sharepoint best practice and the cloud
TRANSCRIPT
SharePoint Best Practiceand the Cloud
Simon Hudson – Cloud2 Ltd
Mick McGuinness – Application Performance Ltd
Zoë Buckingham – Application Performance Ltd
www.applicationperformance.com
Twitter: @appperf and @shareperf
Successful SharePoint delivered fast
SHAREPOINT IN THE CLOUD AND
BEST PRACTICES
• Building Intranets and applications in Office 365 – benefits, challenges and potential pitfalls.
• Simon Hudson
• Director, Cloud2 Ltd
• See the webinar on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXEYa4ZqeBU
Why: the old ways
Go to the office
Why: Mobile staff
• The old way
– Needs
• secure token such as RAS
• Remote servers such as Citrix
– More passwords to remember
– Slow
– Often expensive
Why: Better IT at home than office
VS
Why: Benefits of the cloud
Work anywhere on any device
Lower risk of data loss or leakage
Flexibility
• ability to procure on demand,
• reduced provisioning time
• Days vs months
Lower support
• Automatic patches and updates; fixes and DR
New ways of working
Better ways of working
Future proof
Staff productivity
WATCHOUTS AND CONSIDERATIONS
Is it safe?
Cloud has matured
• In reality most organisations use physical and network security that is, at best, no better than cloud solutions
• Microsoft are considered to be particularly strong
The single greatest threat is the action of staff
• Cloud doesn’t change that
There are few reasons to reject cloud solutions out of hand on the basis of security
• Financial institutions, multinationals and other organisations with commercially or legally sensitive information are committing their content to the cloud
• Safeguards available, e.g. tools which can monitor what is being uploaded
Due diligence and research
Security myths“The cloud isn’t very secure”
“I wouldn’t trust my data to the cloud”
Reality
• Restricted physical data centre access - authorised personnel only
• Multiple layers of physical security - biometric readers, motion sensors, 24-hour secured access, video camera surveillance, and security breach alarms
• Encryption of data both at rest and in transit
• Data Protection Act and keeping data in Europe
• Dublin and Amsterdam
• Singapore, USA
• Password policy
• 2 factor?
How secure is the Microsoft infrastructure?The physical storage devices are housed in shipping units with cables and water pipes for cooling running into and out of them. These units are almost never opened. Personnel at the facilities are tracked with RFID, and restricted to authorized parts of the building with biometric controls. Data is backed up in separate parts of the storage units. And if the whole facility goes down, there are still more layers of redundancy in datacenters located in far-off regions of the US and beyond.
Standard cloud security measures include:•At-rest and in-transit encryption (ISO 27001 grade)•Remote wipe capabilities (in case device is lost or stolen)•Two-factor authentication (sends you a text with a passcode after you put in your password)
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=26552
Risks
Dynamically changing platform
Loss of control of process
Supporting business change
• Tenant name vs. Org name
Culture and resistance to change
Potential pitfalls
Moving tenancies
Account management
• Joiners and leavers
• Synchronisation
• SSOLoss of control
Still need some 3rd party tools
Much more dependent on internet connection and connection speed
Perceived performance
• File access is generally slower
• Productivity is generally higher
• But user need reminding of the benefits
Changing your organisation name
Things that are easy
Tenant migration
How easy is tenant migration
BEST PRACTICE
And top tips for Office 365
Planning, Planning and more planning
Changing things down the line is not so easy
• Tenancy name
• Username
• Account management
• Storage planning and migration
• Information Architecture
• Awesome technology, poor processes
Not doing things now will hurt later
• Information architecture
• Metadata
• Content Types
• Governance
• Strategy, focus and purpose
• Migration
• Feedback
Vanity Names
– Change to
– > My Site etc. reflects first UPN, so get vanity names right first
Other considerations
SharePoint Online alerts
• Need to ensure user email addresses are set up in advance or alerts, workflows etc. won’t work
User login
• Discrete sign in
• Vs
• Dsync with password sync
• Vs
• ADFS
Search Centre
Search Centre is a separate Site Collection in Office 365
• It’s good, is being updated and improved so:
• Use this rather than your own search site
• Be aware of limitations
• Doesn’t inherit your branding
• No easy navigation back to Home site collection
Content Query
Need to avoid this in most cases
• Microsoft don’t like it and may issue throttling notice
Use Content by Search instead
Note: Can still use XSLT to style and transform
• But can’t use Audiences or AJAX
• Unless you write javascript
Publishing Features
Can’t save templates that have Publishing turned on
•But they are valuable, so develop work arounds
Test and development?
You don’t have test and dev. environments in O365
• Even if you spin up a devtenancy you have no means to deploy solutions between tenants
Set up additional site collections for dev. and test
• No real risk of having your dev. environment here as there is no code to break the tenant
• You can easily exclude the Site Collection from Search
• Note that you can’t easily remove index results if needed
Large Libraries
Any very large libraries should be a separate Site Collections
•E.g. 5GB per library with 200 libraries exceeds the 1TB site collection limit
•Large, dirty libraries better in segregated Site Collections
Site Admin
On premise, User Profiles are generally managed via AD
In Office 365 you need to manage this in the Site Admin panel
Site administration and user administration are problematic in any version of SharePoint.
• We recommend a 3rd party administration tool such as those from AvePoint and Metalogix
Fast Adoption
Decide whether you want early visibility or slow availability of new features
•It’s a dynamic platform
•New features appear almost weekly
•Changes can confuse users
•Make your choice…
Term Store
Site Collection vs Tenant wide term store option
•Plan for which kind of term store you want
•Unlike on-premise, it’s hard to move taxonomies etc. between these
InfoPath for eForms
•InfoPath is being deprecated, but will be available until past 2020
•List forms etc. are useful
Don’t Panic!
INTRANETS IN THE CLOUD
And especially Office 365
Features and uses
eForms Excel Surveys Extranets
Meetings, conferences and events
•Event planning
•Meeting centre
•OneNote
•Lync integration
Projects and PMO
Sales and Marketing management
•CRM integration
•Collateral creation and managementWebsites Mobile access
Remote access Guest access Phone Memo
External Content
•3rd party apps (Twitter, Monitis etc)
•3rd party data
The best intranets are those which are considered to be a broad business solution and platform and not the pet project of a particular
department…
What is an intranet /is it just about SharePoint?
Collaboration Intranet
Enterprise Social
Network
Document Management
Centre
Business Process solution
Comms. Intranet Enterprise
Intranet SharePoint
OneDrive
Office
Exchange
Lync
Yammer
More things coming…
Sway Video Portal
Delve
Roadmap Features
• E.g. Clutter
• Yammer +
• Skype for Business
Best Practice
• Never send documents internally
• Don’t use Check in/Out– Multi-authoring
– Version Control
– Approval
• Replace documents with OneNote
• Stop emailing people – Lync
– Alerts
– Yammer
– Discussions
• Replace File Shares completely– Migrate
• Use Personal Sites/OneDrive
• Take content offline
• Go Paperless
• Smart document templates
• Save to SharePoint
• Meetings
• Mobile
• Ownership
• Strategy
More Myths
It's too expensive
It's not flexible enough to fit my organisation
It's overkill for a smaller business
It’s not an enterprise solution
You can’t brand it
It’s not Google/Apple/Oracle/IBM
It’s unreliable
It’s slow
It doesn’t work on Apple/Android/Linux/ Windows XP
Users don’t like it
I don’t understand it
We don’t need it
It's too complex
It doesn't work with my browser
Users don't understand it
THE REALITY GAP
Understanding who wants what
Top things a company wants
Corporate branding and ‘exciting’ UI
Flashy animations and
imagesFantastic Search
Document ‘Management’
Corporate Communications
(News etc)
Department Sites
Discussions & Social
HR processes Project Sites
Engaging home page/good UX
Simple navigation/ease
of useFindability
Their stuff and somewhere for all their stuff
Insight into what’s going on
Team Sites
Instant Messaging
Staff Directory/social
Project Sites
Users
Top things actually used on an intranet
Business Applications
Faceted Search AdministriviaReally strong
metadata
Corporate alerts
An easy way to sweep ‘dirty’
content into the intranet
Integration with Office and the
desktop
Remote, Offline and Mobile access
Personal profilesStaff directory and
profilesCollaboration OneNote
Things you really need (but didn’t think to pay for)
Intranet management
Adoption programme
Clear security model
Tablet/touch Workflow eForms
AD and staff profile update
process
Go Live plan & sufficient staff
training breadth
SharePoint Admin,
infrastructure etc.
The needs onion
Corporate features ‘sell’
it
User features drive adoption
What’s used is what makes it
a success
Hidden needs make it
sustainable
Some takeaways
• It’s really bigDon’t eat the
elephant as the entrée
• It’s really broad and flexibleWith great power comes complexity
• Invest in Admin coursesEnsure key users
are trained
• Gatekeepers block progressEmpower users
and delegate
• Evangelise, promote, supportDon’t launch
without a go live plan
• Stick, carrot, crowbarUsers don’t like
change
• But don’t mistreat the developers
Writing code should be a last resort not a
first instinct
• Define what is sensitive, issue a policy, educate users
Don't assume security
• But configure it to your needs
Use standard functionality
wherever possible
• It’s so easy to replicate the mess seen on file systems
Develop and maintain the IA
• And everything elseKeep the
permissions model simple
Risks – A reminder Confusion• Options, costs,
constraints
Supporting business change
• Tenant name vs. Org name
• Restructuring
• Dynamic updates vs. Control and stability
Security
• Snowden, DPA, Patriot
• Remote access
• Governance
The future
• Changing vendors
• Losing vendors
• Changing technology
• Changing laws
Performance
• End user experience
• Network performance
• Platform performance
User perception• What do users do now?• What are their expectations?• What is the current performance?
Ensure your baseline is understood- What is the benchmark for performance
THANK YOU FOR LISTENING
AND NOW…
Years of Performance Tuning
Experience
Innovative SoftwarePortfolio
+=
Helping customers with performance since 2004
Partner with leading vendors
Combine Monitoring and Acceleration
What we Do
6 Steps to Faster SharePoint
Latency and bandwidth of the connection
Speed and Scalability of server and backend
2. CONNECTION 3. SERVERHardware and softwareof the client
1. CLIENT
End user
monitoring
Faster page load
times
Real network
monitoring
Faster file
transfersExpert
support
Application
Performance
End User Monitoring
Real Users vs Synthetic
Real User Monitoring
Real End User Experience Monitoring
“Measures real end user experience
for every page view for every visitor to your site”
NOT synthetic transactions
Answer these Questions
• Is my site really slow?
• When is my site slow?
• Who is affected?
• How does performance vary by location?
• Does performance vary browser or device?
• Which pages are slowest?
• Is it the backend servers or frontend?
• Where should I invest time optimizing?
Simple Installation
One line of code in the HEAD
And one in the BODY
* Works with all browsers that support JavaScript including mobile devices. It uses the
Navigation Timing API or the Google toolbar where available. In other cases standard JavaScript
timing is used.
<script type="text/javascript">var wt_start = new
Date().getTime();</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src=“/webtuna.js"></script>
Architecture
SaaS or On-Premise
After the ‘onload’ event performance
data is beaconed back to a central
WebTuna server.
1 The end users browser executes the
webtuna.js as they navigate the site.
You login to my.webtuna.com to see
real time and historical views of
performance
2
3
Synthetic Monitoring
Tests full service availability & performance from user locations
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Built for the Needs of Business Ops Teams“Pre-trained” sensors eliminate the need for scripting skills
Users can start monitoring virtually any cloud app in less than 5 minutes
The Crowd Changes the Game for IT
Comparative AnalysisAnswers “Is it me, my ISP, or everybody?”Data driven configuration best practices
Collaborative ITDistribute test/tasks to the crowdCollaborative data/information sharing
Correlated Data FeedsSensor, Community & CSP feedsContent + data = insight
Globally shared apps require globally shared monitoring
Demo
