Sharepoint - how do you use it?
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@Hubtech said:
wow scott. how did
your post count
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@Hubtech said:
@Hubtech said:
wow scott. how did
your post count
get so high?
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I'm about to start working my way through "Sams Teach Yourself SharePoint Foundation 2010 in 24 Hours". That's Sams Publishing, not Scott Alan Miller, sadly.
My biggest concern about Sharepoint is how to stop it getting out of control. This may not be a problem at somewhere like NTG, as you're mostly all IT guys. But in a typical SMB, IT skills are relatively low. I like order and structure and will spend a lot of time getting things right, but many other department heads are more laid back. I think it will be very easy for Sharepoint to become a sprawling, dis-organised free-for-all.
My book doesn't address this.
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@Carnival-Boy
When I first started rolling out sites (again SMB level), I didn't let the site get out of control because rights were fairly restricted. I didn't allow personal sites and each sub-site was created only after discussion. It wasn't because I was power hungry. I just wanted to prevent the sprawl. It worked very well. Since you can roll out new things, whether it be a calendar, a new list, or even a sub-site, I don't feel this control process interferes with company needs or productivity. -
@Carnival-Boy said:
My biggest concern about Sharepoint is how to stop it getting out of control. This may not be a problem at somewhere like NTG, as you're mostly all IT guys. But in a typical SMB, IT skills are relatively low. I like order and structure and will spend a lot of time getting things right, but many other department heads are more laid back. I think it will be very easy for Sharepoint to become a sprawling, dis-organised free-for-all.
SharePoint would definitely spiral out of control if you give end users the ability to create their own sites and stuff. Few companies do that. Most use IT as a gateway and make end users request new sites or pages through IT. This keeps the sprawl under control and allows for central governance. At NTG, as an example, no one has ever requested a page and internal IT makes the entire collection of sites and organizes them. It's all pre-planned and very structured.
For example, we make one "site" for each division: HR, management, general "whole" company, IT, Software Engineering, Client Services, etc. About seven or eight of them. Each has the same basics but with slight variations depending on need. Some are globally visible (IT and CS are available to all staff to see, SE only to the development team to keep things tidy for other people, management only to executives, etc.) People without access to a site literally don't even know that it exists, its tabs in the menus vanish so they don't even know that they are missing anything.
Each site has its own wiki and document repository for those teams' documents. Some have calendars (like IT has a group calendar to put IT related events on like scheduled maintenance.) Some, like CS and IT, use SharePoint's database exposure features to maintain client information, asset tracking, datacenter organization, etc. in a highly organized fashion that can be consumed by other services or other parts of SharePoint when needed to keep things really well organized.
You can lock down any section. If you use a wiki, for example, you can control who can read but also who can write there. So maybe you have the whole company able to read the HR wiki full of benefit information but only HR staff can edit it to update that information.
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@scottalanmiller said:
SharePoint would definitely spiral out of control if you give end users the ability to create their own sites and stuff. Few companies do that. Most use IT as a gateway and make end users request new sites or pages through IT.
Oh, right, that's not what I was led to believe from talking with some Sharepoint consultants. I had it in mind that department managers would manage their own sites and not be a drain on IT resources.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
@scottalanmiller said:
SharePoint would definitely spiral out of control if you give end users the ability to create their own sites and stuff. Few companies do that. Most use IT as a gateway and make end users request new sites or pages through IT.
Oh, right, that's not what I was led to believe from talking with some Sharepoint consultants. I had it in mind that department managers would manage their own sites and not be a drain on IT resources.
Would really depend on the department manager. You CAN do that, and it can work.
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Indeed. The first two departments I'm looking at implementing Sharepoint in are HR and QA. By the nature of their roles, these two managers are highly organised and already have good manual document control in place that they want to replicate in Sharepoint. Sharepoint effectively becomes the Quality Manual that we're audited on for ISO certification (do you have ISO in the US?). It's a lot of work, and I want the majority of it to be carried out by them, not me. They know more about what they're trying to achieve than I ever could.
But if you let them have control, how to do you prevent other departments demanding control of their own sites? I'm sure I'll figure it out.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
@scottalanmiller said:
SharePoint would definitely spiral out of control if you give end users the ability to create their own sites and stuff. Few companies do that. Most use IT as a gateway and make end users request new sites or pages through IT.
Oh, right, that's not what I was led to believe from talking with some Sharepoint consultants. I had it in mind that department managers would manage their own sites and not be a drain on IT resources.
An option, of course. But not one that I would recommend. Non-IT people lack the oversight, training, taxonomy and other disciplines to do this alone.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
Indeed. The first two departments I'm looking at implementing Sharepoint in are HR and QA. By the nature of their roles, these two managers are highly organised and already have good manual document control in place that they want to replicate in Sharepoint. Sharepoint effectively becomes the Quality Manual that we're audited on for ISO certification (do you have ISO in the US?). It's a lot of work, and I want the majority of it to be carried out by them, not me. They know more about what they're trying to achieve than I ever could.
But if you let them have control, how to do you prevent other departments demanding control of their own sites? I'm sure I'll figure it out.
Make approval flow through management. Let management provide that gateway.
Is consider making a Sharepoint training a requirement for that type of access.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
@scottalanmiller said:
SharePoint would definitely spiral out of control if you give end users the ability to create their own sites and stuff. Few companies do that. Most use IT as a gateway and make end users request new sites or pages through IT.
Oh, right, that's not what I was led to believe from talking with some Sharepoint consultants. I had it in mind that department managers would manage their own sites and not be a drain on IT resources.
That's typically what I've done. I'll make a site for a department, set their lead user as an admin, and let them have at it. Sure, I'll do some basic training and give guidance along the way, but I leave it as a blank canvas for them to mold.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
Indeed. The first two departments I'm looking at implementing Sharepoint in are HR and QA. By the nature of their roles, these two managers are highly organised and already have good manual document control in place that they want to replicate in Sharepoint. Sharepoint effectively becomes the Quality Manual that we're audited on for ISO certification (do you have ISO in the US?). It's a lot of work, and I want the majority of it to be carried out by them, not me. They know more about what they're trying to achieve than I ever could.
But if you let them have control, how to do you prevent other departments demanding control of their own sites? I'm sure I'll figure it out.
Yes, ISO is an international standard. With permissions and version control, SharePoint is a fantastic Quality management system. If you get into workflows, you can start to use it for other things like corrective action tracking, purchase orders (If your LOB application doesn't have it), and much more.
Some departments couldn't care less about SharePoint. From what I've seen, those that want to be able to choose their own destiny with SharePoint are the ones that will actually use it, and the others could really care less.
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Thanks. I'm about to start my Sharepoint journey. It's exciting, but scary, as I have absolutely no idea what I am doing. Sharepoint is such a difficult application to describe. I think the biggest challenge is to know when Sharepoint is the appropriate solution for a business problem, and when it isn't. For example, to what degree should Sharepoint replace a file server? Some files are better on Sharepoint, some are better on a file server - but how to decide which is which? To what degree should we integrate our CRM, ERP, ECM, and field service tracking applications into Sharepoint? How do we encourage users to engage with Sharepoint? I guess it's going to be a case of having to suck it and see.
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Get some books that talk not just about Sharepoint from a technical perspective but also about data theory and how Sharepoint can be used. MSPress has a few.
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Can anyone recommend any good Sharepoint books? I'm currently half way through Sam's Learn Sharepoint in 24 hours and I'll only give it a 3/5. I'm really bored of studying it.
Also, am I right in saying OneDrive for Business is Sharepoint? And that being the case, will Microsoft drop the Sharepoint name in the near future and we'll just have OneDrive? OneDrive implies file management and Sharepoint implies websites, so I'm a little confused about their direction.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
Can anyone recommend any good Sharepoint books? I'm currently half way through Sam's Learn Sharepoint in 24 hours and I'll only give it a 3/5. I'm really bored of studying it.
Also, am I right in saying OneDrive for Business is Sharepoint? And that being the case, will Microsoft drop the Sharepoint name in the near future and we'll just have OneDrive? OneDrive implies file management and Sharepoint implies websites, so I'm a little confused about their direction.
You get a sharepoint site as part of most Office 365 subscriptions. You may choose to sync part (or all) of that sharepoint site as a library on your desktop and the sync process uses groove.exe (OneDrive for Business), but it is NOT OneDrive.
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OK. I just read this article http://www.fiftyfiveandfive.com/sharepoint/onedrive-business-not-onedrive/ and got kinda confused about the differences.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
OK. I just read this article http://www.fiftyfiveandfive.com/sharepoint/onedrive-business-not-onedrive/ and got kinda confused about the differences.
Well OneDrive and OneDrive for Business are not the same thing either. They accomplish the same task, but are different products.
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@Carnival-Boy MSPress has several good titles on Sharepoint. Just go to their site and search on Sharepoint 2013. They have all different levels from high level for end users to the certification paths.
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On my W8.1. update 1 I have both OneDrive for Business and OneDrive on my PC. I believe the OneDrive for Business has replaced the SharePoint connection.
