SharePoint Governance Goals and Vision

The following are some key items in regard to goals and vision of SharePoint:

•          Reduce total cost of ownership -> optimize, drive efficiency and create cost transparency

•           Encourage Standards and Consistency -> drive common brand and manage risks

•          Provide services and solutions -> empower business. empower teams and empower end users

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What is SharePoint Governance

SharePoint governance is the set of policies, roles, responsibilities, and processes that guides, directs, and controls how an organization's business divisions and IT teams cooperate to achieve business goals in relation to SharePoint sites and technologies.

•          People - roles and responsibilities (end users, developers, operations, security, etc.)

• Gain needed improvements through delegation and empowerment.

•          Process - how to accomplish common tasks such as creating a new site or requesting new business requirements.

•          Technology - automate enforcement by leveraging templates. Have proper policy, security settings, rights management etc.

•          Policy - documented collection of principles - for example, what users, site owners, administrators and developers should / should not do.

• Part of policy includes the information, security and customization as necessary elements so it’s clear what the proper policies are to entail.

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SharePoint Governance Core Review

SharePoint Governance Core Review

The following is a framework of what a core SharePoint review should encompass:

Commit to a 2 week time frame where all documents created to date are reviewed

Utilize whiteboard sessions, presentations and discussions to create new processes and models for governances

Create analysis and document rules for

Architecture

Roles and responsibilities

Operational plans

Development practices

Change control

Training plans

Escalation processes

Other items as applicable to your business/organization

Review for best practices and recommendations

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SharePoint Governance Review Items

The following are some key items to review with individuals in regard to governance in regard to their SharePoint sites:

Focus on what is most in need with the SharePoint Intranet, Internet or Extranet

Review the governance strategy and plan components

Review key roles, responsibilities and processes

Review an analysis of organizational support policies and procedures for SharePoint that align with administration goals

Review and analysis of operational procedures for SharePoint

Develop a SharePoint governance first draft outline and Plan (working documents)

Document process for knowledge transfer

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SharePoint is Collaborative

SharePoint is in many aspects about participation, sharing and collaboration. Overall one wants helpful, ready to use information that can be put to work quickly and easily. Thus, because of this three categories are prevalent:

1)      SharePoint is for organizations – with just a simple browser, it can be used by individuals throughout the organization. SharePoint is purpose driven encompassing an audience that includes executives, managers, decision makers, staff, etc.

2)      SharePoint is for communities – users can foster relationships based on profiles, actual communities, groups, wiki, blogs, etc.

3)      SharePoint is for public engagement – every interest in being engaged and telling a story with content on a site is key.

 

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Authentication in SharePoint 2013

This question comes up a lot from companies moving from SharePoint 2010 to SharePoint 2013 – just how does authentication work in SharePoint 2013?

-In the 2013 version – user authentication remains the same with standard sites.

-When calling a web app – the authentication happens internally.

-Internal authentication happens when calling the web app.

-External authentication – is utilized from the remote web site/application.

-To establish an app identity claims based authentication must occur.

-Incoming calls must use CSOM/REST end – points.

-Essentially the authentication is the same except that calls to the web application are authenticated with both user identity and app identity.

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Site Pages vs. Application Pages in SharePoint

The following are some key differences between site pages and application pages:

-Site pages are located in the virtual file system of a site

-Site pages enhance customizations via web part and SharePoint designer

-Site pages are rendered via a template

-Site page is ghosted to that template

-Site page when customized is un-ghosted

-Site page customization can impact performance via memory usage

-Application pages are deployed once per farm

-Application pages are accessed via _layouts virtual directory

-Application pages are compiled via ASP.NET

-Application pages don’t support user customization

-Application pages are added via farm solutions

-Application pages are compiled into a single .dll and loaded for each web application

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Excel Services & Rest Overview

The Excel services is essentially a SOAP web service which can be accessed via: http://sharepointsite/_vti_bin/Excelservices.asmx

Excel forms have fields that are bound to cells in a workbook. The form can then be filled out and populates the spreadsheet.

Common events utilized are:

              Sheet.DataEntered()

              Workbook.DataEntered()

 Workbook.BeforeTyping()

Common method utilized is:

             Workbook.Reload(call back)

REST allows for information to be accessed via OData as long as regions named as tables are in the spreadsheet

REST can be used with published spreadsheets (.xlsx)

Formatted URL example:

http://sharepointsite/_vti_bin/ExcelRest.aspx/NameofExcelFile.xslx/Odata/TableName

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SharePoint Designer – Why Not for End Users

The following are my core list of items why end-users should not have SharePoint Designer installed:

1)      Powerful tool

2)      Need owners access to fully utilize

3)      Spent a lot of time on governance and want governance to stay intact

4)      Designer can make master page and page layout changes

5)      Don’t want end users – creating workflows

6)      If SharePoint Designer is installed on one end users PC – others will follow (need governance then just on using SharePoint Designer)

7)      Delete site easily

8)      Training issues (keeping up training users with basics)

9)      Corrupt site easier and break it with just a chance of some tags

10)   Outside scope of many job titles – end users shouldn’t be pseudo developers/coders

 

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SharePoint 2016 - Deprecated Items

The following are some key SharePoint 2016 that have been deprecated.

Note: Deprecated doesn’t mean un-available anymore it just means the functionality will not be updated.

1)      Tags and notes

2)      Excel Services – lose functionality when one upgrades from SharePoint 2010 to 2016

(Part of Excel online in Office Online Server)

3)      SQL Server Express

4)      SharePoint Foundation

5)      AppFabric (used in newsfeeds) – provides caching services that are distributed

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SharePoint Search Planning

SharePoint Search Planning

The following are some core search planning items to consider and plan for:

·         Where is the information located to be crawled (file share, SharePoint, other location)?

·         What content sources need to be set-up?

·         If full or incremental crawls are utilized what are the schedules?

·         Will continuous crawl be utilized?

·         What words will be utilized in a best bet

·         Who will monitor search to ensure that crawls are running successfully?

·         When and where will reports on search usage be run and placed?

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SharePoint Planning Personalization’s

SharePoint Planning Personalization’s

The following are useful when planning personalization’s:

·         Decide what Active Directory attributes should be utilized and imported for profiles

·         Decide what profile attributes to display on user’s profile

·         Decide and implement on a profile import schedule

·         Decide what audiences to create

·         Decide when audiences should compile (after the profile import)

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Document Library Planning:

Document Library Planning:
The following are some items to follow in regard to document library planning:

1)      Enable the require checkout option for editing

2)      Keep the number of documents in a view below 2000 items if possible

3)      Limit the number of major versions typically recommend set to 25-50

4)      Educate users on proper naming conventions example:

IT Contacts Doc = BAD

IT_Contacts_Doc = GOOD

IT Contacts 7142017 = BAD

IT_Contacts_7_2017 = GOOD

5)      Think about if turning on metadata navigation or using document sets makes sense based on the data that will be housed in a said library.

Metadata navigation can be used when it make sense to have the ability to dynamically filter and find content in lists and libraries by using a navigation hierarchy tree control to apply different metadata-based filters to the view.

Document Sets can be used if one has a group of related documents that can be created in one step and then managed as a single entity.

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SharePoint Governance Policies - Taxonomy

Each type of site can and should have its own set of policies:

Common sites that fit this realm are:

·         Mysites

·         Teamsites

·         Project Sites

·         Blogs

·         Wikis

Information Governance Policies

·         Users want and need to find information fast

·         They want the applicable content and data via a useful navigation taxonomy

·         Use of metadata can make it easy to search for and compare related items of information

Site Structure

·         Think how users need to work

·         What do they need to find first and fast

Examples ->

Human Resource information

General Search

People Search

Organization Chart

Organization Knowledge Base

Organization News

Information Technology Help (Guides and Videos)

Private / Team Collaboration / Ad-Hoc Collaboration

·         Sites are for departmental and/or divisional teams such as Finance, IT, HR etc.

·         They are permissioned as such so only the proper individuals have access

Project Collaboration

·         Sites are used mainly by PMO to manage Projects during the project lifespan

·         Temporary content

·         Controlled and moderately governed

 

Client Team Sites (Restricted)

These sites are used to store documentation related to clients with a site for each client

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SharePoint Back-up Strategy Planning

 The following are some items to consider when planning an on-premise backup strategy:

See the table columns below for items to be aware of and in this example some data was entered to see what could be needed:

Intranet – On-Premise
	Current database sizes per site collection:	Site Specs	Growth in last year	Estimated additional needed disk space for SharePoint	Estimated growth per year
	93 gigs	875 sites, 21757 lists, 257477 items.	45 gigs	300 gigs   (this is to perform farm back-up and site collection back-up)	50 gigs

Possibly Back-up policy:

Onsite available - > 7 dailies, 4 weekly, one monthly

Off-site available -> 3 monthly, 6 weekly, 14 dailies

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Governance – Proper Naming Conventions

The following are some items for consider for naming conventions:

Have format for database names – example->  WSS_Content_Sitename

Real world example ->  WSS_Content_IT

Have a format for document library naming (example IT_Core_Docs)

Have server name convention which – plans for growth

(example spweb1, spweb2, spweb3, spcentad1, spworkflow1, spsearch1, spdist1)

Names of files should be short and not utilize spaces – use _ instead

Names of view – should be short and descriptive (example: ITContacts or IT_Contacts)

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Governance Site Planning – Part 2

The following are some items to consider for site planning:

Will approval be turned on and who will approve content?

Who will secure sensitive information?

Who will have the permissions to create new sites?

Who will create and publish content?

Who will have the ability to customize sites?

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Governance Site Planning – Part 1

The following are some items to consider for site planning:

·         Decide if users will manage - own websites

·         Decide if users will create their own sites

·         Decide how users will use metadata (managed metadata navigation, managed metadata column or document sets)

·         Train users before they are granted permission to site

·         Decide if owner, member, visitor groups will be enough as far as permissions and who will grant access

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