanet http://buckleyplanet.net

• Individual words or phrases are added to a Term Set with governance and proactive management (create, copy, reuse, merge, deprecate, move or delete)

• Advantages• Integrated into SharePoint• Can be extended (social tools providers)

• Disadvantages• Requires social interaction• Improved filtering needed• Need more display/sharing options• Requires ongoing management (governance)

Topic

Change is Hard

Change Management

At the core of any productivity enhancement effort should be a solid change management system

TransparentStatefulCurrent

Tell people what you are going to do beforehand, give them data while being executed, tell them what was accomplished once completed

Summary

OOTB and Beyond

• Before you can talk about productivity:o Understand the business value of what

can be delivered through SharePointo Clarify the scope of what is to be built --

before you start building it (novel concept, I know)

• Before you spend any time on customizing SharePoint, understand what is possible out-of-the-box

• If you’re worried about “learning” on your primary (production) system, look into test / temporary environments from Fpweb or CloudShare

Get the most out of OOTB

Contact me

Order your copy at http://oreil.ly/qC4loT

Christian Buckleycbuck@axceler.com+1 425-246-2823@buckleyPLANETwww.buckleyPLANET.com and http://info.axceler.com

* Additional Resources * On The Importance of Metadata, Craig Mullins http://bit.ly/cOWp2F * Enabling Social Media through Metadata http://slidesha.re/gdjoaz* Managed Metadata in SharePoint 2010, Scott Singleton http://slidesha.re/hNPeAQ* The Battle for Metadata in SharePoint 2010, Michal Pisarek http://bit.ly/g7vFWN * 5 Steps of a Successful SharePoint Site Transformation http://bit.ly/eB6qbN * Creating Passionate Users, Kathy Sierra http://headrush.typepad.com/

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