The Microsoft SharePoint platform
makes it easy for organizations large
and small to develop shared portals,
allowing for greater collaboration and
improved workflow management for
teams working across the building or
across the country.
Unfortunately, "easy to develop"
doesn't mean that they're easy to
maintain. Even the most well meaning
administrators can get into trouble
when trying to maintain governance
over a SharePoint site.
Here are two of the biggest SharePoint governance mistakes along with
the steps you should take to avoid
trouble:
Taking on too much at the beginning
When new SharePoint administrators
begin governance duties on a
shared portal, they see all of the wonderful
functionality the platform
offers, including advanced workflows
and business intelligence. They want
to turn on all the bells and whistles. This makes the learning curve very
steep for users and administrators
alike.
End users may have more difficulty
adapting to the new collaborative way
of working. They may shun the portal
if they find it too confusing and if they
are presented with too many options
at once.
Administrators can find that they
have trouble problem-solving—
specifically, not being able to track
a problem to its source. If there are
too many possibilities, then it's hard
to pinpoint which bell or whistle is
causing the issue.
Rolling out SharePoint functionality
in stages is a much better way to
begin a portal. Start with the basic
out-of-the-box collaboration and then
move on to more features such as
custom lists and workflows once
users and administrators have gotten
used to the system.
Duplicating too much information
Every department or team wants
its own information in its own folders.
But much of the shared work on the
SharePoint portal is there because it
belongs to the organization as a
whole. Duplicating files and documents
can quickly defeat the purpose
of...
To continue reading for free, register below or login
To read more you must become a member of SearchWinIT.com
a shared portal.
To avoid duplication, take inventory
of the information that will be stored
on the portal and conduct regular
updates of that information. Keep
track of the key information for each
department as well as the information
that is needed by everyone to
ensure that all users get what they
need from the system. Honing in on
which content types are relevant for
which user groups will help this
process.
Once administrators realize there
is trouble with their collaborative portal,
more often than not, they make
things worse by trying to fix the situation.
Here are two big blunders that
administrators make while trying to
clean up and some tips for avoiding
them:
Examining data and ignoring processes
Too many administrators look
for trouble with the data on the portal
without examining the processes that
lead to the data being there. A good
administrator establishes processes
to keep the "junk" out.
If the administrator discovers that
the team is always storing personal
files on the portal, then he or she
needs to step in with clearly defined
parameters about what belongs and
what doesn't. Depending on company
policy, setting your portal to block
files such as MP3s can also keep the
wrong content out.
Storing old data can lead to trouble
as well. Sites become overcrowded
and much less useful if they aren't
constantly being trimmed. Administrators
can set up regular archiving
for items older than a set amount of
time. To prevent a lot of headaches,
create site and document-archiving
strategies and processes for items
that have lost their relevance or are
no longer active.
Looking at the site through tired
Eyes
When trying to fix a portal that
has grown out of control, it can be
easy to forget what the original intent
was. When trying to fix what went
wrong, it is best to step away from
the situation, perhaps over a weekend,
and come back to the situation
with fresh eyes.
It's also a good idea to bring in
someone who isn't as close to the
project as the administrator is to offer
perspective. This could be one of the
users in the organization, someone
from the governance committee who
is not involved with the portal on a day-to-day basis or even an outside
consultant. Whether the perspective
comes from elsewhere in the organization
or from outside, be sure to treat
"the fix" like a new implementation.
Use the opportunity to reexamine
what the original driver behind implementation
was and what steps might
be taken to get back on track. Make
the most out of the second chance.
Rather than just cleaning up messes,
take the time to reorganize the
whole system. Some good questions
to ask are: What are teams finding
useful? Is the navigation clear enough
for new users?
SharePoint's built-in usage reports can help administrators
see what users are gravitating toward
and what areas they're ignoring. Try
using Site Use Confirmation and
Deletion to stay current on Site Collections
that have been orphaned.
As with many helpful technology
tools, SharePoint portals are only as
functional as their users and administrators
make them. It's easy to let
small governance mistakes turn into
major headaches. Don't let the fixes
turn them into even bigger problems.
With careful thought, planning and
maintenance, a collaborative portal
can help teams across an organizational
structure work together more
closely and productively.
Paul West is a co-owner and co-founder of SharePoint360 LLC, a SharePoint consulting and
hosting provider. West has extensive experience with SharePoint architecture and implementations.
He has been working with SharePoint technologies since the Microsoft SharePoint release
in 2001.
