The importance of document management
By Eric Riz
If I were to ask which two words in SharePoint were the most overused (in conversation) and underutilized (in practice), which would they be? “Business Intelligence?” “Administration” and “Security?” “SharePoint Designer?”This is a question I ask many of my clients, and you would be surprised by the answers; they typically focus on individual needs and not corporate objectives. In my experience, these two words are “Document Management.”In my opinion, document management has never been given the respect it deserves within SharePoint’s capabilities. Document management should be looked at the same way an organization does of any line-of-business (LOB) system. LOBs are seen as critical systems that others try to integrate with in order to improve the business. Document management is the same. With a common framework and taxonomy, your SharePoint document management can be seen as the true searchable, traceable LOB that houses documents providing a single source of information.Document management has long been the scapegoat for SharePoint implementations because of its simplicity. I have yet to meet a company that says they are putting together a complex workflow or a connection to a line-of-business system as a simple way to prove SharePoint competency or to pilot an implementation. Companies have been able to deploy SharePoint through a business-unit release of document management functionality, and thus consider themselves “live” or “online.”With the release, corporate dashboards may have a line item turn green; however, the company has done a disservice to themselves as an organization. The long-term risk to the business is that they have failed to plan and align themselves as a company, therefore minimizing the value of SharePoint, causing frustration among staff and potentially risking a ground-up change in the future.I wrote an article two months ago that spoke to the business value of SharePoint and the importance of aligning your corporate road map to your implementation. These next few paragraphs should be a part of that road map. Many organizations begin their implementation by focusing on document management, search or simple portal functionality, and they believe they can deploy it easily. This may be the case, but the first thing to understand about SharePoint’s document-management capabilities is that you are, in fact, deploying a comprehensive document-management system. There are many on the market, and understanding this at a comprehensive level may greatly aid your project and rollout teams in its use.My suggestion is to follow these steps to get your collective minds moving in the right direction:1. Know what’s inside the box: This is a critical first step to ensuring you do not replicate your existing “Q” drive with SharePoint. I’m often told that the catalyst to a document-management implementation has been the existing drive being a mess. Remember, you have to start at the bottom in order to move forward, so dumping data into SharePoint and expecting it to magically act differently is a fallacy. It won’t happen. SharePoint’s document-management capabilities provide the essentials for a robust deployment, including versioning, document sets, records management and retention, holds and e-discovery, term stores, and managed metadata, to name just a few.2. Understand your users: Individuals understand their current use of Word files and templates, but they do not necessarily connect their knowledge with that of their colleagues. Furthermore, they may not understand the benefit their organization can obtain by standardizing documents, templates and having a defined structure for each. In presentations, I often ask attendees what functionality they believe the average user of Microsoft Word understands and uses on a daily basis. You would be amazed by the answers, which ranged from 5% to 85%. Without having team members on the same page, there is no way to implement document management successfully. For project teams, poll your users and get a sense of their document needs and knowledge. This will be critical intelligence for you as your begin to plan your deployment. 3. Have a plan: You cannot begin to plan for a document-management system deployment until a comprehensive plan is developed. This means planning for roles, document usage, sites, site collections and libraries in order to get started. Ask these questions internally in order to frame your thoughts; each of these all must be categorized and prioritized prior to your rollout:• How will you plan for the flow of content between sites or site collections? • How will content types be created and categorized? • What processes and workflow can be created in order to automate your document-management activities? • How will you manage governance? Ensure that the creation of information-management policies and include them in your plan. What requirements does your organization have for information? How will documents be stored, retained, archived and audited? Fundamentally, an effective document-management system must reflect the culture of your organization. If your company is rigid in its creation of data and policies, make sure that SharePoint accurately reflects that state. For companies that create and store information on a whim, your success will be based on users who quickly adapt to SharePoint and its ease of use. Eric Riz is the Executive Vice President of Concatenate, creator of the RealTime suite of products. You can reach Eric by e-mail at ericr@concatenateinc.com, or on Twitter at @rizinsights. Read his other SharePoint thoughts on his blog at www.ericriz.com, and catch him at SPTechCon Boston August 11-14.
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Apps for SharePoint
By Phil Jirsa
One of the most talked-about features of SharePoint 2013 is the introduction of Apps. Apps are basically Web applications that can be hosted in the cloud and have their functionality exposed from a SharePoint site. Implementing a custom solution as an App can provide many benefits for your environment. Some limitations do exist, though, and Apps aren’t always the right tool for the job. Understanding the App Model and its place in your SharePoint environment is important for any SharePoint developer, and a must-have tool on your belt for developing SharePoint solutions in the cloud.What is an App?An App for SharePoint is just a Web application. So what makes it so special? In some ways there is nothing special about it, and that’s a good thing! Developing solutions for SharePoint 2007 and 2010 requires a lot of specific knowledge around SharePoint as a platform. Apps can remove a lot of the dependencies and complexities around SharePoint itself, and boil them down to traditional Web development. This will open the door to a whole new audience of Web developers who now won’t have to worry about the intricacies of SharePoint. Another way that Apps aren’t “special” is in what technology you can use, or where you can host them. An App for SharePoint doesn’t have to be limited to an ASP.NET Web application with Web Parts on a page; it can be any type of Web application you want! You could write an App in PHP, .NET MVC or even Node.js. You also have a choice in where to host that application. The fine printAlthough Apps do provide a good deal of flexibility and opportunity for developers, there is one limitation worth mentioning: Apps are not allowed to run any custom code on the SharePoint server. That is, you cannot deploy any compiled code to the farm with an App. All interaction between your App and SharePoint must use client-side APIs, OData or REST.Initially, this seems like a pretty big hurdle to overcome. However, many improvements have been made to the client-side APIs to provide as much capability as possible. Also, protecting the SharePoint farm from malicious code or poorly performing code is another major benefit of this restriction.Apps are not a total replacement for traditional SharePoint development; in fact, many customizations will still require that. I see Apps as a development pattern to effectively encapsulate and distribute custom functionality for SharePoint sites. Much like mobile apps allow users to accomplish specific tasks on their phones and tablets, a SharePoint App will now let us say, “There’s an App for that.”Want to learn more? Find out about creating Apps for SharePoint 2013 here.Phil Jirsa is a SharePoint developer at Rackspace.
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The SharePoint Cooler
By Peter Serzo
Every SharePoint installation needs what is known as a Cooler. This is just another way of saying you are the person or group responsible for the governance of the installation. In terms of implementing and getting the acceptance of SharePoint, many times it does come down to the vernacular that is chosen. So why the term Cooler?I recently watched (again) the move “Road House,” with Patrick Swayze. It hit me how his role in the movie is an analogy for one of the necessary roles needed in every SharePoint installation. He is referred to as the Cooler, which is the head bouncer. The Cooler is responsible for keeping peace in a bar, establishing the guidelines that patrons must follow. This allows the bar to be successful while providing a place where people want to go and collaborate (of a sort). Sound familiar?In the movie, the Cooler had three simple rules that must be followed for this to happen. I believe these same rules apply to a successful SharePoint implementation:1. Never underestimate your opponent.2. Take it outside. Never start anything inside.3. Be nice.In terms of SharePoint, we definitely do not want a divide between the team implementing SharePoint and the stakeholders/end users. Unfortunately, many organizations do see their stakeholders/end users as opponents, and vice versa.The key part of the Cooler’s first rule is what follows it: Expect the unexpected. One of the many gratifications developers receive after releasing applications to end users is seeing how they use them. This is very appropriate in SharePoint. Many times I have watched how users apply SharePoint in creative ways that take it out of the box I created for it. Expecting the unexpected makes all of us better. It is an attitude that will fuse the team responsible for governance with the end users because it takes away the predetermined judgments and opens up possibilities for innovation and creativity.The next rule is critical, especially in our environment where “social” is the buzzword of the day. What does “taking it outside” mean in relation to governance and SharePoint?When implementing SharePoint, set up proper channels for feedback. Give end users a voice, but not in a place where it will be detrimental to the success of the implementation. People want to know they are being heard. Phil Libin, CEO of Evernote, wrote recently about loving his angriest customers. He says they provide details about where his application is failing them. In short, he has created a channel to management to embrace customer feedback. Too often organizations insulate themselves at a management (governance) level and have a thin skin as to what is being said about the SharePoint implementation. I love Libin’s quote about the Internet: “It is the most efficient invention in the history of the universe for concentrating dissatisfaction into its purest, darkest and most bilious essence.” As such, we have to learn to take it outside. Said another way, properly channel this feedback so that it does not impede the acceptance of the implementation. In every complaint, there is (most times) an element of truth. Don’t take it personally.Which leads to the last rule: Be nice.Rolling a SharePoint implementation out correctly/successfully takes effort, which translates into time and hours (and hours) of dedication. We unleash it, and it is a product of us—a shared vision. Proud, we want others to embrace what we created. However, there is always feedback, and it’s not always positive.How a team deals with feedback will color the way the organization sees the SharePoint application. I can say conclusively as a consultant that has been in hundreds of organizations that the best ones are the ones who participate with their stakeholders/end users. These organizations are not seen as sludge that slows down progress. They are enablers. They are nice, until it is time to not be nice. This means they establish clear application boundaries that are in step with the business. I understand that these three rules are easier said than done; however, being a lucid SharePoint Cooler is critical to a successful implementation. Follow these rules, and the results will improve. To paraphrase another popular Swayze movie: No one puts SharePoint in a corner.Peter Serzo is a published author of the “SharePoint 2010 Administration Cookbook,” a founder of the SouthEastern SharePoint group, a speaker, and SharePoint Architect for High Monkey Consulting. Peter has been in the IT industry for 20 years. He has extensive experience with SharePoint implementing business solutions for several enterprise organizations over the past seven years.
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Spicing up SharePoint 2013 with Workflows
By Todd Klindt
SharePoint 2013 introduces us to a dizzying array of new features. Previous SharePointers articles have highlighted some of them, like the new Office Web Apps, the new app model, and even the new Design Manager have recently gotten some press in this newsletter. This week, we’re going to get you all tingly about the new Workflow Manager and what it can do for your SharePoint 2013 farm and your status as SharePoint Administrator Maestro among your coworkers.When you install SharePoint 2013, it comes with all the back-end machinery to execute the SharePoint 2010 workflows. Anything SharePoint 2010 workflow can dream up, SharePoint 2013 can do. This means that when you’re upgrading your content from SharePoint 2010 to SharePoint 2013, all of your workflows will function after the upgrade.That’s just one less thing you have to worry about. This gives you more time to worry your branding upgrading (it won’t), or whether Search is going to share any CPU cycles with anybody else (it won’t either). The workflow upgrade goes so smoothly that it’s easy to forget about workflow. It’s easy to take it for granted.That, fair reader, would be a mistake. Because while SharePoint 2013 does a good job with SharePoint 2010-style workflows, it has a trick up its sleeve. It has the potential to take workflows to a whole new level. All it takes to give your workflow game a boost is a little elbow grease and a piece of magic called the Web Platform Installer.The Web Platform Installer will download and install the bits needed for the SharePoint 2013 Workflows. This software is officially called Workflow Manager, or the Azure Workflows. It will also install some supporting software called the Service Bus. You can install the Workflow Manager on an existing SharePoint 2013 server, or on a server of its own. It works and plays well with others. The installation and configuration isn’t complicated, but it’s not completely intuitive.Fortunately, Microsoft has provided decent documentation on how to install the Workflow Manager, configure it and get it talking to SharePoint 2013. It’s not a complicated or drawn-out process. From the time you finish this article, take a moment to reflect on how unbelievably inspiring it was, and then install and configure Workflow Manager. It’ll take about 30 minutes. You probably couldn’t get a pizza delivered before you were finished. And you won’t even believe this, but the news gets better: All of this is free. (Except the pizza.)While the install is pretty smooth, there are a couple of things to keep in mind. First, making Workflow Manager highly available isn’t as easy as it might seem. In most cases, to make software highly available, you just install a second instance to take over if the first instance fails. This is the principle behind SQL clustering, having two SharePoint WFEs behind a load balancer, and me having two coffee pots in my office. If the first one fails, the second one kicks in before anyone freaks out.Workflow Manager has a similar feature, but it requires three Workflow Manager servers in order to be highly available. The documentation briefly covers why this is necessary. It has to do with how the Service Bus works, and it seems to involve a flux capacitor, of all things. Anyway, if you’re planning your SharePoint farm to be highly available, you’ll need to install Workflow Manager on three servers and configure them all to work together.The second bit I wanted to mention is patching. Like all good software, Workflow Manager gets patches every couple of months. These patches fix bugs (also lovingly referred to as “undocumented features”) in the software and provide additional functionality (hopefully without more of those “undocumented features”). To patch Workflow Manager, you have to first patch the Service Bus separately. After you’ve patched the Service Bus on all your servers, then you can patch the Workflow Manager itself. It’s a lot of work, but it’s worth it. While you’re at it, don’t forget to patch the Workflow Manager client that’s installed on your SharePoint servers. Your SharePoint servers need the client if they don’t have the Workflow Manager server pieces installed on them.After you’ve done all this installing and patching, it’s time to take advantage of all that hard work. Like SharePoint 2010, you can use SharePoint Designer to create your workflow works of art. If you have Visio 2013 Professional installed, you can design workflows in it too. After you have the Workflow Manager installed and configured, you’ll have a new option for which platform to use when you create a workflow in SPD.In additional to “SharePoint 2010 Workflow,” you’ll see “SharePoint 2013 Workflow” in the drop-down. Choosing the SharePoint 2013 Workflow platform will give you some more actions that you can add to your workflows. The list of new actions is long, but a few of the more exciting ones allow you to start another workflow from a workflow, count the number of items, and call an anonymous HTTP Web service. This opens up some exciting possibilities for little or no cost.If you’re not a business user that creates workflows, it’s tough to get appropriately excited about the new functionality in SharePoint 2013’s Workflow Manager. Trust me, your users will. It’s not completely unreasonable to expect a small parade, or at least a plate of tasty cookies to show up on your desk after you’ve installed it. If you can find a server to install the Workflow Manager on, all this new functionality costs nothing to install, except a little time. And, in exchange for that time, you get happier users and a palpable feeling of accomplishment that can only be outdone by plugging in a micro USB connector and getting it right the first time. I assume that feels like an accomplishment. I don’t think I’ve ever actually done it.Todd Klindt is a SharePoint Principal Architect at Rackspace. You can email him at todd.klindt@rackspace.com. If you would like more of his wit and wisdom you can also follow him on Twitter at @toddklindt.com or read his blog at www.toddklindt.com.
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SharePoint 2013: Tips for strategic alignment
By Eric Riz
With SharePoint 2013 now well past the six-month mark of its release, I have been surprised to see that few of the typical “tips and tricks” articles have been written to address SharePoint from a business and strategy perspective. Yes, I absolutely agree that branding and mobile are big changes from 2010, but many of our clients are asking about what attention needs to be paid toward the strategic use of SharePoint and how its enhanced capabilities will address business challenges across the enterprise.Simply stated, upgrading to 2013 for the sake of doing so will not provide the value that organizations today seek. What you need is a strategy and the associated components that will make your upgrade or rollout a success.One of the big pushes in the 2013 product is toward social, and those who attended the SharePoint Conference last year heard all about the Yammer acquisition from Microsoft and Yammer staff alike. One of the issues that businesses face with social is that the term itself is associated with sites like Facebook and is thus determined to be a time-waster, particularly if your business is one that has implemented a social-networking policy internally. To address this, start your strategy by understating that social is all about the experience, meaning what you put into social internally is what you get out of it. You will need to create a policy that stipulates how and when social should be used. For example, creating a Yammer site for projects will allow your staff to collaborate in ways that it hadn’t before, such as by commenting on documents and having broad distribution for a project team.This can work well, but everyone on your team must use it in order to achieve those results. Social can be further expanded to areas such as MySites, where larger organizations can encourage employees to list interests or commonalities on their profile pages in order to create synergies among staff between departments or common causes. Remember that social isn’t just in one place in 2013, so expand your thoughts and strategies accordingly.I also recommend creating a reward strategy in order to recognize the people internally who are using 2013 to greater degrees than others. New to 2013 is the Community Badges feature that can provide users with “badges” when particular levels are met. These rules are customizable and can be set within a community to recognize an individual who has completed certain tasks. These are great adoption tools for internal recognition; it also turns users into Subject Matter Experts for certain areas.A question that I get quite often these days is whether SharePoint 2013 should be hosted or on-premise. There is no quick answer to this question (insert standard consultant answer here) and each scenario is different. There are many factors to consider, including modifications to third-party (or in-house) applications, data security, and governance.A general rule of thumb is don’t reinvent the wheel. If you are upgrading from 2010 with all data and interface points internally, the recommendation is to remain on-premise. If you are implementing a new installation, my suggestion is to evaluate a hosted solution for 2013. This may be the best result in order to keep your infrastructure costs low while providing a fully supported solution. Above all else, remember that SharePoint 2013’s goal is to transform the way people work, so be sure to address the core competencies of content management and enterprise collaboration in your social and upgrade strategies in order to provide the right information to the right people at the right time. Eric Riz is the Executive Vice President of Concatenate, creator of the RealTime suite of products. You can reach Eric by e-mail at ericr@concatenateinc.com, or on Twitter at @rizinsights. Read his other SharePoint thoughts on his blog at www.ericriz.com, and catch him at SPTechCon Boston August 11-14.
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