Empower The Power User by @KerriAbraham and @SharePointWendy
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This document profiles two women, Kerri Abraham and Wendy Neal, who are experts in SharePoint. It also discusses differences between IT cultures in healthcare and financial services and the importance of empowering users. Kerri works in healthcare and contributes to blogs, while Wendy works in financial services and is passionate about SharePoint branding and training. Healthcare IT tends to be more conservative while financial services emphasizes innovation and empowerment. The document advocates for empowering power users and bridging gaps between business and IT to maximize user adoption of SharePoint.
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Empower The Power User by @KerriAbraham and @SharePointWendy
- 2. Kerri Abraham Retired SharePoint professional, healthcare Regular contributor to NothingButSharePoint.com Contributing author SharePoint 2010 at Work, Tricks, Traps, and Bold Opinions: ‘Empower the Power User’ chapter Wood-fired pizza oven builder
- 3. Wendy Neal SharePoint Architect/Developer for GreatAmerica Financial Services Regular contributor to NothingButSharePoint.com Blog: www.sharepointwendy.com Twitter: @SharePointWendy Passionate about all things SharePoint: Branding, evangelism, governance, training, user adoption, user empowerment
- 4. IT Cultural Differences Kerri – Healthcare Wendy – Financial Dealer Success & Employee Patient Care #1 Engagement 0 Conservative 0 Innovative 0 Restrictive 0 Empowering 0 Secretive 0 Open Communications 0 Minimal Training 0 Learning Organization 0 Dysfunctional? 0 Culture Oriented http://www.aiim.org/community/blog s/community/SharePoint-Governance- http://www.greatamerica.com/about/ab Overhyped-and-Not-Understood Bill out-greatamerica.aspx English
- 5. This is a True Story April 2012 in Atlanta
- 6. SharePoint Designer Lockdowns
- 8. Poll on SPYam https://www.yammer.com/spyam/
- 9. Don’t be the SharePoint Nazi at Your Organization! No SharePoint FOR YOU!
- 10. Goals: Mitigate Fear Bridge the Business and IT gap Maximize Change Management Process Nurture a Disciplined SharePoint/Developer-minded Workforce Create Educational Resources Empower Users
- 11. Anatomy of a Power User Not all users are equally motivated
- 12. I thought I wanted a career; turns out I just wanted pay checks. Power User Site Owner End User
- 13. 0 In the same way that not all rectangles are a square, not all site owners are power users. Ability Time Interest
- 15. Employee Employee Innovative Company Loves is Engaged Ideas Flow Benefits Company YES Employee Empower LOVES Employee? SharePoint Employee writes articles for an International audience re: your company’s NO restrictive culture… Employee Employee Employee Knowledge is Hates Leaves and Talent Restricted Restriction Company Lost
- 16. 0 Site Creation 0 Permissions 0 Navigation 0 Filtering 0 Sorting Basic Power 0 OOTB Workflow User 0 Alerts 0 List and Library Understanding Management 0 Metadata Management 0 Content Types 0 Site Maintenance
- 17. Developers First Need to be Power Users Pick the right tool for the job
- 18. Bridge the Business & IT gap Building a business platform requires a team effort. Recognize everyone wins from business success.
- 19. Critical Thinkers Quick Learners OOTB Masters Courageous Ambitious SharePoint Passionate
- 20. Break the IT Bottleneck Why Business Doesn’t Look to IT for Innovation – InformationWeek
- 21. Cheers to Improved Process! Real end-user adoption: Users bringing ideas to the table that utilize SharePoint tools to improve their work and the business! Power users are there to make those improvements reality.
- 22. If you are doing it right, SharePoint is ALL ABOUT CHANGE
- 23. And CHANGE IS SCARY! The fundamental issue is about giving up control and the potential that creates for chaos.
- 24. Mitigate Fear
- 25. The Risks are Two-Fold Immediate Long Term 0 Crashing/Downtime: 0 Knowledge Silos 0 Server 0 Change Management: 0 Site collection 0 Solution support 0 Subsite 0 Future upgrades and 0 Page unforeseen platform 0 List/Library and/or toolset 0 Loss of Content changes 0 Poor server 0 Loss of Knowledge performance
- 26. Bring Down the Farm? Site Server More Common Extremely Unlikely 0 Modifying 0 SPD Workflow master pages endless loop
- 27. Don’t take advice from this guy…
- 28. SharePoint Designer Settings Web Application Site Collection 0 Settings apply to 0 Settings ONLY ALL site collections apply to that site in the web app collection There are NO individual site or sub site level settings
- 29. Example Site Hierarchy Site collections Sites and sub sites
- 30. SPD Site Collection Settings
- 31. Maximize Change Management A marriage of project and configuration management disciplines that provide structure and understanding without being tediously difficult to maintain.
- 32. Winning end-user adoption is an endless topic of discussion: Are we considering the impact of hundreds, if not thousands of business-critical SharePoint solutions?
- 33. User If a user’s Dependent job is made easier with or Business SharePoint resources Critical? and/or tools, it is painful Does it when they matter? are offline for ANY reason!
- 34. Development Should Be Documented Regardless Of Titles! o Capture Business/Project Requirements o Provides an Overview and Auditing Process o Integrate with Workflow for Approval and Review Cycles o Educational Resource o Platform Support
- 35. Semantics Just Muddy the Waters de·vel·op con·fig·ure verb (used with object) verb (used with object) 1. To bring out the capabilities or possibilities 1. To design or adapt to form of; bring to a more advanced a specific configuration or for or effective state. some specific purpose. 2. To cause to grow or 2. Computers. expand. 3. To elaborate or expand in a. To set up (a program) to detail. enable it to run on a 4. To bring into being or particular computer or for activity; generate; evolve. a particular application.
- 36. Return On Investment (ROI) The value of a solution is reduced when adequate documentation is not available as support to change management strategy in the future.
- 37. Support and Sustainability 0 Do you know every instance of: 0 Workflow Business Process Changes 0 Scripts Platform Upgrades 0 Alert settings 0 Content types Patch Level Maintenance 0 Site columns Server configuration 0 Web part connections adjustments 0 Lookup columns General Clean-Up 0 Custom web parts And the where and why?
- 38. Example: SharePoint 2013 Loss of Design View Data View Web Part 0 Conditional Formatting 0 Connecting information from multiple sources 0 Upgrading Existing?
- 39. The Rudder The steering mechanism for all SharePoint development.
- 41. 0 “Who made this and what business requirement was it meant to solve?” 0 “What on earth was I Honestly, Have testing and why did I get you Never distracted from finishing it? If only I had some notes, Asked Yourself: this looks cool!” I know, me too! 0 “When was this thing created, is it still valid?” 0 “Where is that [insert any customization] located in this site collection?” 0 “How did I ever manage to build that?”
- 42. Documentation not a Novel Document those items that might snag up the next user who has to support what has been built. Make it quick and to the point, both to capture and absorb!
- 43. Scripts Use of client-side scripts is a privilege and applying them in the environment means adopting a responsible attitude toward documentation.
- 44. environment. To the best of my abilities I will make every attempt to understand the code in the script and what it is doing before I test it. There will be documentation surrounding the use of the script, why it is needed, the origins of where I copied it from, and any and all edits I make will be included in Combat Script this comprehensive documentation. I Stupidity Vow: will educate myself on best practices, attempt to follow them Because clearly I am at all times, and share that advice NOT a developer! with those in my environment that may use this library. While my goal may be third tier, I will fully recognize that I probably should stick to client-side manipulation until I have a better development background. I will promise to follow the approval process for use of new scripts in my
- 45. Script Library
- 46. Demo – Create a Script Library http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2JCSjnajnI
- 47. Demo - Add a Script to our Site http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axcwZF9SGZQ
- 48. The Five “W”s of Documentation What Why Who Where When Unique Pertains to People, qualities Location current Go-Live group, or and/or tools where it process and or any used to lives on the other team platform ties directly needing create it: to ROI: dates this and related relating What is site Is to the solution important security SharePoint project to know for the best fit future for this support? solution?
- 51. The Standard Business Model IT supports new technologies with the intent of bringing about change and alleviating business problems.
- 52. SharePoint is All About Change Change + Empowerment + Unknown = Fear
- 53. SharePoint Solutions All discussions begin with some basic information gathering.
- 54. Shared Responsibility IT and business share the responsibility of training.
- 55. Regardless of Title It is the burden of the developer to document their solutions.
- 56. Governance Configuration management is disciplined maintenance.
- 57. Nurture a Disciplined SharePoint/Developer- Minded Workforce Build an empowered team not just individuals.
- 58. Developmental Skills What is this? A Person with A Person Clothes
- 59. Empowerment The exchange of Without configuration documentation as a Responsibility concession for is Chaos! empowerment is an Don’t let the mistakes advantageous of the past mandate the policies of the arrangement for future. both sides.
- 60. The Psychology of Empowerment Linking Empowering Leadership And Employee Creativity: The Influence Supporting studies: Empowered Of Psychological Workers Are Better, More Empowerment, Intrinsic Productive Workers Motivation, and Creative Process Engagement
- 61. Only I know what I’ve created Taught myself Only one here I’ve learned everything I know with this a million & knowledge one tricks! The Problem with One
- 62. Share the knowledge! Create Educational Resources
- 63. Encourage How-To Create a continuous learning environment: 0 Encourages a competitive spirit 0 Highlight best practices 0 Rejoice in achievements 0 Troubleshoot frustrations 0 Build presentation skills
- 64. And When NONE of that Works Move Forward on Your Own
- 65. SharePoint Designer is FREE! INVEST IN YOURSELF! While formal training may accelerate the learning 0 Get your own SharePoint process, it is possible to site. learn Designer with a bit 0 Use it as a portfolio to of ingenuity and some showcase what you know time investment. The 0 Document the greater SharePoint development community has 0 Participate in the online contributed hundreds of community articles to this end!
- 66. Governance policy: All users with access to 1 SharePoint Designer will be taught and Initiation notes are combined expected to use with documentation related to the solution being developed. documentation 2 A techniques. Upon Initiation SharePoint of every project Workflow is initiated Rudder 3 the 5 Ws are for review and Library is captured. approval. 8 created. 4 Once approved the solution Users are is moved to production. provided a test 9 environment. Users share the solution Capable and the knowledge at a users are 6 monthly Power User meeting. granted 10 access to Designer. At 18-months a workflow initiates a review process to ensure solution validity.
- 67. Thank You!
- 68. Questions?
Hinweis der Redaktion
- Wendy: When Kerri asked me to co-present this session with her, I was thrilled! She has been a pioneer for advocating the empowerment of SharePoint power users for as long as I’ve known her, and even though she’s now retired from SharePoint, I feel that she still has a very important message to convey on this subject.This is Kerri’s baby, I’m just along for the ride mostly, but to also add a little bit of balance and share things from my perspective, and to show the demos.
- Kerri: Strictly looking at IT in healthcare, which is a completely separate culture from the patient care side of the facility, the mentality is not one of engagement and innovation, but one of obsessive restriction and lockdown. Management is so focused on putting out fires that everything becomes about fire prevention, zero risk is the only acceptable course. Wendy: At my company we’re a little bit more laid back, we do have fires to put out, but nothing that would put anyone in a life or death situation. We pride ourselves on being very innovative and empowering; we’re not perfect at communicating by any means, but we certainly don’t try to purposely hide anything from anyone. We also see ourselves as a learning organization. IT has a generous training budget that many of us take advantage of.Last paragraph of the linked article - “Empowerment, cross training and the culture of innovation are critical to the continued success of GreatAmerica”
- Wendy: I attended SHARE – The SharePoint Conference for Business Users last April in Atlanta, and during one of the sessions, it was a session on Governance, the presenter was explaining how their organization had set up SharePoint and their governance plan, and just mentioned in passing, almost under his breath that they had locked down SharePoint Designer to their end users. It wasn’t the focus of his presentation, just something he happened to mention.There was a guy sitting right in front of me that started clapping and yelling (loudly) “Yaaaaayyyyyyy!” I was dumbfounded.Keep in mind that this was a BUSINESS conference, geared towards BUSINESS users! What kind of message is this sending to the power user community?
- Kerri: As a community we really need to get past this mentality.
- Wendy: After the incident in Atlanta, I wanted to find out how common SharePoint Designer lockdowns actually were.This was a very casual, unscientific poll I set up on the SPYam network on Yammer.com. For those of you not familiar with SPYam, it’s a private community on Yammer that was set up by Joel Olson shortly after Microsoft announced their purchase of Yammer. It’s a place where SharePoint professionals can network and connect. It’s invitation only; if you want to join just email me and I can get you access.As you can see, about half of the respondents said that power users have no access to SharePoint Designer, and another 12% said that no one had access to it at all.[Poll the audience]
- Wendy: If you’re a SharePoint administrator or “the SharePoint Guy” (or gal) at your organization, you don’t want to be known as the SharePoint Nazi. I actually said this in a governance meeting at my organization. I did not want IT to be known as the SharePoint Nazis. We had to find a way, I told them, to empower our users but in a manner that would not risk the stability and integrity of our systems. The rest of this presentation will lay out the blueprint for achieving that.
- Goals of this presentation.
- Kerri: Just to be clear, I do not in any manner suggest that every user is capable, interested, or trustworthy enough to be allowed access to powerful tools like Designer! Each organization will create their own definition of a Power User, but here are our thoughts on what qualifies as Power User skill.
- Kerri:Power Users are go-getters by nature. They aren’t sitting back taking the easy ride, they are out there looking to make things better and known for pushing boundaries just for the sake of learning.
- Kerri:The Power User has had the opportunity to build solid SharePoint knowledge, which requires three essential elements for learning: ability, time, and interest. While many users may have abundant ability and interest, it is the time to apply them and fully develop their skills that alludes most since organizations so closely guard productivity that capable users can rarely squeeze in any ‘non-productive’ SharePoint training time.Wendy: In my personal experience, a lot of the TIME I spent on learning SharePoint was actually off hours. You may have to do this if your organization won’t let you spend sufficient time during the work day to learn SharePoint. Comparing this to the sports world, if you truly want to be great at something, for instance basketball, then you have to spend lots of time outside of your regular practices perfecting your skills. Anything worth learning and becoming a master at is worth any extra time that you need to put in outside of office hours. Don’t let lack of time be a restriction if you have the ability and the interest. Any by you guys being here at SPS Twin Cities, you’ve shown that you’re willing to take the time to learn about SharePoint.
- Kerri: Okay probably not a solid fact but everyone looking to hire knows the SharePoint talent pool is just too shallow. Users who show proficiency with the platform should not be blocked from the tools that help them build skills that can lead them on to better careers. Blocking Designer from a qualified user (someone who obviously loves SharePoint!) is robbing them of their future.
- More importantly, blocking qualified, passionate users from the tools that help them build better solutions is robbing the organization of SharePoint talent and skill!
- While IT certainly has every right to question the ability of a Power User prior to allowing them use of Designer, there should be a basic understanding from both sides of what skill level is deemed worthy of a more advanced toolset. This list is not meant to be a mandate, but rather a suggestion, either for assessing competency or for setting goals toward empowerment. IT should recognize that users with these skills are both rare and incredibly valuable to the organization!
- Wendy: Speaking of power users, I want to put on my developer hat for a second… I’ve long been saying that SharePoint developers first need to be power users. How else will you know whether you need to write code in Visual Studio or if that functionality already exists out-of-the-box?I learned that lesson the hard way: Shortly after SharePoint 2010 came out, I wrote a custom web part that extended the Content Query Web Part and added URL filtering functionality, only later to find out that it was already included out-of-the-box (new to 2010) simply by configuring it in the web part properties. Doh!
- Kerri: Unless SharePoint is implemented strictly as a document repository without any intent to utilize the platform for it’s collaborative toolset, then business users have to be involved. Those who do the job know the job and are in the best position to solve their own problems. ITs role in that relationship is not to restrict, but to nurture a developer mentality so that a disciplined approach to development of the platform evolves.
- Kerri: The majority of the current workforce in most organizations is not interested, skilled, or tech savvy enough to develop their own solutions in SharePoint. While SharePoint provides the tools, even when given the opportunity, realistically, few users will develop solutions on the platform. The power user bridges the IT gap in both skill and interest to bring user ideas to fruition. Users of all skill levels recognize time saving opportunities, but it is the power user that knows how to use SharePoint tools to make them reality.
- Wendy: Typically what happens in most organizations is that there is a whole lot more work being requested of the IT department than can be delivered in a timely manner. To make matters worse, before SharePoint much of that work was things that power users or site owners should be able to perform themselves: for example managing their own content, publishing news articles, creating a photo album, and the like.There’s an interesting article in InformationWeek that explains why business doesn’t look to IT for innovation. They feel that IT is behind the times in a lot of cases and can’t keep up with the technology needs of the business.With SharePoint, users can control their own content, but it’s not just content any more that users want to manage. They want to customize the look and feel; they want to create workflows; they want to display their data in different ways. And I (being part of IT) don’t want to do everything for everybody. In order to break the bottleneck, we need to empower users to solve their own problems, because IT simply doesn’t have the time or resources.
- Kerri: End-user adoption goes beyond forcing employees to use applications built on the platform that support business critical solutions. Mandated use is not adoption, it is compliance. Real end-user adoption is when the employees themselves think of utilizing SharePoint to help them improve their personal work process.
- Kerri: Medical Transcription Story (Your medical record is documentation of the changes taking place as you develop. The record is meant to allow others to continue to support and provide medical care should the need arise, uninterrupted!) Important things in a state of change should be documented!
- Implementing a generic platform that is meant to empower users to build their own solutions means IT has to give up control, that lack of control and the potential for change is scary to IT. What needs to happen to ease IT’s worries is an open communication process where business users
- Wendy: A few months ago I posted a question on Linked In and Twitter to SharePoint Admins – asking them “What are the real risks of letting your power users use SharePoint Designer?” I asked, what are some of the known scenarios or things that users could do to cause undesirable effects to the SharePoint farm. I had over a dozen people respond, and I compiled their answers in a document.This slide lists out the risks, both immediate and long term, of things that could happen if you don’t take a smart approach to user empowerment. And it’s worth noting that these risks are the same whether a developer or a power user uses SharePoint Designer. It all comes down to training and working in a controlled environment, as we’ll see later.
- Wendy: Going back to my SharePoint Designer question that I posted on LinkedIn and Twitter, it seems that the chances of actually “bringing down the farm” are quite slim, however it is possible. The only definitive example I got was that it is possible in SharePoint Designer to create a workflow that goes into an endless loop, thereby hogging all the server resources before finally bringing down the server. This seems to be more of a risk in SharePoint 2007, because in 2010 they added some safeguards to help prevent this scenario from happening.As far as bringing down a site, it’s actually very easy to do this by modifying a master page in Designer. If you inadvertently delete one line of code that your master page needs, it will error out and your site won’t load. However, you can prevent users from modifying master pages, but still allowing them to modify individual pages on their site, as we’ll see later.
- Wendy:The “most interesting man in the world” may not need a test environment to test (or write) his code, but SharePoint solution builders certainly do.One way to mitigate risk is to set up a test or playground environment where power users can learn and play around without fear of causing damage. They should use this test environment when they are building solutions and then an admin can migrate their solution to the production environment after it has been thoroughly reviewed and tested.
- Wendy:It’s important to understand the different options available for SharePoint Designer. We’re not advocating that Admins completely open it up to everyone. There may be certain areas that you don’t want anyone to touch, even power users who have been fully trained on SharePoint Designer. SharePoint 2010 makes it easy to lock down only the parts you want, while empowering your power users with the access that they need.As you can see, you can lock down or open up Designer at the web application and site collection levels, but NOT the site or sub site levels.
- Wendy: In case you don’t know the difference between a web app, site collection, and sites/sub sites – this diagram is very helpful.A web application is the highest level SharePoint object – it is what’s associated with a website in IIS. A web application can hold multiple site collections. A site collection is just a container for sites and sub sites. Each site collection can hold many sites and sub sites.At GreatAmerica, the way we structured our sites will allow us to have maximum control over SharePoint Designer settings. For example, for every team, project, or group of people who want a SharePoint site, we give them their own site collection. That way we can open up Designer access only on the site collections where the power users have been adequately trained.
- Wendy: These are the SPD Settings for an individual site collection. You’ll notice that the bottom two checkboxes are grayed out and it says they’ve been disabled. Remember before I said that an admin could disable settings at the web application level? This admin has disabled the bottom two choices, so they cannot be turned on or off at the site collection level.NOTE: The administrator of the site collection can always open and use SharePoint Designer regardless of these settings. These settings apply to site owners and designers.The first option will either enable or disable SPD entirely. If you disable it, the other 3 options don’t even apply.The second option will either allow or not the detaching of pages from the site definition, also referred to unghosting pages. In SharePoint most site pages are derived from templates. These pages are stored on the file system so they load very fast. In SPD it is possible to change page such that it is no longer derived from the template, thus it is stored in the content database. This could affect both performance and future upgrades if your changes aren’t documented.The third option says whether users can modify master pages and page layouts using SPD. At my company, IT has made customizations to the master pages that we push out to all site collections for uniformity. So we don’t allow users to modify the master pages at all.The last option refers to users being able to see the hidden URL structure of their site.
- Who supports the solutions that users come to use and depend on every day when there is a staffing change? As we see SharePoint maturity grow, this notion is going to come to forefront of conversations, especially in light of true end-user adoption,
- What happens when power users responsible for enthusiastic end-user adoption moves on leaving behind a mass of unsupported business critical solutions? Consider any number of both used and unused content types, workflows, jQuery scripts, and other SharePoint development all without any documentation that require support and/or upgrade. Still think power users aren’t developing solutions? Try supporting them without any documentation.
- Kerri: Reference here to the blowup I had over the Laura Rogers article I wrote: https://www.nothingbutsharepoint.com/sites/eusp/Pages/Laura-Rogers-You-ARE-a-Developer.aspx We are developing the platform, it must be documented at every level. This is NOT a pot not needing to be stirred, but a recipe that needs to be shared!
- Kerri: SharePoint is both configured and developed. While SharePoint provides opportunities to configure pages, lists, or web parts in hundreds of ways; where there was nothing before, if something is created, that is development. The newly created thing is then configured for the specific purpose.
- Wendy: From an IT support and sustainability standpoint, it’s extremely important to keep tabs on all the customizations out there, whether they be done by developers or power users. A lot of the items on this list are things that can be done out of the box using the SharePoint interface, so we’re not talking about JUST SharePoint Designer changes when it comes to upgrades and maintenance.
- These changes to the tool set in Designer are unforeseeable and completely unexpected. No matter who develops the platform, there should be documentation of where these kinds of solutions exist for the sake of future upgrades.
- Actions Speak Louder than WordsMy grandmother passed away last summer. She and my grandfather had both been married before, each a widow and a widower, so their marriage took place a bit later in life, and while she was the only grandmother I ever knew, she never had children of her own and her personality kind of reflected that emptiness in her heart. She wasn’t cold, she just seemed distant; not a “warm-fuzzy, let’s make cookies” kind of grandma. At the time of the funeral I pondered what it was that made us feel close to those we love. It seemed to me that it was in the giving; an investment of time and thought that provides meaning and substance to a relationship. I felt as though my grandmother and I had missed that somehow. Then she surprised me.Weeks later as the family congregated to clean out the house and get it ready to sell we came across piles of newspaper clippings, boxes of children’s artwork, and grocery sacks filled with greeting cards. Not only had my grandmother saved every piece of artwork I had ever given her and my grandfather, but she had saved every single greeting card from every holiday, many of which were handmade. The part though that moved me more than any other discovery was the newspaper clippings. She had not only cut out every article from the small town paper where I had been mentioned or pictured, but she also saved every clipping she came across that mentioned my friends from high school, college graduation or marriage announcements, anniversary notices, family deaths, everything. I didn’t even know she knew who my friends were, but she had documented my life, thorough enough to include those I held dear, and had proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that I had indeed been very important to her, even if it hadn’t been her way to say it, her actions spoke far louder than any words could have.My grandmother had been dedicated to documenting my life, not only when I was young, but even as I got older and could have easily documented it myself. Perhaps it was just a habit she couldn’t break after years of doing it? To me it doesn’t matter, the proof is in the action. Power-Users can prove their dedication in the same way, hopefully creating habits along the way that prove to IT they are equally committed to the platform, all while building a legacy for future support.
- Kerri: Documentation is not only handy for letting others know what you were doing, but it is fantastic as a resource to use for yourself as well!
- A complete how-to from beginning to end is not necessary, provide links to original sources as often as possible…but if your idea or technique is indeed original and nowhere to be found…write it up and share it with the rest of the SharePoint community! (Then link to that in your documentation!)
- Wendy: We’re going to use Kerri’s idea from her book and create a library to store all the script files, whether it be JavaScript or jQuery; CSS and HTML files. I’m actually NOT going to store my documentation in this library as Kerri suggests in her book, because where I work we want to use versioning on our scripts, but or our documentation library we don’t need to use versioning. And we’ll build a documentation library later.
- Wendy: I'm going to show you how to create a script resource library to store your scripts and other assets that are used to customize your SharePoint site. We can use this to store jQuery and JavaScript files, CSS files, HTML, and even images if we want to. We want to store these in a uniform place and add some metadata around the files so that we can troubleshoot if we have problems.
- Wendy: We're going to add a custom script to a script resource library and implement the solution to our SharePoint site. For this demo I'm goinig to use Easy Tabs, the awesome tabbing solutios built by Christophe Humbert of PathtoSharePoint.com
- Wendy: OneNote is a great tool for capturing the five Ws that Kerri mentioned and other documentation around the customizations on your site. OneNote is basically a digital notebook where you can store text, images, even video and audio notes. It’s great for organizing notes. The tabs at the top represent sections in a notebook and the pages on the right represent the documents in that section.
- Wendy:Now I'm going to show you how to create a OneNote document library in SharePoint 2010, and then how to utilize OneNote for capturing and storing documentation around any site customizations that you make on your site.
- It’s the standard drill. Business has a problem, someone in business researches solutions and they take them to IT to implement. Depending upon the organization those conversations are long and arduous, but at some point an agreement is reached and IT takes on the responsibility of installing and managing the new purchase.
- SharePoint is a bit different from standard implementations in that in order to use SharePoint, it must be developed to some degree. SharePoint is a platform of toolsets provided for users with the intent of helping them create their own solutions to their problems. This is new territory for most of IT, since other business solutions typically fall under and implement, initially train, and then support/put out fires. Locking SharePoint into only a few tasks may keep it within the standard model, but since it can do so much more….well that is precisely the unknown that IT is worried about. If IT doesn’t know SharePoint, what users are capable of developing, and how to manage that development, that is scary!
- This diagram is meant to represent every solution built on the platform and how the responsibility for that solution should be divided between Business and IT. At the point that Business Requirements are collected, it may still be unknown if SharePoint is the best tool for the job, even at this stage the discussion should be captured starting with recording who is at the initiation meeting? What do they think is the problem? Is that really the problem (why?) If SharePoint is the best solution, should it be built? What are the expected project dates/go live? Capturing most of this information up front and associating it with the project notes from the beginning saves a lot of headache later!
- The initial rollout of the platform generally requires that IT shoulder the majority of end-user training, but specific solutions built by business users do not. Therefore the responsibility for user training is shared between both parties. When IT steps away from active participation in the Business Users development they often can not always adequately understand/use or support the solution. IT must be an active participant in the development process in order to keep pace educationally with Power Users and be able to provide adequate support and training as needed.
- Without documentation requirements and consideration for change management, any calculations for return on investment (ROI) are threatened should the sustainability of the solution come into question. Imagine the Power User leaves the organization and hundreds of business solutions sit unsupported on the platform. Not knowing who uses them, are they still valid, or what business problem do thy address are all nearly impossible to ascertain without proper documentation. Standardizing documentation needs provides structure to managing the lifecycle of all solutions.
- Simplicity is the key to creating good habits and winning adoption. Everyone developing the platform should be held to the same standard and those who hold dedicated SharePoint positions should be leading by example. Ultimately Configuration Management is simply SharePoint Governance, reducing risk by providing a method for development compliance.
- The platform is at risk when anyone developing solutions is missing fundamental SharePoint understanding, but equally threatening to the reputation of SharePoint solutions and those that build them is to not leave behind supporting documentation. Users can both prove their competency with the platform through documentation and build valuable resources for the future. It is a win/win for everyone.
- Kerri: Empowerment is a hot topic among researchers. The research all points to the same conclusions: Empowered workers are more productive, have higher moral and better overall performance, all these attributes pointing to increased innovation and creativity in the workplace. But don’t empower one… empower a team!
- IT shouldn’t fear a team of users learning Designer, but instead they should be aware of how many powerful and user dependent solutions one user can create that will need support should they leave. Designer is not necessarily the biggest threat IT has to deal with in regard to SharePoint, but the very development itself (even OOTB) if not managed, monitored, and that skillset shared and documented! Besides, it is WAY more fun for the power user to have a team of other enthusiasts to share in the knowledge and discovery!
- Kerri: Power users must meet regularly to share what they have built, what they have documented, and the struggles that they have overcome. Use the SharePoint community as an example.
- Use the SharePoint Community as the example.
- Kerri: you begged and pleaded and IT is still stuck in their antique way of thinking but you know SharePoint is your passion? Take the bull by the horns!
- Just because you don’t have designer at work, that doesn’t mean you can’t learn Designer at home!
- The 10 Steps to Empowered Utopia! This is a common sense plan, a variation on what junior developers experience while in training. Why not apply the same principles to Power Users too?
- Achieving SharePoint maturity is dependent upon an empowered workforce. The future promises cutting-edge techniques to engage employees through enhanced collaboration tools and SharePoint is already a major player in that arena. Developing a skill set from within the organization that can meet those demands is very savvy! Make SharePoint lockdowns a thing of the past and make SharePoint configuration management the stuff of the future!