Thursday, September 7, 2017

Three B’s of SharePoint

Overall in SharePoint the three B’s are important concepts to know in regard to the framework options of SharePoint:

Business Connectivity Services (BCS) – Enables users to read and write data from external systems – through web services, databases and .Net assemblies.

Business Data Catalog – Provides connectivity to back-end business systems and data sources.

Business Data Connectivity (BDC) – provides business connectivity using a declarative model to external systems so that external data can be exposed in SharePoint.
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Design a SharePoint Taxonomy


One of the most important aspects of SharePoint is having a good taxonomy -> because how users find information as well as where new sites and subsites are built depends on taxonomy.

Typically, I recommend that a taxonomy be filled in as such – so that end-users can start to see how the information, libraries and meta-data in their site will be created:

The one item – I’ve been utilizing for many years is the use of a private site which basically is a team site with unique permissions only to those users whom are granted permission to that said site.
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Saturday, August 12, 2017

How to Measure Success in SharePoint

The following are some items to consider to measure that SharePoint is successful:

       End-users understand the capabilities of the platform and are well trained to use them

       New sites and applications are systematically introduced with quick time-to-market leveraging site templates, compliant with standards which follow approved corporate branding

       Governance teams review and proactively act based on the usage data and business needs

       Business users are aware of the security model and help to enforce

       Service-level agreements (SLAs) are in place, platform performance is good, and any custom coding and enhancements are well tested

       The growth of the server farms, servers, and storage is planned out to be scalable as the business needs

       Operational costs are in line with business value delivered by the platform
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Building and Evolving SharePoint Governance

The following are some points to take on while building the phases of a SharePoint Governance plan:

       Initial work stream should focus on:

- Addressing major areas of operations, support and development activity

- Mitigate key immediate risks

- Establish the right organizational structure and ownership is key (people aspect)

- Develop foundation of governance polices, standards and a compliance process

       Leverage existing processes and teams

       Bring in new teams only to help with gaps in the organization

       Realize that the governance document or wiki is a living document and will change with the business
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SharePoint Governance Phases

The following are three key phases to utilize when putting together a SharePoint governance planned approach:


       Phase 1 – Plan and Initiate

       Establish appropriate teams and oversight

       Develop actionable SharePoint strategy aligned with business needs

       Define initial set of policies & standards with focus on short term pain points

       Start education and training

       Implement compliance enforcement processes

       Phase 2 – Operationalize

       Integrate policies and standards into day-to-day activities and existing processes

       Finalize policies and standards

       Continue oversight, education and training

       Automate compliance where possible

       Phase 3 – Mature as needed

       Review progress and results

       Mature policies, standards and processes

 
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Friday, August 11, 2017

Key Contents of a SharePoint Governance Plan


The following are some items to make sure a SharePoint governance plan accounts for:

·         Vision

·         Key Roles and Responsibilities

·         Information Governance Policies

·         Operations and Support Governance Policies

·         Development Governance Policies

·         Security Policies

·         Training Plan
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Gaps and opportunities in SharePoint

The following are some key and core gaps and opportunities that are common within many SharePoint environment:

       Lack of business focus

       Lack of formalized support structure for SharePoint

       Lack of scalability of the architecture

       Lack of evaluating business risks around content stored in SharePoint

       Lack of an information management records and taxonomy management policy

       Lack of appropriate service level agreement for SharePoint

       Lack of high availability and a disaster recovery strategy

       Lack of a monitoring strategy
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