I've been tasked with re-designing the architecture of my division's document repositories. We currently have hundreds of documents across multiple SharePoint servers and would like to consolidate them under one repository that will allow users to easily find and update their docs.
Can you recommend any resources to help me in terms of best practices, case studies, tips, etc.
Any help will be extremely appreciated.
Thanks.
Findability is a good organising principal for your Information Architecture.
(Bill English on sharePoint and findability)
Remember that different users prefer to search others like to browse using site navigation.
It is pretty much all about the users and how they are going to find and share thier docs and very little about the technical aspects of how SharePoint can organise information.
From the perspective of architecting a shared single SharePoint instance bare in mind that you don't want a particular Site Collection to grow more than 100Gig in size as the database infrastructure is going to be hard to manage.
So plan for document storage growth and divide up fast growing document collections accordingly.
Related
We're starting to use SharePoint 2013 to manage our department's process documentation and I have some questions about best practices for site structure. I'm a little surprised I can't find the answers via web search, since this seems like a basic question every new SharePoint user must deal with.
Moving from a file share environment, I'm trying hard to get out of that mindset and I understand the many benefits of SharePoint over file shares. I also understand why creating folders in SharePoint forces arbitrary divisions on files whereas one large set of documents with metadata lets you filter and group the files based on different needs.
What's confusing me is that I also read that it's better to have too many sub-sites than not enough. It seems like sub-sites can easily become pseudo-folders and I'm not sure where that line is crossed.
Here's an example.
We have a SharePoint site devoted to our department. We've create a sub-site dedicated to an application we developed to load data into our business systems. It mainly holds technical documentation about the application. This application supports many different data sources, each with its own set of user instructions for loading, its own schedule (calendar), contact lists, supporting files, etc. There's no compelling reason to separate them to restrict access. However, there doesn't seem like a lot of value in having them all in the same sub-site, either, since someone working on a job will only want to see the docs and supporting files for that data source. I just can't foresee someone wanting to view supporting files across all data sources, although, I could see someone wanting to see the schedule for all data sources combined.
My question is, should I create separate sub-sites under the application for each data source or do I just store everything in the application sub-site and use metadata and views to group things by data source? Putting all the items for a specific data source into its own sub-site seems to be much simpler to manage and present than having to specify metadata for every new file and creating a lot of views. However, I can't shake the feeling that I'm still using file share thinking. Or maybe I'm just missing some basic concept of SharePoint.
Any advice or links to good discussions of this topic would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
I would recommend that you use metadata and views to separate data in one repository/site.
My reasons are as below:
In SharePoint, it is recommended to use metadata than "evil"
folders(or subsites in your case). Keep in mind that maintaining
multiple subsites requires big administrative efforts in long term,
for example, some sites will be inherited while others unique
permission.
As time passes by and people rotate, it becomes vague
that where the data was stored and where the new data should go to,
especially with large volume subsites.
Since confidentiality is not concerned in your case, keep data centralized and open to people working in related field increases sharing and collaborating phenomenon. In contrast, using subsites increases the possibility of data silos.
people are all lazy :). Taken me as example, I dont want to remember all those xyz URLs, I want to go to one place and be able to fetch everything that I need.
I am new to share point and still learning all the best practices, but I have a parent site called "Clients" and a sub site for the each of the clients i.e. Walmart, Kmart, Target. Is it a best practice to have a unique document library for each of the sub sites and the parent site. Or to use just one library for all of them. And if I were to use just one how would I set that up?
Thanks
Sites and Pages are not the same!!!
I wish that was more clear. In this case I want a SITE with the customers. Then each customer will have its own page. This way I can use the same apps across all the customers. I will probably need to learn how to create a customer template next.
to start with you need to answer few questions first, and these questions will help you to decide on an approach.
Do you have unique documents per client
will you control access to your users, that is each subsite will have unique permission, users for one client say for instance walmart should not access documents of Kmart
what would be tentative size of each documents and how much will that grow over the year
above are few question which will help you to get started, being said that, I will start creating a site and if the look and feel are the same for my other clients with little changes, then save the site as template.
This template will be my base for other client subsites/ sites.
will also create a global document library, which will store relavant documents which can be sharable across subsites
If required, each client will have their own subsites and own libraries for maintainabilty. this will also help to move subsite to its own site collection if there is hugh growth in data for a particular client.
You can also plan to use search, and webparts like content search query webpart to mashup data from subsites.
Another area to explore is metadata and Information architecture.
When you ask "Is it best practices" for the multiple Libraries or a single Library. From what you have described and Ramakrishnaraja was trying to say, you need to figure out what would work best for the situation. I don't know if you mean to have a different group called "customers" or if that is the same as "Clients" I'm going to respond assuming you mean both parties are the same.
Ramakrishnaraja points out that you have one central log on page "Clients- 'Main'" which leads to the other pages. If you want to the users to be divided into groups that have access only to the documents within their repective page then you should create multiple Document libraries. If you want the users to have access between the sub pages and use/edit files between the sites then best practices would be to have one Library for the Site.
I hope this helps you. Ramakrishnaraja makes a lot of good points and approaches it from a design overview rather than a specific response to your situation so try to use his post from that perspective.
I'm the IT Manager at a mid-size manufacturing company. We are getting our feet wet with SharePoint - so far we're got one blog in production use> It's the CEO's.
We have use cases for a couple of list-based "applications" with some simple workflow that will be implemented by one of our developers. We also want to give our users (at least the more tech-savvy ones) the ability to create and work with their own departmental sites.
We're concerned, however, that we might be starting something that could quickly get out of control if it's widely adopted (which would be a good thing). Since we don't really understand all the architectural trade-offs, we could end up with massive amounts of user data in a structure that bites us down the road.
Our biggest question is whether to have multiple sites for each use vs. a single root site from which everything else descends. Multiple sites would give us flexibility to make changes or develop new features without creating problems for all the users. However, multiple sites might be harder to back-up, search, and maintain user profiles/security. A single massive site seems to reverse the cost/benefits.
I'd appreciate any insight on the one vs. many trade-offs, or links to resources that discuss it. Links to general SharePoint "enterprise best practices" (sorry) would also be appreciated.
Thanks.
However, multiple sites might be harder
to back-up, search, and maintain user
profiles/security. A single massive
site seems to reverse the
cost/benefits.
I would consider this as incorrect. First we need to clarify when we say multiple sites, do we mean multiple site collections or multiple sites - they are two entirely different things.
Now even if they are multiple different site collections, in SQL database, they are just one database, since the database is created as web application level and not site level.
That was regarding backup.
Coming to search and user profiles, again your assumption is wrong. Search and User Profiles are Shared SErvices and they work fine as long as they reside in single Shared Services Provider. Both are farm level services.
A single massive site is (if you really mean site here not site collection) is a complete no-no and a bad design.
I would recommend having multiple site collections (something like Overall department in your company like HR, Finance , IT) and then have subistes under it. This way you have one database in SQL to manage and still you can scale by adding content database to existing web application.
Again here, I assume that you are creating your topology at company level. If this is at some lower level it needs to be refined.
Read some articles on taxonomy and site architecture on Technet before going ahead with any one.
Planning worksheets for SharePoint Server 2010
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262451.aspx
Plan sites and site collections
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263267.aspx
Sites and site collections overview
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262410.aspx
Plan site navigation
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262951.aspx
It purely depends upon your needs and requirements. even having a deferent web applications for deferent site i can provide you one citation taking backup as advantage. You might have few sites where data does not changes frequently like organizational policies, process documents etc. in this case taking regular backups/search crawling does not make sense(although you can opt for differential backup and incremental crawl but still in a week or fortnightly you have to take full backup). hence i would suggest carefully analyze your requirements and then take a decision. Microsoft has provided a good list of checklist and templates for planning purpose. few of the links are provided in madhur's reply and rest you can google upon.
At our company we are currenty trying to define the basic things our software architects have to know about SharePoint for them to architect and/or lead a SharePoint implementation project. Many architects in our company have a .NET developer background and know a lot about .NET development and the various framework components and tooling. However, they currently lack SharePoint knowledge. In fact they don't even want to know the nitty gritty details. They want to know just enough about it to make the right architectural decisions and apply proven patterns. If more specific knowledge is required they'll ask a SharePoint expert.
So What would is the basic set of SharePoint knowledge / skills that an architect would need to have?
Skills such as list, documents, workflow, permissions... are a bit too basic and are requirement for a SharePoint DEVELOPER.
I'd argue that perhaps site (and site structure) is an area that would fall under the architect's plate.
There are more areas that a SharePoint architect can help with:
Capacity planning - running multiple servers in a farm. Scalability and other magic words.
Knowing the capabilities and business scenarios of using SharePoint - this is a very common one.
The manager asks: what can SharePoint do for me?
The developer asks: well, what do you want it to do.
The manager then asks: well, I don't know what it can do for me so how do I know what do I want it to do?
Closely related to SharePoint capabilities are the various licensing costs related to each component.
As well as familiarity with development and customization costs. Take the same project time that would have taken in ASP.NET, then multiply it by a large coefficient, and then add an additional constant.
And closely related to what-can-it-do, and how-much-does-it-cost, is the all important question of Return-Of-Investment. All hail supreme ROI!
SharePoint deployment can be a massive issue and a lot of pain.
SharePoint upgrade from v2 (MOSS 2003) to v3 (MOSS 2007). We should be seeing a new version of SharePoint in 2010(?). Well soon after the next version of Office goes out the door. So past upgrade experiences may be useful.
Knowledge of 3rd party webparts. I believe a SharePoint architect should be able to give you at least 5 webparts that they've tried from CodePlex and tell you what they think about them. These are free and easy to grab and play at your own leisure.
Some knowledge of commercial webparts. Because they are still cheaper than writing your own.
Have at least 5 SharePoint blogs that they follow religiously (know the community). If not having their own SharePoint blog (give back to the community).
If they are on StackOverflow they must try to answer SharePoint questions (such as this one).
Attend local SharePoint usergroups. I think communities are a huge deal. Especially what you'd learn from talking with people directly and learning what they are doing with their SharePoint installation. You may just surprise yourself.
Experiences with SharePoint Integration - this comes in two equally important flavours - both from SharePoint accessing existing systems (business catalogs, webparts, etc), as well as other systems accessing SharePoint content via webservice or API.
In addition, SharePoint works with (or works well) with Office, OCS, reporting services, performance point, project server.
SharePoint hosting arrangements - Microsoft SharePoint online services can be a popular and cheaper option to start using SharePoint. It can be hosted inhouse, or with a 3rd party company. Knowing the options is always useful.
Must have read SharePoint code using reflector (and preferably still having hair).
I think it takes at least a couple of years to be a SharePoint architect (your mileage may differ). Your .NET architects need to want-to-be a SharePoint architect, otherwise I agree with other's summaries before me - find someone who already is a SharePoint architect.
An architect should have quite a good understanding of our a product works, from a functional and technical viewpoint.
So in my opinion, an architect should:
Have been involved in at least 2 Sharepoint deployments, from design to roll-out.
Have knowledge of our the major sharepoint components can be used using the API.
i.e. Sites, Lists, Documents & Workflow components.
As none of your architects have this knowledge, I would pair them with a Sharepoint expert in an existing Sharepoint project, so they get the knowledge they need.
Ideally SharePoint Architect Skills fall into the below mentioned categories
Infrastructure Level/Operational
Capacity Planning
Physical Architecture (Farm Setup, Network, OS, Licensing)
Application level (Functional and Non-Functional)\
Requirement and Feasibility Analysis (Custom Vs OOTB Development/Implementation)
Techno-functional Mapping of requirements
Information Architecture
Logical Architecture
Conceptual Architecture
Detailed Design
Database design (not in terms of traditional Database design), this is with respect to Number of content Databases for Site collections/web apps.
Deployment
Best way to go for deployment, first time and incremental
Some other activities that an architect will collaboratively work is the Project Manager in Planning, Estimation, Execution/Implementation, Risk Management (assessment, mitigation).
Apart from his daily tasks of working with technical teams, testers, User Interface professionals, Vendors, Clients (Business and IT teams).
Interacting with Enterprise Architect groups if any.
In my not so humble opinion I think the entire "Sharepoint Architect"/"Expert" thing is over-played.
Sharepoint is a tool to centralize an organizations digital resources for centralized collaboration or working together in a centralized way.
The best explanation of What Microsoft Sharepoint is and does
from the WROX book "Beginning Sharepoint 2010 - Building Business Solutions"
"Because computers play such an integral part in any business, not surprisingly, more and more
of the information that is created, consumed, and shared in an organization is digital. The more
business that you conduct and the more successful your business becomes, the more information you
have to manage. Usually, you have some form of document for just about every process and transaction
that plays out during the day-to-day operations of your company. From proposals to legal
documents, from sales receipts to human resources policies, the amount of information required for
a company to function is staggering.
To manage your information overload, SharePoint offers tools with which you can build business
applications to better store, share, and manage digital information. With it, you can create lists,
libraries, and websites for your various company teams to help run your business processes more
efficiently. By locating your organization’s important business data in a single location, it becomes
much easier and intuitive for users to find the right information when they need it rather than
searching through disparate locations such as email, computer hard drives, or file shares.
WHAT IS SHAREPOINT 2010?
SharePoint 2010 is an extensible and scalable web-based platform consisting of tools and technologies
that support the collaboration and sharing of information within teams, throughout the enterprise and
on the web. The total package is a platform on which you can build business applications to help you
better store, share, and manage digital information within your organization. Because you can build
with or without code, the package empowers the average business user to create, deploy, and manage
team websites, without depending on skilled resources, such as systems administrators or developers.
Using lists, libraries, and web parts, you can transform team websites into business applications built specifically around making your organization’s business processes more efficient."
Creating a schema for an organizations Sharepoint deployment is not rocket science. 1. Determine the structure of the organization 2. Determine what Sharepoint can do as far as centralizing the organizations digital resources. 3. Create a Sharepoint construction plan. 4. Build it, test it, refine it. 5. Maintain it, test it, refine it, add onto it. There! Not so tough.
Sharepoint can be a nasty beast to work with if you don't know the ins and outs of it (they should be experts with it to architect it). At a minimum, they should know how lists, sites, and permissions work. Ideally they should also know how all the web parts fit together on pages and how they are supposed to interact. Really if the architects don't want to learn about sharepoint, they are going to create a .net web application and force it to run on sharepoint. It won't really follow the paradigm of how a sharepoint app is supposed to work.
I would look at a company called Mind Sharp for guidence as to what they should learn.
My advice is look for a doer that doesn't just reads PowerPoint to much in the Sharepoint world is just based on what other people have said.
We have been having issues with crawling 500000 items in a Sharepoint farm and everyone gives another story how to get better speed... Normally people refer to not more than 2000 items in a folder, but that does not change the crawl speed....
So a good architecture is someone who is able to do POC proof of concepts himself of his design and not just refers to some vague stories.....
I have seen to many Sharepoint Architects that hasn't had experience from real life....
For the better part of 10 years + we have relied on various network mapped drives to allow file sharing. One drive letter for sharing files between teams, a seperate file share for the entire organization, a third for personal use etc. I would like to move away from this and am trying to decide if an ECM/Sharepoint type solution, or home grown app, is worth the cost and the way to go? Or if we should simply remain relying on login scripts/mapped drives for file sharing due to its relative simplicity? Does anyone have any exeperience within their own organization or thoughts on this?
Thanks.
SharePoint is very good at document sharing.
Documents generally follow a process for approval, have permissions, live in clusters... and these things lend themselves well to SharePoints document libraries.
However there are somethings that don't lend themselves well to living inside SharePoint... do you have a virtual hard drive (.vhd) file that you want to share with a workmate? Not such a good idea to try and put a 20GB file into SharePoint.
SharePoint can handle large files, and so can SQL Server behind it... but do you want your SQL Server bandwidth being saturated by such large files? Do you want your backup of SQL Server to hold copies of such large files multiple times?
I believe that there are a few Microsoft partners who offer the ability to disassociate file blobs from the SharePoint database, so that SharePoint can hold the metadata and a file system holds the actual files, and SharePoint simply becomes the gateway to manage access, permissions, and offer a centralised interface to files throughout an organisation. This would offer you the best of both worlds.
Right now though, I consider SharePoint ideal for documents, and I keep large files (that are not document centric) on Windows file shares.
Definetely, use a tool.
The main benefit here is version control. Being able to jump easily to a previous version, diff'ing and seeing who modified what (see most VCS' blame/annotate tool- it prints out a text file showing when/who modified each line in the text file).
Second, you can probably benefit from issue tracking/task tracking.
Other benefits include web access from the internet, having a wiki (which can be great in some situations), etc.
I use Subversion + Redmine at work, and I find it highly useful- test a few solutions and you will surely find out further advantages for you.
One thing that can be overlooked in the change to an document management tool is the planning required around how much is going to be stored and information architecture issues like where different content is going to end up.
SharePoint particularly is easy to setup without a good plan going forward and is particularly vulnerable to difficulties later on when things get to busy.
I would not recommend a home grown app for something like this. The problem has been solved by off the shelf tools and growing one from scratch is going to cost a huge amount and not get you any way near the features for the money.
Did I mention how important planning your security groups and document areas (IA) was?
If you need just document storage then sharepoint can do very well. WSS is ewen free and it provides very good document storage capabilities.
But you have to plan carefully as updating existing applications is painfull. If you decide to go with Sharepoint then I can give you few advices from top of my head
Pay attention to security configuration (user groups, privilegies,..)
Plan your document libraries well as it is not easy to just move documents betveen them
Also consider limiting number of versions that one document can have, because sharepoint stores full backups betveen verions, not just changes
Don't use infopath:) we have very bad experience with it (just don't tell this to managers)
If you don't really need to change graphical look of Sharepoint than don't bother with it as it brings many problems (I'm talking about custom masterpages and custom site templates)
Try to use as much OOB stuff as possible, because developing your own webparts not only cost more, but it can be quite complicated.
Make sure to turn-on search indexing. This is quite tricky, because it is by default turned off and then you will be as surprised that search is not working as I was :)
If you try to just deploy it and load 10.000 documents into it then you will surely have problems with it later. If you give a little thought about structure then you will end up with really good document storage.
Migrating is very probably worth the cost in the long term. You will gain reliability, versioning, traceability, and extensibility.
Be sure to first identify the groups/rights, and to identify which links need to be fixed (maybe you have applications that use links to the shares).
An open source alternative to SharePoint is Alfresco, it is very good for CIFS (Windows shares) too.