So you’re building an intranet

So You’re Building an Intranet
Becky Bertram
Independent SharePoint Consultant, SharePoint Server MVP
www.beckybertram.com
With contributions from Mike Henthorn
Covenant Technology Partners, St. Louis
http://mhenthorn.blogspot.com/

Evaluating Scope and Granularity

 Stakeholder = person footing the bill
 Important to prove business value and ROI
 This person is sometimes more concerned with dollars
and cents than usability. Usability must translate into
cost savings.
 End-user = person using the system once it’s build
 This person doesn’t care how much the system cost.
They care if it helps them do their job better.
 May not have an eye on the big picture. May wish they
could post pictures of their pets on their My Site more
than whether the site saves the company money.
Stakeholders vs. End Users

 Important to get input from both stakeholders and
end-users (but not necessarily at the same time).
 Stakeholders have final say in what gets built, but
they must understand needs of their users.
 Find representatives throughout your organization
who know their business processes for their
particular area/department.
 Find tech-savvy “champions” who are excited about
technology and are not afraid of change.
Steering Committee

 Users either love or hate what they currently have,
but it will serve as their frame of reference.
 It’s important to get people to dream, whether that
means giving them hope that something better is out
there, or opening their eyes that there might be a
better way of doing things than they have done
things for the last decade.
 A key to getting them to dream is to show what’s
possible. Demoing gives people more understanding
than talking about SharePoint’s features.
The Curse of the Past

 When working with stakeholders, they might
continually whine or lament that the new system
lacks what either their current system does, or some
system they worked with at another job.
 Set the expectation that SharePoint is not
WebSphere, Documentum, Fill-in-the-blank…
 Sell SharePoint, but don’t oversell it. It won’t do their
laundry or buy their groceries. It’s a tool, and it can be
customized for their needs.
The Curse of the Past, Continued

 Import for everyone to feel heard. Take a note of
everything they wish to see.
 Begin a process of group prioritization.
 If this is done as a group, everyone gets a vote. If the
loudest person insists on a priority, but it becomes
apparent it’s only important to them when it comes to
the voting process because it only gets their one vote,
it’s hard for them not to understand if it doesn’t get
implemented.
 Primarily stakeholder(s) get a greater vote than
everyone else. Dems da berries.
Requirements Gathering

 Create a matrix of: costly, important, cheaper,
unimportant. Prioritize the requirements along this
continuum.
Prioritization
Costly and important Costly and less important
Less costly but more
important
Less costly and less
important

 A house needs a foundation before you can hang the
curtains.
 When calculating “important” things, think about
things that cannot be easily changed once you start
your implementation.
 How users authenticate
 Number of site collections
 Retention policies
 Base content types
 Server location (hosted or on-premises)
First Things First

 Easier to start with limited functionality and add it
later. Too much functionality too early:
 Increases the chances that users are overwhelmed and
quickly disregard the whole system
 Increases the chances that users don’t know how to use
the system properly and make mistakes, causing
frustration and limited usage of system.
 Because of increased complexity, causes increased
maintenance for site and farm administrators, who are
new to this system as well.
 Better to start with limited functionality with a
strategy for expanding functionality later.
Starting Small

 People hate change, by and large
 To get people excited about using the new system, work
to get their “buy-in” earlier than later. Do it while you’re
building the system. Don’t present them with a shiny new
system and than be disappointed when they don’t care
about your pet project.
 Ways to get buy-in:
 Periodic updates on project’s status. Perhaps this is in an e-
mail, a newsletter, etc. Prepare people for this new change
that will happen.
 Periodic demonstrations of new functionality
 Solicit feedback during the process
Encouraging Adoption

…they will not necessarily come.
A SharePoint site must present users with a better way of doing
their job than they do it now.
No Outlook = no e-mails at work.
No SharePoint = business as usual (i.e. e-mailing documents, e-mail
discussion threads, etc.)
People will NOT voluntarily add meaningful content to the site if
they are not assigned it as a part of their meaningful job tasks.
Make sure people understand this is a priority and not just “one
more thing” they have to do. (Wikis, blogs, discussion boards seem
like a great idea until no one uses them. )
If You Build It…

This has an effect on a number of things:
 Technical:
 Server load
 Maintenance
 Logistical:
 How many people need training?
 How many people will need to be administering the
content on the site?
 How will you find your “champions”?
Number of Users

 How many logical sites will be built? The
smaller the granularity, the greater the
number.
 You might need one public facing site
 You might need one intranet portal homepage
 You might need 5 departmental sites
 You might need 100 team sites
 You might need 300 My Sites
Scope and Frequency

 Object model, navigation, browser tools, only work
within one site collection. Better user experience
when one site collection is used.
 Monster big site collection = monster big database =
bad disaster recovery scenario
 Reasons for splitting site into site collections:
 Smaller DB sizes, i.e. faster backup and restore scenario
per DB.
 Quotas
 Expiration and deletion
Number of Site Collections

 My Sites (Quota, permissions, OOTB)
 Project or team sites (Quota, expiration)
 Ad hoc sites (Quota, expiration)
 Document-heavy sites (Database size)
When do multiple site collections
make sense?

 Will your site need to support more than one
language?
 Will the infrastructure team need to install language
packs?
 Will you be using site variations?
 How will the translation process work?
Multi-lingual Sites

 Ad Hoc: Nearly anyone can create a site, create lists, add or
remove content, etc.
 Controlled content creation: SharePoint Administrators,
Site Administrators put in place to limit who gets to create
or modify content.
 Publishing sites: Greatest level of control; usually only
Content Owners are given permission to create content;
page templates are pre-defined.
Spectrum of Control
Ad Hoc Publishing

 Advantage of enabling Publishing in your site:
branded look and feel, more pleasant Web
experience.
 Disadvantage of Publishing: meant for public facing
Web sites, primarily. Can be inconsistent user
experience if Publishing pages used for news stories
while list views are used for lists, etc.
 Blended approaches:
 Publishing and collaboration are layered in the same site
 Publishing in one site collection, collaboration split off in
another area of the site
Publishing or No Publishing, that is
the question

 Benefit of SharePoint is that it allows for distributed
use and maintenance.
 For it to be effective, responsibility must be
delegated.
 How much centralized control do you want to cede in
order to encourage distributed ownership?
 Depends on job responsibility or initiatives of end users
 Maybe means making a distinction between “official”
and “unofficial” content. (Workflows, or publishing vs.
non-publishing sites.)
Delegation

 Think task over org chart
 People come to a page or a site because they are trying
to accomplish something
 Logical structure is also tied to security
 Key to effective content management is creating
multiple ways to retrieve the same data
 Metadata, metadata, metadata:
 Sorting, grouping, filtering on lists
 Relevant search terms for data retrieval
 Content queries
Site Organization

 Columns: At the global level, emphasize search-ability and
retrieve-ability. At the list level, emphasize sorting,
filtering, grouping, etc.
 Content Types: Can be used for workflows and policies, as
well as a collection of columns or document templates.
 Global vs. local
 Fewer the better
 Take advantage of content type inheritance
 Base content type at the top
 Inherited content type at the list level
Content Types and Metadata

 Custom Search Scopes and/or Search Tabs
 Customized Advanced Search page
 Customized Results
 Customized Refinement Panel
 Canned Searches
Search

 Approval workflows
 Sequential or parallel
 Who’s in the workflow groups?
 Are you using a Records Center? Are you archiving
content? Do you need to set up routing rules?
 Are you implementing expiration policies on your
content?
Workflows

Social media components can be implemented independently of
one another.
 Use Personal Features
Contains Memberships, such as SharePoint sites and distribution
lists; Colleagues, such as the My Colleagues list and colleagues
recommendations; My Links; My Personalization links, such as
personalization site pinning; and User profile properties.
 Create Personal Site
Creates a My Site Web site, which includes a personal, private
My Home page and a public My Profile page.
 Use Social Features
Includes social tags, Note Board, and ratings.
(From http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee721063.aspx)
Social Media

 Each user’s My Site is a new site collection. Possible to
make changes to a site collection before it’s created.
Doubles the effort or more to make changes to existing
site collections after the fact, as well as provide for
changes in new sites to be created in the future.
 How does management feel about My Sites? Do they see it
as “wasting time”?
 How will you monitor the content that people publish? Are
there policies in place if someone misuses their My Site?
 Storage space estimate and quotas should be in place
before enabling.
My Sites

 How will you get content from your existing site (if
you have one) into your new site?
 What’s the process of scrubbing data before bringing
it over?
 Migration options:
 Manual
 Programmatic
 Third-party tool
Content Migration

 Audience targeting is not the same as security
 Do you want to target content to specific audiences?
 Can make users more interested in the site because they
only see relevant content
 Can also anger people if they want to see content and
feel like they were excluded in any way
 What are the rules for setting up those audiences?
 Will content owners take the time to actually target
content?
Audience Targeting

 On premises
 Hosting Company
 BPOS
Hosting

 How many servers of which type? (Web front end,
application server, database server)
 Do you have a development environment? Staging?
 Is your hardware virtualized or not?
 Will you be extending the site’s availability outside
the firewall?
 Alternate access mappings
 VPN access
 Will you be applying security certificates to the site?
Server Architecture

 If you’re hosting in-house, do you need to order more
hardware?
 Do you have the appropriate software licenses?
 What will the URL(s) for your site be?
Plan Ahead

 SharePoint Server 2010 supports authentication methods that were
included in previous versions and also introduces token-based
authentication that is based on Security Assertion Markup Language
(SAML) as an option.
 Supported authentication methods:
 Windows
 Forms-based authentication
 SAML token-based authentication
 Authentication Types:
 Classic-mode
 Claims-based
Authentication

 What is right for me?
 Classic mode
 This is the same as used in 2007
 Kerberos is still used
 No support for Forms or SAMAL Token-based
authentication
 Claims-based
 What am I doing
 Who is my customer
Authentication cont.

 What is supported under each Authentication Mode
 Classic-mode or Claims-mode
 Windows
 NTLM
 Kerberos
 Anonymous
 Basic
 Digest
 Claims Only
 Forms-based authentication (using)
 LDAP
 SQL database or other database
 Custom or third-party membership and role provider
 SAML token-based authentication (using)
 AD FS 2.0
 Windows Live ID
 Third-party identity provider
 LDAP

 Best Practice Guidance
 Claims-mode
 Only if you have a need for one of the following
 Forms-based authentication
 SAML token-based authentication
 Classic
 Use it if you don’t have a need for the above
 Important: Classic-mode web application’s can be
converted to Claims with PowerShell but, Claims-based
cannot go back to Classic-mode.

 Authentication = Are you who you say you are
 Authorization = What do you have permission to see
and do?
 Who has permission to do what in your site?
 Does everyone get to edit everyone’s content, or do
people get to only edit content within their own
department?
 Does everyone have permission to view everyone else’s
content?
Security

 If users are being stored in Active Directory, which system will be
used as the user identity management location?
 SharePoint 2010 now allows for SharePoint to read or to update
AD info.
 Will users update their own personal profile info?
 Who will maintain the user groups?
 Adding people to SharePoint groups directly is not very scalable
but works for smaller environments (of several hundred users).
Benefit: SharePoint administrators don’t need to contact IT
people every time a change is made
 Simply adding an AD group to a SharePoint group means users
are managed within AD. This is helpful if you already have a
system for managing users in AD. It’s also more scalable, and
ultimately, allows AD to be used for what it’s intended: user
management.
User Management

 Are there external systems you want to connect to?
 How will you authenticate with them?
 Will you use the BCS?
 Are you using additional applications like SQL Server
Reporting Services, or Microsoft Project? Does this
affect your authentication requirements?
 Are you wanted to install any third party SharePoint
products, such as imaging/scanning plug-ins, server
management tools, etc.?
External Systems and Applications

 Ad hoc site creation
 Delegated site creation
 Centralized site creation
 Sites defined by a feature, site template or definition
 Request form for new sites
Site Creation

 What is the disaster recovery SLA?
 Built-in products or third party products?
 Where are the backups being stored?
 Physical Media?
 Cloud Storage?
Disaster Recovery

Planning Customization and
Development

 What skillset do you have to build and maintain your
solution in-house?
 Are you planning on building your solution in-house,
or outsourcing the development to someone else?
 If so, how will you maintain the application after it has
been built?
Development

PROS:
 Code can be stored in a code-repository, providing better
disaster recovery
 Repeatability; code can be tested in one environment,
propagated to next
 Does not customize content
CONS:
 Requires SharePoint developers
 Requires investment in development tools (Visual Studio) and
development hardware.
Bottom line: Good approach for enterprise solutions.
SharePoint Development

PROS:
 Easy to use. Don’t have to be super-technical to use it.
 Little development effort. Cheap way to create a nice-looking
site.
CONS:
 Making changes directly to content database
 Must make changes directly to production database
 Cannot test changes in lower environment. Changes must be
made again in production, all over again
 Customizes content
Bottom line: Good for small sites with limited technical
expertise on staff, provided a good disaster recovery plan is
in place.
SharePoint Designer

 “Train the Trainer”
 “Champion” or site administrator trains others in
department; delegated training
 Online or contextual training
 Lunch-n-learns, etc.
Training

 What type of team do you have to support the
environment?
 What type of SharePoint administration training needs
to take place before taking over the day to day
management of the system?
Administration Needs

 Who is responsible for the ongoing support of the
site, once the initial training has been completed?
 Are you going to use an existing Help Desk/ticketing
system?
 Are current Help Desk folks prepared to support
SharePoint?
 Is there an SLA in place for resolving issues?
Ongoing Support

 How are you going to celebrate the
launch of a FANTASTIC intranet site that
knocks everyone’s socks off?
Where’s the Party?

SharePoint Server 2007 Best Practices
Bill English
Microsoft Press
Association for Information and Image Management
www.aiim.org
Essential SharePoint 2010: Overview, Governance, and Planning
(Addison-Wesley Microsoft Technology Series
Helpful Resources

This is a time to ask questions, or to share
with others in the room about your own
experiences of building an intranet.
What worked?
What didn’t?
Questions and Answers

So you’re building an intranet

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