Email, file shares, documents, legacy systems, metadata…..it can be overwhelming. Whether you are planning a brand new SharePoint implementation, migrating from another system, or supporting the SharePoint site you already have, this presentation will help you get (and stay) organized. Through the view of an Information Architect, I will take you through a process of discovery and design that helps you map requirements to SharePoint functionality and set you on the right course for a successful implementation.

1. Getting Organized
Discover, Design, and Implement
STEPHANIE DONAHUE
FOCAL POINT SOLUTIONS
@STEPHKDONAHUE
SDONAHUE@FOCALPOINTSOLUTIONS.CO

2. About Stephanie Donahue
 SharePoint Solutions Architect at Focal Point Solutions
 Consulting for 7 years, 13 years in IT
 Focus on SharePoint Information Architecture and providing
SharePoint solutions to improve business processes
 Author and Event Speaker
 SPTV Co-host http://mysp.tv
 Blog http://www.notjustsharepoint.com
 Twitter @stephkdonahue

3. Agenda
 Discovery
 Understanding why its important
 Process for gathering information
 Design
 Take what you’ve learned and put ideas together
 Considerations
 Implement
 Take ideas and make them reality
 Make it a success!

4. Discovery
The process of figuring out what your users want,
what the business needs, and how to get
everyone on the same page.
 What kind of data do we have? Where is it located?
How do we get it into SharePoint?
 Planning is so important!!

5. I’m going to spend how much time
and money? And all I get is a plan?
 We’ll just have users move their own information over as they have time.
 This is a bad idea!
 Bad habits are continued
 Less guidance means higher level of frustration
 Getting stuck in Phase 1
“The real opportunity to drive business value occurs when organizations
understand how and who use their intranet, and then leverage this
information to drive adoption and incorporate new technologies that
provide value to users” --Webtrends

6. Discovery – Time and Budget Approval
If you still aren’t convinced….
 Assists with defining timeframes and budgets
 Set goals, prove success, and show ROI
 Provide others time to align with those goals
 Determine training needs
 Identify if you can handle the work in house or if you need to hire
additional help, bring in consultants, or both
 Time to plan appropriate security, governance, and archiving needs

7. Discovery – Before Getting Started
 Get familiar with the version of SharePoint you are implementing
 2010: http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/en-us/buy/Pages/Editions-
Comparison.aspx
 2013:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sharepoint__cloud/archive/2013/01/10/sharepoint-
2013-onpremise-edition-comparison-chart.aspx
 Online (Cloud): http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj819267.aspx

8. Discovery – Getting Started
 Identify groups of business users
 Identify which groups who adopt change well
 Identify management willing to encourage adoption
 Schedule discovery sessions
 Best executed in groups – 2 to 4 hours
 Can also work with individuals – 1 hour each
 Mind Mapping Template

9. Discovery – Getting Started
 Identify types of information within each group – groups may use
their resources differently:
 Structured Data
 File Shares
 Local Documents
 Email
 Legacy Systems
 Integrations with other systems
 Unstructured Data
 Blogs, Wikis, Communities like News Gator

10. Discovery – File Shares
 Don’t move all of it to SharePoint !
 Find active data
 Benefits of SharePoint Functionality
 Participation in a process/workflow
 Document Types
 Know the benefits of .docx vs .doc
 iFilters
 Don’t have to move the entire file share at once

11. Discovery – File Shares
 Who owns it?
 Who consumes it?
 Does the current organization make sense?
 Is it secured correctly?
 One version of the truth
 What metadata should we take note of?
 Why is metadata important?

14. Discovery – MMS, Taxonomy
 How to find metadata
 Documenting - MindJet
 Local to sites, site collections, and global usage
 Card sorting
 Later on we’ll be talking about the importance of terms to:
 Managed Metadata Service Application
 Search
 Workflow

18. Discovery – Third party tools
 What third party tools can do for you
 Find metadata with third party tools like:
 Pingar
 Wand
 BA Insight
 Idera

19. Discovery – Local Documents
 Education for the users
 Making it easy without bending the rules
 One version of the truth
 Consider My Sites
 “Sky Drive for work”

21. Discovery - Email
 The most difficult thing to tackle
 Email enabled libraries
 Email content vs attachments
 Email folder structure - metadata?
 The scare factor
 Research Email add-ons like Colligo and harmon.ie

22. Discovery – Legacy Systems
 What is the existing site structure?
 Are there integrations with other systems?
 Are there workflows present to be aware of?
 Workflows are often metadata driven
 Site restructures and metadata changes can be impactful
 Who manages the security on the site?
 Research third party migration tools
 Integrating existing metadata
 Document Types

23. Discovery – Systems Integration
Consider other sources of data and where it would reside in SharePoint
 External Lists
 External Data Columns
 Be prepared for the challenges

24. Discovery – Compliance and Governance
 Include existing governance committees in planning, or form one
 Know your compliance rules and how they should impact your
design
 ISO, SoX, etc.
 Get familiar with Information Rights Management (esp if you are
2013!) and find out if this is something you need.

25. Discovery - Summary
 Identify departments or groups to work with first
 Ask the right questions
 Find the critical, active data
 Start documenting taxonomy and content types
 Consider compliance and governance

26. Design - Focus
 Taxonomy, Folksonomy
 Content Types
 Site Hierarchy
 Start mapping requests to functionality
 Develop Roadmap

27. Design – Getting Started
 Review discovery documents
 Review existing file types – file shares, etc.
 Continue filling out term store and content type
documentation
 Start site hierarchy documentation

28. Design
 Identify requirements within the groups defined
 Work with the Business Analyst to identify “low hanging fruit” or easy
wins
 Content reorganization and tagging will be tightly integrated with
business process needs
 Identify short term and long term goals
 Map those requirements and goals to SharePoint functionality
 What version of SharePoint do we need? Or, what can we do in place
of functionality that is not available based on the version we have.

29. Design – Functionality Mapping
 How do I take what I’ve learned and translate it into SharePoint
functionality?
 Remember these? Revisit these sites
 2010: http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/en-us/buy/Pages/Editions-
Comparison.aspx
 2013:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sharepoint__cloud/archive/2013/01/10/sharepoint-
2013-onpremise-edition-comparison-chart.aspx
 Don’t recreate the wheel

31. Design – Key Concepts
 If you are new to SharePoint and/or find the editions comparison
overwhelming (there’s a lot to learn!), focus on these concepts:
 Metadata, Managed Metadata Service Application
 Site Columns
 Site Content Types
 Content Type Hub
 Managed Properties
 Search

34. Design – Content Types
 When is a content type hub useful?
 Forms
 2010: InfoPath
 2013: Your choice
 Document Templates
 Document content types in detail

36. Design – Best Practices
 Try to avoid folders - as Ruven says “The F word”
 When determining the libraries and lists needed, use security and
metadata as a guide for grouping related documents
 Avoid item level permissions
 Consider providing a “public” site for shared information and a “secure”
site for each department rather than library level permissions
 Create columns and site content types at the root site then add the
custom content type to the library
 Use the Content Type Hub when it makes sense

37. Design - Ideas
 Document Sets
 Derived from a folder content type. Documents inside a document set
can share metadata (but can also have metadata fields individual to a
document)
 Example: Law firms that have a unique case number that should be
shared with all documents in the case.
 Workflows can run on the document set, or on individual documents
within the set

38. Design – Site Hierarchy
 Site Collections vs. Sub-sites
 Associated Databases – high level understanding
 Consider disaster recovery and restore time
 Go back to how the users were grouped for discovery– reminder:
organizing by departments isn’t always the best route
 Define what information is shared and what should be secured
 Publishing sites vs. collaborative team sites, other templates
 2013: Community Sites
 2013: Deprecated Site Templates
 Best Practice: My Sites should be in their own Web Application

41. Design - Ideas
 Managed Metadata Navigation
 Dynamic Views within a single document library
 Managed Metadata based Navigation
 New to 2013
 Different than the navigation within the library – used for the site
 Great article on how to set up:
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/15876.sharep
oint-2013-navigation-using-managed-metadata.aspx

42. Design - Ideas

43. Design - Simplify
 KISS – Keep it Simple!
 Clean design
 Make it easy to find content
 Multiple options: The navigator and the searcher

44. Design – Other considerations
 Consider version of SharePoint
 Internal Resources (Personnel) available
 Scalability
 Service Applications
 Integrations
 Prepare for migration of existing data
 User Adoption strategies
 Governance strategies

45. Design
 List which groups will participate first
 Build a priority list within each group, obtain approval/buy in
 Keep a backlog for future goals
 Set appropriate expectations with management as well as users
 Build your road map and set the schedule!

46. Design - Results
 At a minimum you should leave the design phase with the following
documents:
 MMS Import File
 Detailed Content Type Spreadsheet(s) for developers
 Site Hierarchy diagrams
 Feature Matrix and functional requirements
 Short term goals
 Long term goals (Backlog)

47. Implement - POC
 Don’t be afraid to create a proof of concept
 POCs can be completed as each section of the design process is
completed.
 This gives administrators, developers, and others time to figure out
methods for how they will accomplish their tasks.
 Provides time to test and obtain budget for third party add-ons
 Work in a development environment, even if you have to build one
locally
 If changes are requested, make sure the original design
documentation is updated!

48. Implement – Migration Plan
 How do we map existing data to new content types?
 Tagging
 Migration Tools (basic)
 MetaVis – Information Manager
 ShareGate
 Migration Tools (complex/more expensive)
 MetaVis – Architect Suite
 AvePoint
 Axceler

49. Implement – Best Practices
 Run test migrations prior to your go-live date
 Don’t take on too much at once
 Content Types should be published programmatically and/or using
the content type hub
 QA your deployments with select business users to refine
 Test, Test, Test. Revise, Test again.

50. Implement - Promote
 Communication and Support from business leaders
 Training
 Provide incentives
 User Adoption programs
 Use third party tools – harmon.ie
 Gently enforce the rules without creating fear

51. Implement – Measure Success
 Analytics
 OOTB
 Third party tools
 Examples on how measuring success can help adoption (page 7)
http://webtrends.com/files/whitepaper/Whitepaper-
UsingAnalyticstoMeasureYourIntranet-Webtrends.pdf
 Surveys

52. Thank you!

53. Thanks To Our Sponsors!

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55. SharePoint Network
 Are you an independent consultant or remote worker who deals with SharePoint,
Office or Office365?
 Do you sometimes feel cut off from the rest of the SharePoint world?
 Do you need help with technical or business issues, or just want the chance to
socialize with others?
If so, then the SharePoint Network might be for you!
www.SharePointNetwork.org