Designing an effective information architecture (
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This document provides guidance on information architecture planning for a SharePoint implementation. It emphasizes the importance of upfront planning to define the taxonomy, content types, metadata, navigation, and search experience. A well-planned information architecture ensures usability, findability, and sets the project up for future success and flexibility. The document recommends involving stakeholders and iterating on the design throughout development.
Designing an effective information architecture (
- 2. What? Why? Who? When? How? Tools
- 3. Brings together content, objects, size, scalability, taxonomy, metadata, navigation High-level planning ◦ Don‟t get too detailed Very often neglected It‟s NEVER OVER
- 4. Risks if you don‟t ◦ Decreased usability/findability ◦ Performance/reliability issues ◦ Lack of user adoption ◦ Future enhancements can be costly Benefits if you do ◦ Consistency, usability, reliability, security Good architecture = Good experience
- 5. ◦ IA Design ◦ Planning Management ◦ Infrastructure/Storage ◦ Metadata ◦ Content Types ◦ Social ◦ Navigation & View ◦ Security & Auditing ◦ Taxonomies (Closed or Open) ◦ Search (Managed Properties, Scopes, Search Centers) ◦ Identify & Create Records (Legal Requirements) ◦ Retention & Holds (Litigation) ◦ Importing Information (Batch Loads) ◦ Rich Media
- 6. Up front: Create at least a basic plan as soon as possible. ◦ Costs increase exponentially over time. As you progress, implement iteratively Treat it like governance ◦ Meet regularly ◦ What has changed? ◦ What works/doesn‟t work anymore.
- 7. Invite ◦ Stakeholders must be involved ◦ Not too many Listen ◦ Understand requirements (audience, legal, etc.) ◦ What do you mean by that? ◦ Keep an open ear for metadata Visualize ◦ Existing environment ◦ Card sorts/whiteboard
- 8. Communicate ◦ Options ◦ Pros and cons (there is always a trade-off, no „cake and eat it too‟) Agree ◦ Build a consensus ◦ Get it in writing ◦ Stick to it Execute
- 9. •Who „owns‟ this information? Owners •How is your site organized now? (like it or not, folks are used to it) Topology •Who/how will contribute? Authors •Who will be retrieving your information? Customers •Why does it need to be stored? Business Need •How does it need to be secured? Security •Who will maintain the information? Administrators •What needs to be stored? •What is the lifecycle? Content
- 10. Control What is the cost of not finding information? If it isn‟t available, how important is it? Can the audience contribute to the architecture? (Open vs. Closed) Structure Cost of creating content vs. finding content
- 11. Scalability ◦ Limits – Number of site collections, items in a list query limits, total items, overall database performance. Usability/Findability ◦ Two ways to get to data: Search = Metadata Navigate = Visualization Manageability ◦ Authoring experience ◦ Distribution ◦ Centrality ◦ Empower authors/content managers
- 12. Security ◦ Granularity vs. Performance Permissions need to be checked for all objects being rendered Granular permissions can be a nightmare Design Resiliency ◦ Under-plan: Won‟t survive the current solution. ◦ Over-plan: Won‟t survive the next solution (e.g. too many content types) ◦ Balance of priorities, volatility, and what „can be known‟ ◦ Future flexibility vs. current needs – Focus on building a solution for general flexibility, rather than trying to identify every possibility.
- 13. Realize it will be wrong ◦ It has to be, because you can‟t possibly know everything ◦ Communicate that expectation Get it as good as you can for today, with flexibility for tomorrow. Plan to fix it over time
- 14. Hierarchy ◦ formally ranked group: an organization or group whose members are arranged in ranks, e.g. in ranks of power and seniority ◦ Hierarchy Approches Business Unit – Easiest, but dangerous Functional – Domain (Role) e.g. HR - Employee forms vs. Manager forms Hybrid – Business may be needed, but structure the architecture so that it can „flex‟ to a different model.
- 15. Taxonomy ◦ grouping of organisms: the science of classifying plants, animals, and microorganisms into increasingly broader categories based on shared features. ◦ Taxonomy Approaches Departmental = Easy to store (creators) Functional = Easy to retrieve (consumers) A natural, healthy, conflict between the two ◦ At what level is it useful? Think of our buddies up there: Do we need to classify them as “Rabbit”? It depends! Hierarchy/content determines taxonomy…
- 16. Taxonomy vs. “Folksonomy” ◦ Taxonomy = Scientist ◦ Folksonomy = Layman Benefits ◦ Improved usability ◦ Relevant searches ◦ Faster navigation Consistency, consistency, consistency
- 17. Content Types ◦ Syndication – Create content type „hub‟ that entire organization can use. Publish/Subscription model. ◦ Document Sets – “Super-Folders” that behave like a content type Groups documents as a single unit Versioning as a whole
- 18. Property Promotion – Pulls properties from documents and promotes them into SharePoint for filtering, workflow actions, etc. External Content Types - Multiple content types that come from an external system (as if it is inside SharePoint)
- 19. Folders vs. Metadata ◦ You can set metadata based on folder structure ◦ You can use content organizer to create a folder structure based on metadata
- 20. Navigation ◦ Visualization of the IA, Taxonomy, Hierarchy ◦ Should be highly controlled at the top level, and flexible/allowed to change at the „leaf level‟ ◦ Determines your initial design – OOB navigation is site-collection specific
- 21. Will it scale? (Depth of navigation) Need to monitor throughout to adapt to changing requirements. (Nav = Performance) Plan on improvements through end-user feedback Intuitive = Success
- 22. Folders are fine if you expect all users to navigate in the same way File explorer Other applications can interact. If you use folders, keep it shallow (cognative memory) Still have the 256 URL limit. If you want to allow for multiple navigation schemes, you need metadata
- 23. Term Store ◦ Database that contains taxonomy information ◦ Each Includes: Groups – Containers for Term Sets (security controlled) Term Sets – Containers for terms (can determine whether open/closed) – Pushed like content types Terms – Predefined values that contain taxonomy objects
- 24. Structured ◦ Specific, managed data, but less flexible ◦ Ensures proper use/compliance, familiarity Unstructured („Folksonomy‟) ◦ Allows users to participate (add, tag) ◦ Builds/exposes relationships that were not previously envisioned Can be used for Metadata-based navigation Metadata Validation (Based on your rules)
- 25. Content Organizer ◦ Allows for automatic routing rules for submitted documents ◦ Drop-Library: Customers have a single „drop-location‟ in which document is routed to the correct location based on metadata. ◦ Implemented as a feature, must be activated ◦ Auto-enforces 5,000 items per folder rule
- 26. Social Features ◦ Stream of social networking activities ◦ Community-driven ◦ Follow what colleagues find useful/interesting ◦ Comments – Improves content. Communicates to the author about usefulness. ◦ Tags – Improves searchability ◦ Ratings – Assess value of content.
- 27. Rich Media ◦ Automatic Image Upload (Automatically uploads images referenced by a document during upload) ◦ EXIF Data Promotion – Data that accompanies images can be promoted into SharePoint ◦ File Dialog – Open and close documents, insert into SharePoint directly from the file dialog ◦ Previews (view/play in place Image Preview Thumbnail Previews Video Preview
- 28. SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Content Management Implementers' Course ◦ http://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/sharepoint/hh126808 ◦ Or Bing: “SharePoint 2010 ECM”