SharePoint – More Than Just a Technical Solution
- March 24, 2009
- By Chi-Wei Wang (http://www.sharepointbriefing.com/spconfig/article.php/3811791/SharePoint-More-Than-Just-a-Technical-Solution.htm)
As a technical solution, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007) provides a platform for addressing many of the collaboration issues faced by today’s organizations. Using SharePoint’s out-of-the-box functionality, business users can configure and adapt their solutions as necessary. As a result, SharePoint creates new opportunities for these empowered users to build and manage their own solutions and help ensure adoption.
The SharePoint Solution
SharePoint provides a web-based way to address the challenges, in particular, collaboration and document management, facing many organizations. In today’s workplace, an organization’s employees might be spread across multiple locations and time zones, which make it even more important for them to be able to work together and share information efficiently.
A SharePoint site provides a way to store and publish information to specific audiences: the public, across an organization, or specific users. A common use is to create a site for a project that gives its members a shared workspace for anything related to the project. This includes project announcements, information on team members, tracking of issues, and tasks assigned to users. As a document repository, users know where to find the latest version of a particular document and changes can be tracked. In addition, workflows can be created to model processes, such as the approval of documents.
While SharePoint provides the basic templates for its sites, sites need to be configured and customized to fit the organization and its needs. There are multiple approaches available with varying levels of complexity as shown below in Table 1.
SharePoint Approaches: The table shows the varying levels of complexity for configuring SharePoint to meet an organization’s needs.
Table 1.
- Out-of-the-Box Configuration - Low - Users
- SharePoint Designer Development - Medium - Web Designers
- Visual Studio Development - High - Developers
Solutions should be created with the users in mind, because they are often the ones who will eventually be given control. While custom development through SharePoint Designer and Visual Studio does offer the most flexibility, it is not always necessary; solutions can sometimes be built solely by configuring SharePoint’s out-of-the-box functionality. Even in situations where custom development is needed, configuration can still go a long way towards the overall goal. SharePoint Designer or Visual Studio can then provide the last bit of desired functionality.
Creating a new Document Library
SharePoint’s configuration gives users the opportunity to take on more responsibility by allowing control over their solution without the need to write any code. Users are able to configure their site’s appearance, structure, security settings, and functionality, such as how documents are stored or how workflows behave. To access these configuration settings, users can use the settings screens built into the SharePoint interface.
Almost all sites leverage SharePoint’s out-of-the-box functionality to some extent – either for content or security. By maximizing the use of this built-in configuration, users can maintain their sites without the need for additional tools or programming.
- Owners: Full Control permissions
Users who belong to the SharePoint groups assigned as the site’s Members and Owners have control over both the content and the solution itself.
As site members, users are responsible for a site’s content. With SharePoint, these users can directly control what is published. They are the people who best understand the information and know to whom the content should be made available. Today, many web sites are administered by an organization’s IT department, and users must work through IT to get their content published. SharePoint removes this overhead, which is beneficial when IT’s involvement should be limited to auditing and accountability.
As site owners, users are responsible for maintaining the business aspects of their SharePoint site. Such users often include key members who “own” the solution. They have full control over the site, including configuration of its out-of-the-box features. For example, they can configure a built-in approval workflow to handle the process of approving content submitted for publishing. They might have a need to change the versioning settings or adjust audience targeting to filter content. Beyond managing the content, they might need to update their solution to reflect changes in the organization, such as by creating a document library for a new department, or updating an approval workflow to include a new manager.
Organizations often change as they adapt to better serve clients or thrive in a market. Unsurprisingly, existing solutions also have to adapt as the needs of an organization change. By shedding light on how solutions are built, SharePoint creates opportunities for owners to manage their solutions and make them more agile. Through this experience, owners gain knowledge and insight into how SharePoint can support an organization’s existing and future initiatives.
Governance and Planning
SharePoint can be a powerful solution when control is given to the business users. With that power though, SharePoint can quickly grow out of control if a governance plan is not put into place. A governance plan is a guide that lays out the roles, responsibilities, policies, and processes that determine how the organization will use SharePoint. As a result, every organization needs to have and enforce a governance plan before deploying a SharePoint solution.
SharePoint can often blur the lines of responsibility between business users and their IT counterparts. The governance plan should clearly identify the roles and responsibilities of each. Possible roles include system administrators, site administrators, site owners, site members, and site visitors.
Administrators should be drawn from an organization’s IT department. They’re responsible for making sure the SharePoint farm and site collections are configured correctly from an IT perspective. This includes maintaining the infrastructure and hardware for the SharePoint site, site collection, Shared Service Providers, and the SharePoint farm, as well as backing up the site and its content.
Business users usually fill the roles of site owners, members, and visitors. Site visitors are allowed only to view the site and its contents. Site members should consist of users who own the content and are responsible for publishing it. Finally, site owners should be users who own the overall solution and are responsible for maintaining the site.
Before deploying a SharePoint solution, users should receive training specific to their role. In particular, site members should understand the standards and policies for their content, including naming conventions and content-management processes. Site owners should understand the standards and policies for maintaining the solution and the processes for managing site security. Even though they are business oriented, owners should understand how to fully leverage SharePoint’s out-of-the-box functionality and how to apply that functionality to real-world scenarios.
SharePoint solutions appeal to a wide audience by lowering the technical complexity for creating sites, and empower users by offering powerful out-of-the-box functionality that’s often sufficient to solve the problems without having to write custom code. With a governance plan in place, SharePoint can become a successful solution that business users themselves can control to fit their business needs.
