sharepoint governance questions january 2014 ©2014 susan hanley llc

SharePoint Governance Questionshttp://tiny.cc/SharePointGovQuestions

January 2014

©2014 SUSAN HANLEY LLC

2©2014 SUSAN HANLEY LLC

Contents

Vision and Overview Enterprise Decisions

Policy Questions Compliance Training Access Provisioning Branding and Functionality Information Architecture Content Life-cycle Management Operational Decisions Personal Sites/Social Features

Roles and Responsibilities Site Specific Decisions

The key to successful plans for SharePoint

governance starts with having the right

conversations with the right individuals at the

right time.

If you start with the right questions, you can build

your governance plan from the answers.

Vision and Overview

3


A typical SharePoint deployment has multiple solution areas. The vision and goals may be different for each one – along with the governance policies and guidelines..

4

Intranet (Home Page)

Intranet (Sub-

sites/secondary pages)

Departmental Portals

Personal Sites – Social Content

Personal Sites – User Profile

Team

Sites

Personal Sites –

Personal Content


Vision and Overview

Who are the solution stakeholders? What is the vision for each aspect of the

solution that apply (intranet, departmental portals, team sites, social computing, personal sites) and how does it relate to each key stakeholder? How is the vision statement translated into a

set of business objectives for the solution? (5-10 key outcomes that will connect with key stakeholders)

How will each stakeholder determine if the business objectives are successful?

What are the key organizational initiatives that the solution is designed to address? In other words, which specific strategic

objectives for the organization does the intranet (and each other type of SharePoint solution) align with?

• The goal is to describe how the solution relates to core business outcomes.

• This is not a vision for the features of SharePoint that you want to leverage. It’s a vision for how the solution is intended to integrate into the flow of work.

• The outcome of answering these questions (which hopefully were answered at the start of the project) will help you develop the messaging and context for using SharePoint and following governance guidelines.

• The goal in answering these questions is to identify a set of core business outcomes that will help answer the “what’s in it for me?” and “why do I need to pay attention to this?” questions for each stakeholder.


Template for Documenting the Vision/Overview – create one row for each relevant area of your solution.

Solution Area

Vision Type of Content

Ownership/ Accountability

Frequency/Type of Review

Governance Overview

Intranet Home Page

Targeted information based on users role

• News• Important

Links• Personal KPIs• People and

Culture

Corporate Communications

• Ongoing review for news

• All documents and pages reviewed at least annually

• Tightly controlled• Formal content

management processes• Content managed by

Corporate Communications

Intranet Sub-sites

Departmental Portals

Team Sites

Personal Sites – Social Content

Personal Sites – User Profile

Personal Sites – Personal Content


If social computing is part of your solution, talk about:

What are the specific business objectives for the social features of SharePoint?

What are the business-specific “moments of engagement” where social will drive value?

Is there an existing social media policy that applies to SharePoint or can be adapted to cover internal social networking?

Who are the key stakeholders for the solution? Who is involved in content creation? Who is involved in content consumption? Who will be impacted?

Enterprise Decisions

8


Enterprise Policy Questions - Compliance

Key Governance Question Decision/Answer

What types of overall corporate policies for information management, business, or technology management apply to the solution? Are there existing legal, IT and information management policies that SharePoint solutions must follow?• Use of IT Resources• Electronic Communications• Social Media Policy• Protection of Personally Identifiable

Information• Records Management

How are these policies enforced in other systems? (Look for opportunities to leverage existing processes and have the conversation about how governance within SharePoint can be aligned with governance in other systems.




How do the corporate records and discovery policies address:• Intranet pages• Intranet documents• Document versions• Intranet news articles• Intranet images• Team site documents• Community or Team site Discussion

Lists• Other Community or Team site lists

and images• Newsfeed• Individual user content in SkyDrive

Pro

Are there specific events in SharePoint that need to be logged for audit purposes? Are the right reporting tools in place to ensure that this can happen?




Is there an expectation around how often content or entire sites need to be reviewed to ensure that information is kept up-to-date and is reliable?• For example, is it required that all sites

be “re-certified” on an annual basis?• For example, is it required that

individual documents be reviewed on an annual or more frequent basis?• Do the same review requirements

apply to all types of sites?

For each solution area, who is accountable to ensure that policies are followed?

How will accountability be evaluated?• How often?• By whom?




What processes must be in place to ensure compliance?

Is there a penalty for non-compliance? If so, how will it be enforced? Are the penalties different for different types of sites/solutions?• If the governance plan says that page

and site owners are responsible for content management, are you prepared to de-commission pages where no one in the organization will step up to page ownership responsibilities?

• Who will be responsible for making these decisions?

Is a third-party tool needed to help ensure and manage compliance?




Who will have responsibilities for maintaining the “governance plan” (or the artifacts, training, and other processes where governance information is “consumed” by key stakeholders)?

Where will governance information “live”?

How will it be communicated to users?


Enterprise Policy Questions - Training


There are different roles and types of users involved in any SharePoint deployment. Business users, in particular, are empowered with new capabilities for which they are likely to need training.

What are the expectations around user training (who takes which training)? For example, are new Site Owners expected to take any type of training before they get their “super powers”? If you are using Community Sites or Community Features, are Moderators required to have training before they get their super powers?

What are the plans to incorporate governance policies and best practices into SharePoint training?


Enterprise Policy Questions - Access


Are there any overall access restrictions? (specific AD or other groups permitted or not permitted to access the solution as a whole or individual types of sites)

If you are in an Office 365 environment, can site owners invite external people to access content?

If external users can access your sites or documents, can they do so with an anonymous guest link? On all or just selected site collections?

Are there restrictions on specific types of sites where external access is or is not permitted?


Enterprise Policy Questions – Provisioning


What is the provisioning process to get a new site collection? Does it vary by type of site requested?

Who can request a new site collection?

How is the type of site collection matched to the business need?

How is this decision reviewed (or does it need to be)?

What is the process to provision a team or community site within a site collection?

How will sites and site collections be de-commissioned?

What is the plan for content archiving?

(Note: these questions will need to be addressed for each type of portal/ solution.)


Enterprise Policy Questions – Enhancement Provisioning


What processes need to be in place to request new features or capabilities for the solution (or provide feedback in general)?

Who will be accountable to review and manage enhancement requests?


Enterprise Policy Questions – Branding and Enterprise Functionality


Is there an overall design style guide that all sites are required to follow?

Who is responsible for branding decisions?

Can users with permissions change the theme for a team site?

Will there be a library of acceptable/approved team site logos? If not, can users with permissions add a logo/icon of their choice?

Is SharePoint Designer permitted?

Is the use of InfoPath permitted?

Are any third party tools/apps permitted? Restricted?


Enterprise Policy Questions – IA: Navigational Architecture


Who is responsible for managing the navigational architecture for the solution?

What is the process for requesting new “nodes” in the navigational architecture?

How will the effectiveness of the navigational architecture be evaluated over time?

Who determines which sites are promoted to which audiences on the Sites page?

What is the process for requesting “promotion” on the Sites page?


Enterprise Policy Questions – IA: Page Layout Architecture


Does the layout of each site home page have to be consistent? Can owners of sites make changes to the layout and lists and libraries on the site?

Are there specific page templates that site owners/solution analysts must leverage? (Note that you should think about different types of solutions and whether there are or should be different page templates for each solution.)

If Site Owners can make changes, can they use any available web part or app on or is there a specific list?


Enterprise Policy Questions – IA: Page Layout Architecture, continued


Are there guidelines about placement of certain types of content on pages? For example, is there an expectation about what type of content will be “above the fold” or in the Quick Launch?

If there are no templates, how will training about page layout best practices be communicated to users who are empowered with permissions to add content and web parts to pages?


Enterprise Policy Questions – IA: Content Organization


Are there enterprise content types?

Is there any enterprise-wide mandatory core metadata? (for example, records retention codes)

Are there enterprise-wide supplemental terms? (Managed metadata in the term store)

Do all site owners have to use these terms where they are relevant? If so, how will information about enterprise terms be communicated?

How is the overall metadata architecture going to be maintained?

Can users request new terms? If so, what is the process?


Enterprise Policy Questions – Content Life-cycle Management


What type of information is most important for success?

What is the process for creating and maintaining critical information in each area of the solution? For example, is content created on private sites and then “pushed” to public areas? Is content created and consumed on the same site?

What types of processes are needed to ensure that critical content is created and maintained?

Are there specific information management policies that apply to different types of content?

What type of retention policy is applicable for Newsfeed content? Is it the same as email?


Enterprise Policy Questions – Content Life-cycle Management, continued


Who “owns” published documents? Contributor? Department? Does it depend on the site or site type? Is the “owner” responsible for content life-cycle management, including management of inactive content?

Are there any overall requirements for dealing with inactive content? Does it get archived? (If so, how?) Does it get deleted? (Is this dependent on the type of site?)

Are there specific policies for document versions, including how many versions should be retained?

Should retention rules be manually enforced or do we need to invest in automated processes or third-party tools?


Enterprise Policy Questions – Content Life-cycle Management – Specific Content Types


Are there any specific content requirements for user’s personal content on SkyDrive Pro?

Are there specific policies or guidance for non-document types of content? • News• Links• Discussion Posts• Data Files• Multi-media files (e.g. video)• Images• Yammer/Newsfeed posts

If a video or other multi-media content was produced more than X years ago, does it need to be re-made?

Enterprise Operational Decisions

26


Enterprise Policy Questions – Operations and Support


For each type of content or collection of sites:• What type of availability is required?• What are the expectations for disaster

recovery and backup?• What are the expectations for

response time?• What is the impact on storage,

network infrastructure, or other elements of the IT backbone?

What type of environments are needed to support the business outcomes (for example, development, QA, and production)?

How will migration be supported from one environment to another?


Enterprise Policy Questions – Operations and Support


What types of processes are needed to ensure that the solution infrastructure is maintained and monitored?

How will performance or infrastructure issues be escalated and resolved?

How do Site Owners request support for custom development? Support in general (if they don’t know if they even need custom development)?

What type of support infrastructure will be available to support end users and Site Owners/Solution Analysts?

Personal Sites/Social Features

29


Personal Sites/Social Features

30

This section covers the following topics: User Profile Newsfeed User Content (e.g. SkyDrive Pro, blogs) Community Sites (Discussion Forums)

User Profile

31


User Profile Review Approach

For the conversation about the User Profile, make sure that representatives from HR as well as Corporate Communications are available to participate.

Consider each “out of the box” attribute (listed on the following pages) as well as any custom attributes that you may want to add. For each attribute listed, discuss: Should this attribute be included? If so, can/should it be authoritatively sourced?

You will want to evaluate what information you can import from AD, such as the office location, office phone, manager, etc. The attributes on the following pages are those that are available by default in a brand new SharePoint site. You will likely have a rich collection of profile attributes in addition to these that you can use to synchronize employee information with your identity management system.

For each custom attribute, identify whether it will be entered by the user or “sourced” from an authoritative system. Review how you will source the values and how the synchronization will occur.


Enterprise Policy Questions – User Profile – Basic Information

Attribute Name

User Instructions in SharePoint

Considerations Sample Guidance

About Me Provide a personal description expressing what you would like others to know about you.

• This statement is displayed to all people who look at the user’s profile.

• It should be brief and “consumable.”

• Use the About me statement to talk about your current role and responsibilities.

• Keep the message brief so that others can “consume” it quickly.

• Use the 90/10 rule as you create content – about 90% professional and 10% personal (if you are comfortable sharing personal information).

• For some examples of About me descriptions, check out the profiles of [Link to Name] and [Link to Name].

Picture Upload a picture to help others easily recognize you at meetings and events.

• Do you want users to be able to upload their own picture?

• What kind of picture is acceptable?

• Are there legal or privacy issues associated with pictures?

• Can users “opt out if you are planning to source the picture from, as an example, your badge pictures? (which everyone hates, by the way)

• Until you upload a picture, your profile will show a silhouette.

• Choose a picture in which you are the only subject.

• The picture should only show your head and shoulders.

• Make sure the picture is “sized for the web” – around 90 KB maximum.


Enterprise Policy Questions – User Profile – Basic Information

Attribute Name



Ask Me About

Update your "Ask Me About" with topics you can help people with, such as your responsibilities or areas of expertise.

• Attributes entered by users are stored in the shared keywords list so that they are reusable by others.

• These attributes are used by search to return both people and documents when someone searches for that term.

• It’s a good idea to pre-populate shared keywords with common terms for your organization so that when people start typing values, they will see the list of pre-defined, correctly spelled terms.

• How well does someone have to know a topic in order to list it here?

• Use this area to identify up to five or so professional (work related) topics that you can help people with, such as your responsibilities or areas of expertise.

• In addition to those areas that are your primary areas of responsibility, list topics where you have extensive experience and can assist or educate others.

• Tip: Separate values with semi-colons. Do not use commas to separate terms. for example, if you enter X, Y, and Z as your term, the system will replace your entry with three separate values (and the third will be called “and Z”). Use spaces to separate words that together form the term.


Enterprise Policy Questions – User Profile – Contact Information

Attribute Name



Mobile phone

This number will be shown on your profile. Also, it will be used for text message (SMS) alerts.

• Does your organization provide staff with mobile phones? Can this be sourced from an authoritative source?

• Are there any privacy issues associated with mobile phones?

Fax

Home Phone

Office Location

Enter your current location. (e.g. China, Tokyo, West Campus)

• By design, this is where someone could enter where they are TODAY, but it may be difficult to get people to fill this in.

• Consider whether your users will find this attribute useful and if so, be sure to provide expectations about how it should be used.

Time Zone

Select the time zone for your current location. We will use this information to show the local time on your profile page.

Assistant (Selected with “People Picker.”)


Enterprise Policy Questions – User Profile – Details

Attribute Name



Past Projects

Provide information on previous projects, teams or groups.

• How many past projects?• Will users be expected to keep

this information up to date? If so, how will you make that happen?

• Will asking for it add value?

• Optionally list the names of previous projects you have worked on.

Skills Include skills used to perform your job or previous projects.(e.g. C++, Public Speaking, Design)

• Will users be expected to keep this information up to date? If so, how will you make that happen?

• How much guidance do you want to include about how facile you are with that skill? Does it mater?

• Is there an another system from which this information can be sourced, e.g., your HRIS?

• List skills used to perform your job or skills for previous projects. If you speak or read a language other than English, list it in this section.

• You can list any skill you wish to share – even if it may not be related to your current job.

Schools List the schools you have attended.

• Since there are many ways of spelling colleges and universities, consider “priming” the keywords list with common values prior to launching.

• List schools you have attended.• As you start to type, wait for the

system to offer suggestions – in case you are not the first person to enter this value.

Birthday Enter the date in the following format: April 25

• Is it OK to ask for this information even if it is optional? Some organizations feel that it is not a good idea to leave this field in the profile.

• Sharing your birthday (month/day) is optional.

• Enter your birthday only if you wish to share this information. People who are “following” you will see a notification in their Newsfeed on your birthday.


Enterprise Policy Questions – User Profile – Details, continued

Attribute Name



Interests Share personal and business related interests. We will help you keep in touch with activities related to these interests through events in your newsfeed.

• Can personal interests be included? Do you want to provide guidance regarding the type of acceptable interests?

• Since there are many ways of spelling and defining interests, consider “priming” the keywords list with common values prior to launching – especially terms that you want to keep track of. (Note that the values for Interests are sourced from the same list as Skills and Ask Me About.)

• Will users be expected to keep this information up to date? If so, how will you make that happen? Is it important for the business outcomes?

• This may be very confusing for your users because interest keywords and hashtags seem like they should be the same – but they are not. Interests are sourced from enterprise keywords and listing interests generates an action when content is tagged authoritatively or manually by a user using a system keyword. Hashtags are sourced from the hashtag term store, which is only associated (right now) with Newsfeed and Discussion posts.

• Share any personal and business related interests that you wish to share. These should be topics that are of interest to you that you would like to learn more about.

• As your interests change, be sure to update this list to add or remove values.

• When activities or content associated with these terms are tagged, you will get a notification in your Newsfeed.


Enterprise Policy Questions – User Profile – Newsfeed Settings

Attribute Name


Considerations Sample Guidance (for SharePoint 2013 Newsfeed)

Newsfeed - General

N/A • Newsfeed or Yammer, that is the question?

• Considerations:• Until August 2013, there is no

specific guidance or easy way to replace the Newsfeed link in the Suite bar (especially for Office 365).

• Until Fall 2013, there is no single sign-on (shared profile).

• Until some time in 2014, there is no integrated search provided by Microsoft – though you can federate search results to Yammer on your own.

• Hashtags and @Mentions in the SharePoint 2013 Newsfeed are also used and integrated with Discussion Lists.

• The Newsfeed settings allow you to control which activities you get an email about and which activities you want to share.

• This is also a place where you can maintain the list of hashtags you want to follow. You can leave this list blank initially or start typing terms that describe your interests. Hashtags must be single words.

• Note that this is not the only way SharePoint can alert you about content via email. In addition to these automatic notifications, you can also set up an Alert on a document or a library or list so that you will get an email when content changes. Alert emails can be restricted to a specific time of day or day of the week. Newsfeed emails are sent immediately.

• You will probably want to start out by leaving all the default values checked. If you find that you are getting too many emails or that your Newsfeed is too cluttered, you can adjust the settings on this page to align with how you want to work.


Enterprise Policy Questions – User Profile – Newsfeed Settings, continued

Attribute Name


Considerations Sample Guidance (for SharePoint 2013 Newsfeed)

Followed # Tags

Stay up-to-date on topics that interest you by following #tags. Posts with these #tags will show up in your newsfeed.

• Since there are many ways of spelling and defining terms, consider “priming” the hashtags list with common values prior to launching – especially terms that you want to keep track of.

• These are not maintained in the same list of keywords and will have to be created separately.

• You can leave this list blank initially or start typing terms that describe your interests. Hashtags must be single words.

• You may not be familiar with the term Followed #Tags, which is read as “followed hashtags.” When you post or reply in your Newsfeed, you can associate a topic by using a hashtag.

• To assign a hashtag, place the number symbol # in front of the term that you want to include in the tag. SharePoint returns a list of terms that match what you have entered.

• When a post contains tags, the Newsfeed displays an activity related to that tag and users who follow that tag see the activity in their Newsfeed.

• Using tags helps focus attention on a specific topic and can be used to filter posts and replies in search.

• You can use the Followed #Tags area of your profile to set up a list of terms that interest you to ensure that you see content posted by others that has been tagged with your term.

Newsfeed Use and Management

40


Enterprise Policy Questions – Newsfeed Use and Management

Key Governance Question Decision/AnswerWant type of guidance do you want to provide about what types of conversations are appropriate for the Newsfeed versus other ways to communicate? (for example, email, discussion forums, instant messaging, etc.)

Do you want to provide guidance about mentioning someone in the activity feed using an @mention or posting a photo of someone without asking permission?

Is there an existing policy for social media that applies to the Newsfeed (or needs to be updated)?

Are there specific topics or content that should not be included in Activity posts? For example, in one legal implementation, attorneys were advised not to mention any specifics of open cases in newsfeed posts.

How will newsfeed policies and guidance be enforced and communicated?

User Content

42


Enterprise Policy Questions – User Content

Key Governance Question Decision/AnswerWill all users have SkyDrive Pro?

Are there any restrictions on types of content or quantity of storage available to users in SkyDrive Pro?

Can all users have a blog? If so, is there special guidelines/training for users who are creating blogs? Are there any existing guidelines?


Enterprise Policy Questions - Communities


Are there standard policies that need to be included in each Community site (on the “About” page)?

Do community moderators need special training?

Is there a documented list of expectations for community moderators?

Do moderators have to be employees?

Roles and Responsibilities

45

46

It takes a village … sample Roles for SharePoint Deployments

SharePoint Executive Sponsor

SharePoint IT Owner

SharePoint Administrator

Help Desk

Application Development Team

Solution Business Owner

Solution Steering Committee

Site Owner/ Solution Analyst

Site Contact

Solution Information Architect

Site Sponsor

Solution IT Owner and Support Team

Site Member

SharePoint Coaches /Evangelists

SharePoint Power Users Community

SharePoint Training and Communications

Intranet Business Owner

Intranet Steering Committee

Intranet Information ArchitectIntranet Page/Site Owner, Author, Visitor

Enterprise Roles Roles for each site or solution


Roles and Responsibilities

Who is the business owner for the solution? Who is responsible for technical management of the environment,

including hardware and software implementation, configuration, and maintenance? Who can install new Web Parts, features, or other code enhancements?

Who will be responsible for ongoing evaluation to ensure that the solution continues to meet business and technical expectations?

Who is allowed or who will be responsible for setting up new sites? If this responsibility is controlled by the IT department, then it is likely that IT will have to negotiate a service level agreement (SLA) for site set up responsiveness with the business stakeholders. If this responsibility is delegated, users will need training to ensure that they follow acceptable conventions for naming, storage, and so on.

Who has access to each page/site? Who can grant access to each? Some organizations do not allow individual site owners to manage security on their sites. If this is something you decide to do, who will be responsible for managing security?


Roles and Responsibilities, continued

Who is responsible for managing metadata? Who can set up or request new content types or site columns? How much central control do you want to have over the values in site columns?

If the governance plan says that page and site owners are responsible for content management, are you prepared to de-commission pages where no one in the organization will step up to page ownership responsibilities? Who will be responsible for making these decisions?


Roles and Responsibilities, continued

How do the existing organizational roles map to the roles required for the new solution? Are there additional skills that people need to acquire? Are there additional resources that need to be hired?

Is there a requirement for training to have a specific role overall or for an individual site?

Who will be accountable to ensure that lessons learned in various implementations across the organization are effectively shared with the rest of the organization?

Do Site Owners have to be employees? (for example, can a contractor be a Site Owner?)

Site/Solution-Specific Decisions

50


Site-Specific Questions – General Policies


Who can request the creation of this type of site? Is there an approval process? Is there a step to make sure that the site is needed (rather than just being added to an existing site)?

How critical is availability, backup, response time to this site type? Do special SLA’s need to be established with IT?

Who is accountable for ensuring that the content on the site follows governance policies and guidelines?

How will you ensure that the purpose and relevance of the solutions or site has not changed?

Who determines when the site is no longer needed?


Site-Specific Questions – General Policies, continued


How does this type of site get de-commissioned? When that happens, what happens to the content?

How critical is availability, backup, response time to this site type? Do special SLA’s need to be established with IT?


Site-Specific Questions – Permissions


Who is accountable for determining and assigning permissions to access the site?

Is there a requirement for training to have specific permissions?

Who can publish content?

Can users outside the standard security permissions be invited in to the site? Note: external users can be prevented from access globally (for SharePoint Online deployments) but users with manage permissions privileges control which internal users access the site.

Are there any site-specific restrictions for Site Owners/Solution Analysts?


Workspace-Specific Questions – Layout and Navigation


Who can request a new top level site of this type? What is the process?

Who “owns” the persistent top level navigation? What is the process for updating?

Can the Workspace Administrator create sub-sites? If so, are there restrictions?

Does the layout of pages in the site need to be consistent? Are there specific things that cannot be changed?

Can Workspace Administrators use any available web part or app on or is there a specific list?


Workspace-Specific Questions – Content Life-cycle Management


What type of information is most important for success?

What is the process for creating and maintaining critical information in each area of the site?

What types of processes are needed to ensure that critical content is created and maintained?

Are there specific information management policies that apply to different types of content?

Are there specific policies or guidance for different types of content that are different from the enterprise policies?

Who “owns” published documents? Contributor? Department? Does it depend on the site or site type? Is the “owner” responsible for content life-cycle management, including management of inactive content?


Workspace-Specific Questions – Content Life-cycle Management


What happens to old or irrelevant content? How often does content have to be reviewed? By whom? Can content be deleted?

Are there specific policies for document versions, including how many versions should be retained?

sharepoint governance questions january 2014 ©2014 susan hanley llc

Documents

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governance policies

solution stakeholders

social features of sharepoint

right questions

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