Do people like SharePoint?

IT departments, or maybe just IT people who blog, seem to universally hate SharePoint. And their point of view is not entirely off the mark. SharePoint is riddled with compromises that should not have been made. The source code produced is a nightmare, the administration model is confusing and inconsistent, and the UI is a mess.

People like to point to Google Docs, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social networks as how things should have been done.

I have to take an opposing opinion. It is not a case that SharePoint has grown because Microsoft has forced companies to take it on in some mind control conspiracy. Vista proved that Microsoft has no such power.

SharePoint has grown because it is the only ECM that people actually do like to use.

And that is actually a bad thing.

Well its not entirely a bad thing. To quote British Conservative Leader David Cameron "it is a good thing and it is a bad thing." Users take to SharePoint. I have seen time and time again the take up explode on firms who had not strategy for promoting or controlling it. Users flock to the tool because it is fairly easy to use, employs a web based UI, and allows devolved solution design by local experts that can then be shared.

I don't have any proof so I can only state that I assure you that people take to using SharePoint in vast numbers and create a large number of solutions in it. I have seen it time and time again.

So what could be wrong with that? Well the problem is that people like it and IT hates it, and I see organizations fall in to the same trap time and time again. IT never learns to understand SharePoint or work with the business to provide Enterprise support. The end result is that SharePoint gets cluttered with inconsistent user generated solutions and does not work as an Enterprise.

Sociology of SharePoint 101: Team Site

Google Image Result for http://www.microsoft.com/library/media/1033/business/images/education/screenshotimages/Fig1_51075.jpg

SharePoint offers a set of collaboration tools. Social tools of all kinds like telephones, televisions, and trucks support certain kinds of social activities. What SharePoint really does is support kinds of social working, and to really understand SharePoint is not the technology as much as the social uses made by web pages.

In my experience the most popular SharePoint feature is the team site. A team site allows a set of members to share documents, comments, to make list items and track tasks. It includes the ability to make calendar items.


Positives

Over the past 5 years I have seen this tool more than any other used by businesses. Business is generally about project work which is what Information workers usually do.

Team sites not only support small project team working, they also avoid some of the dangers of other web 2.0 tools. Unlike Wikis its unlikely that a small team will get side tracked with arguing about how the SharePoint site should be created, mainatined or governed, or who has control over it. Unlike blogs there is little chance that producers will concentrate on status and kudoos over doing some work. Discussions among team members who work together are not likely to contain flames. Team sites are generally safe ways for busiensses to make clear use of Web 2.0 featues.

Negatives

But there are also negatives to team sites. These negatives are the negatives of teams. Remember its not the tool but the kind of group that the tool is used by. Team sites are used by teams and thus the problems of teams are the problems of team sites.

Teams can develop loyalty with established members wanting to work with each other and not allowing new members to join. Team sites can produces an internet of unconnect little kingdoms that don't work together.

Teams will inherit work without a clear understanding of the history of it. SharePoint reflects these problems. Team sites are generally be created without any information about the pre-history of the project. Work is repeated. Clients get billed again and again for the same work until they have enough. It becomes hard to join up small teams in to enterprises. You get a few gurus with some people around them over a company able to form to meet new needs.

Conclusion

When using a Team Site or planning Team Sites you should think about how to prevent a team from becoming a clique.

How can you connect teams to a company wide vision?

I think RSS feeds that come from company wide blogs or other information feeds to put the big picture there. Using an tool like Quest's web parts will enable the business to collect data from teams. Also trying to keep standards can promote shared working standards.

I would also suggest you talk to your users and get them involved in the process of making teams that work with the company. SharePoint is only a space to do social work, you still need to work with the people.

Authority and SharePoint

I need to recommend Cyberchiefs by Mathieu O'Neil

Though the work concentrates on the Open Source web community and not Microsoft, its study of wikipedia, blogging, and project communities are very useful to anyone thinking about how SharePoint technology will impact their organization.

I find that organizations don't tend to think of the risk of Web 2.0. You get people who ignore Web 2.0 and people who think its great, but O'Neil is for those who thinks "it just is", and looks at collaboration and community on the web as a social reality with its negative and positive impacts.

O'Neil studies authority and autonomy, and these are the key issues on SharePoint systems as well. O'Niel identifies four spaces of kinds of authority on the Internet.

• Projects
• Networks
• Assembly
• Forum

Each one tends to be dominated by its own kind of leaders, to form its own kind of community and will tend to follow its specific history.

SharePoint offers Web2.0 tool to provide all these spaces. Team Sites are classic project sites where experienced leaders can guide teams to produce text. Blogs provide at hand network tools, and Wiki and document libraries can provide Assembly function. Discussion forums are a standard of SharePoint.

Reading this book you can get some idea of what social impact these structures can have on your organization.

A few points, more my ideas but coming out of a third reading of this amazing book:

1. Organizing your collaboration by projects will promote a community of experience, with more senior and experienced staff gaining status and cultivating sites as super users guiding new users. Team Sites are really SharePoints killer app as far as collaboration goes.
2. Providing Blogs will produce a culture of competition and rankings, with key blogs and bloggers becoming more and more interested in outdoing each other, having more viewers, getting more content and being seen as more important to the organisation.
3. Wiki projects will almost always become involved heavily in rules and regulations, as the leaders emerge trying to give some order to a fairly chaotic content too.
4. Discussion forums are the hunting grounds of male macho bullies. I would strongly suggest to any IA or System Admin working with SharePoint to not give out discussion groups lightly, and to keep an eye on them in case they get out of hand. Discussion forums almost inevitably become full of flames.

The examples O'Niel usese from Wikipedia, LambdaMoss, Second Life, dailykos and debian all strike home for anyone who has used SharePoint in an office.

Conclusions?

SharePoint is a great project tool, and projects are great social structures for companies to get work done. If you are looking at SharePoint as a collaboration tool you might ask "what kind of collaboration is good", and the project structure is the best.

These are not O'Neils rules but mine, but I think they can server as a good starting point:

Bob Hookers Golden Rules of SharePoint Sociology:

1. Provide collaboration in project sites seen only by project members.
2. Company wide information should be provided in managed sites with managed feedback.
3. Discussions should only be allowed on project sites and limited to project time.
4. Establish a shared understanding of proper SharePoint practice. Net guides can only be of so much value. For example it is very bad form on the net to flame someone for spelling mistakes, in a business it is probably necessary to point them out.
5. Do not let managers and the works they work with access to the same forums.
6. Avoid long life sites and projects that are collaborative.
7. Make sure you bloggers understand a shared set of rules, to not "hot dog"
   

Sadly many of the most interesting new tool in SharePoint like Wikis, blogs and chats are also those with the most social danger. Flame wars and deletion by "net nazis" are bad enough on the web, but imagine if any of these problems came to work.

Think about how Wikipedia works, would you really want to work like that? To have your work suddenly deleted by a more senior manager because it was not relevant or some other subject assessment? Would you want to talk with you managers in a chat room full of flamers?

My suggestion to someone thinking about the impact of SharePoint, stick mostly to collaboration by groups within groups, give projects with set life times, and keep a keen eye on what is Company wide vs. project local. Don't hand a company wide tool to users by accident.

A List of WSS and MOSS Site Definitions and Configurations.

A great post from SharePont University

The other 'MS' have a list on OOTB content types here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms452896.aspx ( have a look in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\FEATURES\ctypes\ctypeswss.xml), but I though I would share another piece of reference material I often use - all those "Out Of The Box" Site Definition Configurations. You know, all those 'site template' choices you get when you create a new site collection...

They are normally found in the 12 hive location: C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\SiteTemplates.

If your desired definition isn't listed, save site as a template (.stp), extract the manifest.xml file and locate the

entry to find the number show below.

Remember that saving as a template won't replicate a full site definition (many customisations, such as content types, won't be there), so if it's a hand customised site you will have to reverse-engineer it yourself, or use one of the 3rd party or MS dev tools, to help you create a definition from it in Visual Studio. I'll cover my approach to using these in a later blog post.

WSS Templates (with configuration #)

· 0 - Global: GLOBAL#0 (SetupPath=global) - “Global template”

· 1 - Team Site: STS#0 - “Team Site”

· 1 - Blank Site: STS#1 - “Blank Site”

· 1 - Document Workspace: STS#2 - “Document Workspace”

· 2 - Basic Meeting Workspace: MPS#0 - “Basic Meeting Workspace”

· 2 - Blank Meeting Workspace: MPS#1 - “Blank Meeting Workspace”

· 2 - Decision Meeting Workspace: MPS#2 - “Decision Meeting Workspace”

· 2 - Social Meeting Workspace: MPS#3 - “Social Meeting Workspace”

· 2 - Multiple Meeting Workspace: MPS#4 - “Multipage Meeting Workspace”

· 3 - Central Administration: CENTRALADMIN - “Central Admin Site”

· 4 - Wiki Site: WIKI#0 - “Wiki Site”

· 9 - Blog Site: BLOG#0 - “Blog”

MOSS Templates (with configuration #)

· 7 - Document Center: BDR#0 - “Document Center”

· 20 - SharePoint Portal: SPS (OBSOLETE) - “SharePoint Portal Server Site”

· 21 - Personal Space: SPSPERS - “SharePoint Portal Server Personal Space”

· 22 - Personalisation Site: SPSMSITE#0 - “Personalization Site”

· 30 - Contents Area: SPSTOC (OBSOLETE) - “Contents area Template”

· 31 - Topic Area: SPSTOPIC (OBSOLETE) - “Topic area template”

· 32 - News Area: SPSNEWS (OBSOLETE) - “News area template”

· 33 - News Site: SPSNHOME#0 (SubWebOnly) - “News Home template”

· 34 - Site Directory: SPSSITE#0 (SetupPath = SPSSITES) - “Site Directory Area”

· 36 - Community Area: SPSCOMMU (OBSOLETE) - “Community area template”

· 38 - Report Center: SPSREPORTCENTER#0 - “Report Center Site”

· 39 - Publishing Site: CMSPUBLISHING#0 (SetupPath =PUBLISHING) - “Publishing and Team Collaboration Site”

· 40 - OSRV - “Shared Services Administration Site”

· 47 - Collaboration Portal: SPSPORTAL#0 - “Corporate Intranet Site”

· 50 - Search Center with Tabs: SRCHCEN#0 - “Search Center”

· 51 - Profiles: PROFILES - “Profiles”

· 52 - Publishing Portal: BLANKINTERNETCONTAINER#0 - “Internet Presence Web Site”

· 53 - Publishing Site with Workflow: BLANKINTERNET#2 - “Press Releases Site”, “Publishing Site”

· 54 - My Site Host: SPSMSITEHOST#0 - “My Site Host”

· 90 - Search Center: SRCHCENTERLITE#0 - “Search Center Lite”

· 6221 - Project Web Access Site: PWA#0 - “Project Web Access Site”

· 6215 - Project Workspace: PWS#0 - “Project Workspace”

· 14483 - Records Repository: OFFILE#0 - “Records Repository”

Office Live vs Google Docs, and the Winner is?

Microsoft Office Live


I have been a long time user of Google Docs keeping my graduate school documents on it for some time.  I think Microsoft has hit a massive home run with Office Live.  The migration of Microsoft in to a web based Live product has been slow and painful, but Live just a better site than Google Docs.  The primary problem is the Live is Microsoft centric still and I can't use it on my Linux machines using Flock browser, but for an XP based machine the integration between Microsoft Office Live and Office 2003 and 2007 makes it a no brainer.  The site is also easier to use and provide more pre-existing business templates. 

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Capabilities

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Capabilities

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 is a new server program that is part of the 2007 Microsoft Office system. Your organization can use Office SharePoint Server 2007 to facilitate collaboration, provide content management features, implement business processes, and supply access to information that is essential to organizational goals and processes.

You can quickly create SharePoint sites that support specific content publishing, content management, records management, or business intelligence needs. You can also conduct effective searches for people, documents, and data, participate in forms-driven business processes, and access and analyze large amounts of business data.

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides a single, integrated location where employees can efficiently collaborate with team members, find organizational resources, search for experts and corporate information, manage content and workflow, and leverage business insight to make better-informed decisions.

•	Collaboration Allow teams to work together effectively, collaborate on and publish documents, maintain task lists, implement workflows, and share information through the use of wikis and blogs.
•	Portals Create a personal MySite portal to share information with others and personalize the user experience and content of an enterprise Web site based on the user’s profile.
•	Enterprise Search Quickly and easily find people, expertise, and content in business applications.
•	Enterprise Content Management Create and manage documents, records, and Web content.
•	Business Process and Forms Create workflows and electronic forms to automate and streamline your business processes.
•	Business Intelligence Allow information workers to easily access critical business information, analyze and view data, and publish reports to make more informed decisions.

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server

Learn More about Office SharePoint Server

• Collaboration and Social Computing
• Portals
• Enterprise Search
• Enterprise Content Management
• Business Process and Forms
• Business Intelligence
• Hosted Solution
• Developer Platform

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