1. Is Your SharePoint Really
Healthy?
What’s the Right Prescription?
Presented By: Richard Harbridge
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

2. Who am I?
Boston
Washington
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

3. SPTechCon
The SharePoint
Technology Conference
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

4. Why does this topic matter?
We find the issues in SharePoint typically when
SharePoint upgrades, new third party components,
new solutions and significant changes are made to
SharePoint.
This results in high costs and greater delays than if
many of those issues had been discovered earlier.
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

5. What we will be talking about…
1. What is a SharePoint Prescription?
2. SharePoint Preventative Care
3. SharePoint Palliative Care
4. SharePoint Curative Care
5. SharePoint Incident Reporting
6. SharePoint Health Assessments
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

6. Our Goal Today…
From Here To Here
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

7. What is a
SharePoint Prescription?
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

8. Why do you need a Prescription?
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

9. What is a Prescription?
 It’s a health-care program implemented by a physician
that governs the plan of care for a patient.
 They typically contain orders to be performed by
patients, caretakers, nurses, pharmacists or other therapists.
 They indicate that the prescriber takes responsibility for
the clinical care of the patient and in particular for
monitoring efficacy and safety.
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

10. What is a SharePoint
Prescription?
 It’s a health-care program implemented by a by an expert
technology-care program implemented physician
patient.
that governs the plan of care for a SharePoint implementation.
 It typically contains orders to be performed by patients,
system, administrators, developers, architects or other
caretakers, nurses, pharmacists or other therapists.
experts.
 It indicates that the prescriber takes responsibility for the
clinical care of the patient and in particular for monitoring
system
efficacy and safety.
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

11. The Outcome
An effective and personalized prescription is
what we really want.
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

12. What to watch out for…
Even with an effective prescription
you must follow it in order for it to
be effective.
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

13. SharePoint
Preventative Care
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

14. What is Preventative Care?
Measures taken to prevent diseases (or injuries) rather than
In SharePoint Terms? their symptoms.
curing them or treating
The pro-active actions you plan for, schedule and execute to
mitigate or prevent issues from occurring in your SharePoint
implementation.
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

15. SPDisposeCheck
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

16. Sandboxed Solutions
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

17. Deployment Processes
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

18. Site Provisioning Process
Having a site provisioning
process is a preventative
measure and provides the
following benefits:
• Explains and enforces
information architecture and
user interface standards.
• Improves search and
navigation.
• Provides consistent
application of site and
content access permissions.
• Mitigates legal and
compliance issues.
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

19. Quotas and Locks
Configuring Quota’s and Locks
is a preventative measure.
• It may be a way to halt users
from adding content to an
‘archived’ or transitioning
environment.
• It may be a way to ensure
that a site collection (and it’s
database) do not grow
beyond a certain limit
without IT intervention.
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

20. Database Growth Example
A site collections content database is 60GB in total size.
Preventative Action: Set alert to warn if the content
database goes beyond 80GB in size and schedule
reports on storage space and database growth.
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

21. The Outcome
You are able to prevent many potential
SharePoint issues through careful planning.
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

22. What to watch out for…
No one wants to do preventative
care or pay for it.
“It won’t happen to me.”
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

23. SharePoint
Palliative Care
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

24. What is Palliative Care?
Any form of medical care or treatment that concentrates on
In SharePoint severity of disease symptoms, rather than
reducing the Terms?
striving to halt, delay, or reverse progression of the disease
Targeting and fixing symptom like issues within your
itself.
SharePoint implementation without targeting or solving the
root cause.
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

25. When to use Palliative Care
When curing the symptoms of
an issue is all you can do.
• You are unable to make sense
of the underlying issue (don’t
know what it is).
• You are under artificial
constraints that make the
potential solutions for the
underlying issue infeasible
until a later time.
• Budget/Time/Scope
• Awaiting Technology
Improvements (Upgrade)
Cynefin (Dave Snowden Explains)
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

26. SharePoint Example
A site collections content database is 60GB in total size.
Preventative Action: Set alert to warn if the content
database goes beyond 80GB in size and schedule
reports on storage space and database growth.
The content database grows quickly to 100GB in total
size. The warnings have been sent out.
Palliative care would be to either split the content
database up or to adjust processes so that the content
DB can continue to grow beyond 100GB.
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

27. The Outcome
Symptoms of an underlying SharePoint issue
are resolved to decrease the impact of the
underlying SharePoint issue.
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

28. What to watch out for…
When a symptom is treated it
doesn’t cure the underlying issue.
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

29. SharePoint
Curative Care
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

30. What is Curative Care?
Actions that seek to cure the existing disease
or medical condition.
In SharePoint Terms?
Solve the underlying issue/problem so that it no longer
exists in your implementation.
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

31. There is no
magic pill.
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

32. SharePoint Example
A site collections content database is 60GB in total size.
Preventative Action: Set alert to warn if the content
The content database actually went from 60GB to 100GB in the course of
database goes beyond 80GB in size and schedule
one day.
reports on storage space and database growth.
Through investigation it is determined that a workflow
The content database grows quickly to 100GB in total
was causing the issue. Extra The warnings have been sent out.
size. versions of all documents in
a library were created on an infinite loop (until the server
automatically stopped the process). would be to either split the content
Palliative care
database up or to adjust processes so that the content
Curative care would beDB can continue to grow beyond 100GB.
to remove the workflow and perform corrective
Governance adjustments (adjust Sharepoint Designer permissions, adjust
Quota policies, and to train the SharePoint Designer workflow developer).
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

33. Do I Need To?
Before you go through a medical procedure
the doctor would explain the procedure and
the risks, options and alternatives allowing
the patient to make an informed decision
about whether the risk was worth it.
We must do the same with SharePoint
solutions – the risk is theirs to take, not ours.
Not if there are no known or identified issues.
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

34. SharePoint Lobotomy?
Is there a way to cause a severe
‘personality’ change in your
organizations perception of
SharePoint?
• Eliminating alternatives can
force users to utilize
SharePoint or develop their
own workarounds.
• Eliminate and rebuild your
implementation.
(2007 to 2010 upgrades provide an
opportunity to accomplish this with
less user resistance since things are
changing anyways.)
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

35. The Outcome
Through careful focus and identification we
can ‘cure’ many SharePoint issues.
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

36. What to watch out for…
We cannot cure something if we
don’t know enough about it.
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

37. SharePoint
Health Assessments
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

38. When to Assess
When not scheduled it’s still important to
perform assessments after any “curative” action
is performed.
“It indicates that the prescriber takes responsibility for the clinical
care of the system and in particular for monitoring efficacy and
safety.”
Additionally it may be best to perform one after
significant palliative or preventative measures are
taken.
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

39. Mental or Physical?
Physical health without mental
health is not ‘healthy’.
In a SharePoint Implementation:
Physical Health = Technical Health
Mental Health = Business or
Non-Technical Health
If you have business or non-
technical issues you may not have
a healthy SharePoint
implementation.
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

40. Business Strategy Assessments
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

41. • Why are we using SharePoint within our Enterprise?
• What are we currently using SharePoint for within our Enterprise?
• What are the future uses for SharePoint within our Enterprise?
• What are we currently using SharePoint for
• How is SharePoint helping us achieve our business goals?
• What are our SharePoint objectives and their priority?
within our Enterprise?
• What are our SharePoint initiatives and their priority?
• How do our SharePoint initiatives align with our SharePoint
•
• What are ways we can reduce inefficiencies and duplication?
objectives?
Are we using it as our primary document
•management platform?
What groups are doing similar initiatives and how can we help?
• What are the related systems, applications and services we have
• Are we using it to meet external web content
within our enterprise?
•management needs? SharePoint initiatives?
How is the business prioritizing
• Who are the people or key areas of the business involved in setting the
• strategicwe using our as an application delivery
Are direction for it SharePoint implementation?
• What areas of the business offer the most opportunity for growth?
platform?
• How are you communicating strategic changes or initiatives related to
SharePoint in your organization?
• How are you allocating costs?
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

42. Technology Strategy Assessments
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

43. • What are the known current SharePoint Initiatives?
• What are the known future SharePoint initiatives?
• Am I using all the features our organization is paying for?
• Are we using any of the features incorrectly?
• Am I using all the features our organization is
• What are the related business applications and services?
• Do any contain duplicate features/functionality?
paying for?
• Are any being retired/eliminated in the future?
• What are the technical objectives for SharePoint within the
organization?
• How are these technical objectives prioritized?
• What are our current and future licensing plans with SharePoint?
• Do you have a communication plan?
• When do communications occur?
• What must the communications contain?
• Who are the contacts for key responsibilities?
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

44. What about the Site level?
Can SharePoint Help?
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

45. Analytics for Management
Do you know what people are
doing in your SharePoint
implementation?
• What content is the most
popular and where are
people going/coming from?
• What are people searching
for and what are they not
able to find?
• How fast are your sites
growing? How big are they
getting?
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

46. SharePoint Designer Management
Are you aware of who is
building and using SharePoint
workflows?
• Do you know how many
SharePoint Designer
Workflows you have in your
environment?
• Do you know how complex
the SharePoint Designer
workflows are in your
environment?
• Have you mitigated the
impact to end users from a
poorly designed workflow?
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

47. Governance Assessments
• Do you have clearly defined Governance teams, committees
or boards?
• Are the roles and responsibilities of the membership
clearly defined?
• Is all of the membership engaged?
• Does the membership rotate?
• How often are your members getting together?
• What are the reasons your Governance
teams, committees or boards get together?
• Are the outcomes of these meetings actionable?
• Do you have a Governance Site (and Governance Plan)?
• What is within your Governance Site?
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

48. Have the teams/roles in use?
There are typically 5 teams for SharePoint Governance:
 Business Strategy Team
 Initiatives/Technical Strategy Team
 Tactical Teams:
 Tactical Operations Team
 Tactical Development Team
 Tactical Support Team
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

49. Governance Deliverables
 Aggregate/Reference Document or Site
(Contains all SharePoint Info – Single Point of Reference)
 Objectives/Priorities
(Tech/Business)
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

50. Operations Deliverables
 Objectives/Priorities
 Disaster Recovery Plan
 Storage and Quota Policies
 Monitoring Plans
 Maintenance Plans
 Service Level Agreements
 Security Policies
 Deployment Process, Policies, and Schedule
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

51. Development Deliverables
 Objectives/Priorities
 Branding Guide
 SharePoint Designer Policy
 Workflow Policy
 Development Standards (Including OOTB vs Custom)
 Development Environment Policy
 Testing Requirements
 Deployment Process, Policies, and Schedule
SharePoint Standards Online
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

52. Support Deliverables
 Objectives/Priorities
 Site Classification and Platform Classification
 Site Provisioning Process/Questionnaire
 User Expectations Agreement
 Roles and Responsibilities
 Support Agreement(s)
 Training and Communication Plans
 MySite Policies (Pictures)…
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

53. Support Deliverables
 User Lifecycle Policy
 Taxonomy Management
 Social Policies
 Content Standards
 Legal and Compliance Policy
 Search Management
SharePoint Standards Online
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

54. Infrastructure Assessments
Are there problems in your
server farm?
• What are the current
problems?
• Where are the problems?
• What are the solutions
for these problems?
• Awesome Tip?
• Turn on alerts for this list.
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

55. • Who is responsible for what when it comes to SharePoint infrastructure?
• Do they have a backup?
• Do they have the knowledge and training they need?
• Have you ever deviated from the default settings? Why and when?
• How are you monitoring SharePoint?
• Have you ever deviated from the default
• Do you know when a content DB’s size is approaching it’s
recommended limit?
settings? Why and when?
• Do you know when the site count of a site collection is approaching
it’s recommended limit?
• Do you know when the site collection count in a content database is
approaching it’s recommended limit?
• What quotas have you configured for SharePoint?
• How do you handle requests for a larger quota?
• What quotas have you configured for
• What is the maximum quota?
• Do you have errors in your event logs?
SharePoint?
• Do you have errors in your SharePoint logs?
• you have errorstheyour SQLsettings for storing logs?
• HaveHow do you handle requests for larger
• Do
you changed
in
default
logs?
• Howquotas? to grow do each of your logs have?
much space
• What is the maximum quota?
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

56. • How many servers do you have in your farm? (and possibly how many
farms?)
• How many web applications do you have in your farm?
• How many site collections do you have?
• How many databases do you have?
• How large are your databases?
• How many SQL Server Instances do you have?
• How many users are using your SharePoint site collections?
• How many requests per second are you seeing?
• How many sites do you have?
• How many documents do you have?
• What is the highest document size?
• What is the average document size?
• What are your resource throttling settings?
• What other technologies are you using with SharePoint?
• Are you using ISA or Forefront?
• Are your users using Micrsoft Groove or SharePoint Workspace?
• What is the current version of Microsoft Office you are using?
• Are you using Office Communication Server or Lync?
• Are you using Microsoft System Center products? Which ones?
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

57. Timer Jobs for IT Pro’s
What is going on in our
SharePoint server?
• What Timer Jobs are
Scheduled (w/ Definitions)?
• What Timer Jobs are
Running?
• What Timer Jobs have Run
Successfully or Failed?
• Server
• Web App
• Duration
• Status
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

58. SharePoint Diagnostics
How do you determine how
well different aspects of your
environment are performing?
• How do you quickly
identify, isolate and resolve
an issue?
• How do you keep
Environments within SLAs?
• How do you reduce
downtime?
• How do you validate and
benchmark code
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge the Latest SharePoint Admin Toolkit
Download

59. Backup and Recovery Assessments
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

60. • What is your Disaster Recovery plan for your SharePoint
implementation?
• Do you perform a fire drills based on your plan? When was the last
one and how often do you do them?
• How do you provide single file recovery? (version control, recycling
bin, DPM, etc)
• How do you provide single or multiple site recovery?
• How do you provide server recovery?
• How do you provide data center recovery?
• Are you storing excess or unnecessary (unused) data in your SharePoint
farm?
• What are the costs of this storage?
• Why is it being stored?
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

61. Performance Assessments
If we can save 2 seconds of loading time does it matter?
Let’s say you are a law firm and you have 300 attorneys.
The typical Attorney bills at $300.00 per hour. Attorneys
visit this page roughly 50 times per day and we assume
a Calendar year of 280 billable days (because we all work
too much)…
That is roughly $700,000.00 worth in billable time
saved per year to deliver more value to clients.
($25.00 per second for 28,000 seconds per year).
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

62. • How is SharePoint performance?
• What are the bandwidth costs associated with SharePoint?
• What are the costs associated with transferring redundant data
around your farm?
• What are my slowest performing pages?
• How heavy are my SharePoint pages?
• Are you using caching in your SharePoint implementation?
• Are you using Output Caching?
• Are you using Disk Based Caching?
• Are you using Object Caching?
• Are you using IIS compression?
• Are you monitoring SQL Server Latency?
• Is your latency 10 milliseconds or less for the Temp Database?
• Is your latency 10 milliseconds or less for the Search Database?
• Is your latency 20 milliseconds or less for the Database Log File?
• Do you have pre-negotiated SLAs for first time load of a site, subsequent
loads of a site, and performance at remote locations?
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

63. Analytics for Performance
Are you monitoring all the things
you should be?
• What are your slowest pages?
• What lists or sites are becoming
very large?
• Two Key SharePoint 2007 Tips:
• Look at the reports available
in SharePoint Designer.
• Explore
“_layouts/usagedetails.aspx”
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

64. Resource Monitoring and Throttling
Wait a second… I have SharePoint 2007 (or 2003)!
Are there performance
• Large list views and lists with many lookup columns lists or
problems with large
have performance challenges. queries?
• If you are upgrading to SharePoint 2010 this is also
• What are the realistic limits
important to understand as the default list views and lookup
for throttling
limits may impact user experience. columns to protect server
• SQL Scripts (Read Only) and API callsperformance and user
can help identify
experience?
what lists you do have over the default throttle
settings, and which have a larger • What are the dangers of
lookup count.
• Preventative Measures: DDoS and DoS attacks and/or
your servers running out of
Selectively indexing large list columns can help (up to
10 columns), building smarter more resources based on existing
efficient views
(1st filter), CAML/Search alternatives…jobs and PUT/POST requests?
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

65. Support Assessments
SharePoint
Standards
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge Online

66. • What kind of SharePoint support do you currently provide?
• Do you provide help material such as Manuals, Course
Guidebooks, Workbooks, How To, Tutorials, or Demonstrations?
• How do you train users on SharePoint?
• How do you currently provision your sites?
• How do you determine where each site should live?
• Who owns the site and who supports the site?
• How do you communicate new features, initiatives, or changes to
SharePoint to your users?
• How many SharePoint support requests do you currently get?
• How are these categorized?
• How are these assigned and escalated?
• How many are effectively responded to?
• How many are closed with success?
• Do you leverage/contribute to an internal knowledgebase for SharePoint
support?
• Do you have clearly defined SLAs for support and problem resolution?
• Do you offer face to face learning or unstructured/semi-structured
environments for learning? (Lunch and learns, after hours
discussions, communities etc)
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

67. Multiple Tiers for Escalation
(You can’t know everything)
Tactical Support Team
Help Desk
Site Administrators
End Users
Learning Libraries/Online/Help
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

68. Diversify Support
resources/mediums
 Books and Manuals
 Online
 MSDN  Forums
 TechNet  Help
 Blogs  Etc
 Cheat Sheets
 One on One
 Classroom Training
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

69. Taxonomy Assessments
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

70. • Do you have a site map that represents the current site structures?
• Does this clearly indicate recommended containment hierarchy?
• Do you have a site map that defines future site structures?
• Are you using Content Types?
• Are you using metadata to help make content easier to organize and find?
• Are you using site columns?
• Are you using and managing Term Sets?
• Do you have tagging guidelines?
• Are you managing keywords?
• Are you using and managing Site Directories?
• Do you have classifications based on type of use?
• Communications based (publishing) portal/sites/collections?
• Team based collaboration sites/collections?
• Application/services based sites/collections?
• Are you checking for dead links?
• How well is your site structured?
• Can people find what they are looking for?
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

71. Security Assessments
OR
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

72. • How secure is your SharePoint environment?
• Do you have PII (Personally Identifiable Information) in your
environment? Is it secured and audited?
• How well are permissions managed in your SharePoint environment?
• Have you ever deviated from SharePoint’s default security levels?
• In what site collections?
• What was the reasoning/need behind creating your own security
levels?
• How can security be improved in your SharePoint environment?
• How can you more effectively monitor, manage, and maintain security in
your SharePoint environment?
• Do you have separate/specific site collections or web applications for
confidential data which are more tightly controlled, audited, and
managed?
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

73. Development Assessments
Customizations
Ahead
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

74. • Do you have clearly defined Development Standards?
• What third party products are we using in our SharePoint environment?
• Where are they available? Who can use them?
• What is the status of these non-Microsoft products?
• Are there newer versions available?
• How is custom code performing within our SharePoint environment?
• Are you disposing of SharePoint objects correctly?
• Are you using best practices when querying or working with
SharePoint objects?
• Do you know how many workflows have been created within your
SharePoint environment?
• Do you know what they do?
• Do you know who owns them?
• Do you know what they were developed using? (SharePoint
Designer? Visual Studio? Third Party Product?)
• Who is using SharePoint Designer?
• How do you test your SharePoint environment when an update is made
to it?
• When new code is added or a third party product?
• How are you storing older versions of configurations, code and compiled
components?
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

75. Integration Assessments
When I Say “SharePoint Integration”
You Probably Think Of This...
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

76. • Is your SharePoint implementation part of an overall enterprise
technology plan?
• What are the current systems and applications in place?
• What are the application and system lifecycles?
• Is there duplicated content that is contained in other systems or
applications and not just within SharePoint?
• How is this content kept synchronized when updates are made to it?
• Can data stored in other systems provide additional value to your
SharePoint business solutions?
• Can it give added context to SharePoint content?
• What are already integrated?
• How are they integrated?
• What are not integrated?
• Why haven’t they been integrated?
• Are there ways to reduce user disruption by providing more single
sign on opportunities?
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

77. Usage & Adoption Assessments
Adoption
Activities
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge Listing

78. • How do you share the benefit of existing SharePoint solutions in your
organization?
• Does this include user built SharePoint solutions?
• What is the SharePoint skill level of your users?
• Do you have user stories on how people are currently using SharePoint
successfully?
• Have you performed interviews or surveys to help understand how
people are using SharePoint or how specific SharePoint solutions can be
improved?
• How many people are using your SharePoint implementation?
• Are you reviewing SharePoint Usage Statistics on a Regular Basis?
• How many are using a specific site?
• How many are using specific documents?
• What times of the week are they using specific sites or documents?
• Are there patterns that can be identified to help in determining
the best time for updates or additions?
• Is your SharePoint accessible externally or via mobile devices?
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

79. • How usable are your SharePoint solutions or implementation?
Usage and Adoption Assessments
• Have you performed usability assessments?
• How has your SharePoint implementation been branded?
• Does it have a unique name for referencing?
• What are your theme and styling guidelines?
• How does your SharePoint implementation work across
browsers?
• What about upcoming browsers?
• What are the accessibility concerns in your current SharePoint
implementation?
• How can this be improved?
• Do you have usage policies defined?
• Have your users signed off or acknowledged these policies?
• Do you enforce these policies?
• How often are these usage policies assessed and updated?
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

80. Usability Assessments
Consistency Across
User Environments
Modify Provisioned
Site (or Templates)
Based on Need
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

81. • Have you identified and defined user personas?
• Is your SharePoint accessible externally?
• Is your SharePoint being used on mobile devices?
• How is the user experience?
• How has your SharePoint implementation been branded?
• What are your theme and styling guidelines?
• How does your SharePoint implementation work across browsers?
• What about upcoming browsers?
• What are the accessibility concerns in your current SharePoint
implementation?
• How can this be improved?
• How do you make navigation changes in your SharePoint
implementation?
• Is your current navigation effective?
• Have you performed card sorting exercises?
• Have you performed the ‘blind’ test?
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

82. Make it easier to work with
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

83. Make it easier to work with
Powerful Columns You Probably Didn’t Know About
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

84. Make it easier to work with
Why Leveraging SharePoint Blog Features for News is a Great Idea
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

85. Staffing Assessments
Building A
SharePoint
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge Team

86. Mobile Assessments
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

87. • What is the mobile experience of your SharePoint site?
• Have you optimized the site for smaller resolutions?
• What mobile browsers do you support?
• Is your organization adopting tablet PCs (iPads)?
• What is the tablet experience of your SharePoint site?
• What support do you provide for remote workers?
• What are the offline and synchronization options your organization
is providing?
• Is SharePoint available outside of the firewall for employees?
• When a user receives an email linking to a SharePoint document on
their phone can they download that document?
• What is this mobile email and SharePoint experience like?
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

88. Search Assessments
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

89. • Are you using custom search scopes?
• Are you using people search?
• Are you checking what queries resulted in failure (no click through or 0
results)?
• Are you using best bets?
• Have you defined synonyms?
• Do you allow users to search non SharePoint data from within
SharePoint? If so what data?
• Are you using hit highlighting?
• Have you made organizational enhancements to the noise words file
and/or the thesaurus file?
• Have you defragmented your search database(s)?
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

90. Social Assessments
Eight Key
Considerations
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

91. • What does a one star versus a five star rating mean in your organization?
• What are acceptable tags?
• Are negative tags allowed?
• Are there examples of effective tags available?
• When should a user tag and when shouldn’t they?
• If content has already been tagged is it valuable to tag it again?
• Is it okay to tag content if that content already has a column (or
metadata) value that represents that tag?
• Are you using Status Updates?
• What are acceptable status updates?
• Are there examples of effective status updates available?
• What is acceptable About Me information for a user profile?
• Are there examples of effective About Me descriptions available?
• What is an acceptable user profile picture?
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

92. Cloud Assessments
70+ Cloud Evaluation Questions:
https://www.nothingbutsharepoint.com/sites/itpro/Pages/Ev
aluating-Cloud-Providers-Tools-and-Questions.aspx
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

93. SEO Assessments
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

94. • Are you using keywords, key phrases, and a description that reflects
each pages content?
• Are you using Robots Exclusion Standard (robots.txt)?
• Are you placing your content higher up in the page (to improve search
engine processing).
• Are you ensuring alt and title tags are always filled on things like images?
• Are you using descriptive text in your hyperlinks?
• Are you using descriptive page titles?
• Are you automatically updating the sitemap (helps search engines crawl
or discover pages on the site).
• Are you adjusting the Search Visibility for sites or pages you don’t want
crawled?
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

95. Strategic Assessment Approach
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

96. Tactical Assessment Approach
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

97. Phase the Assessments
Phase Phase Phase
1 2 3
SharePoint Search
Assessments
SharePoint
SharePoint Security
Infrastructure
Assessments
Assessments
SharePoint Branding SharePoint
and Usability Performance
Assessments Assessments
SharePoint Strategy
Assessments
SharePoint SharePoint
Development Integration
Assessments Assessments
SharePoint SharePoint User
Governance Adoption
Assessments Assessments
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

98. Tools That Help Answer Questions
• Microsoft Products
System Center Operations Manager
• Microsoft/Community Tools
SharePoint Diagnostics (2007, 2010), ULS
Viewer, SharePoint DocGen, Log Parser, Visual
Studio 2010 Ultimate (Load Testing) etc.
• Third Party Products
ControlPoint, DocAve, Nintex
Reporting, CardioLog, MAPILab, etc.
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

99. The Diagnosis
Diagnosis is used to help determine the
causes of symptoms, mitigations for
problems, and solutions to issues.
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

100. What to watch out for…
“Prescription of a SharePoint
“Prescription without Diagnosis is
Tool/Solution/Implementation
Malpractice.”
without Diagnosis is Malpractice.”
Please Share This!
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

101. What we talked about…
1. The Plan of Care for SharePoint
What is a SharePoint Prescription?
2. Preventative Care is critical and cost effective.
SharePoint Preventative Care
3. Palliative Care targets side effects and is expensive.
SharePoint Palliative Care
4. Curative Care is difficult without clear diagnosis.
SharePoint Curative Care
5. Record andIncident Reporting
SharePoint Learn from Results
6. Assess Often, Target Assessments, Act on Results
SharePoint Health Assessments
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge

102. Get Well Soon!
Thanks to Organizers, Sponsors and You for Making this Possible.
Questions? Ideas? Feedback? Contact me:
 Twitter: @RHarbridge
 Blog: http://www.RHarbridge.com
 Email: Richard@RHarbridge.com
 Resources:
700+ SharePoint IA Slides at.. PracticalIntranet.com
130+ SharePoint Standards at.. SPStandards.com
15 Pages of Important Questions at.. SharePointDiagnostics.com
#SharePointFest @RHarbridge