Best Practices in SharePoint Deployment and Implementation

1. Best Practices in SharePoint Deployment and Implementation Milan Gross Principal Synergy Corporate Technologies www.synergyonline.com/sg

2. Overview • Project 1: SharePoint 2007 Intranet Portal • Project 2: SharePoint 2007 Extranet Site • Project 3: SharePoint 2007 Internet Portal

3. Organizational Context • Municipal Government • Multiple Departments • City Attorney • Community Development • Police • Fire • Recreation & Parks • Public Works • Transit & Parking • Heavy Investment in MS Technologies • Needs New Intranet / Extranet

4. Challenges and Opportunities • Existing Intranet • Traditional web technologies • Difficult to customize and add information • Difficult to find information • Limited collaboration tools • Expensive to update • Legacy applications • 1200 users • Need to train wide range of departments

5. Core Requirements • Content management tool • Search tool • Collaboration Tools • Personalization • Need to accommodate existing legacy applications • Extranet Capability • Potential platform for Internet Site • Integrate with AD and Exchange

6. Recommendations • Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 • Meets most requirements out-of-the-box • W3C Accessibility and Section 508 compliant • Cross-browser support • Extensible .NET Development Platform

7. Implementation Schedule • Phase 1 – Discovery and Planning • Phase 2 – Production Pilot Implementation • Phase 3 – Staged Production Rollout • Phase 4 – Cleanup

8. Discovery and Planning • Interviews with each of the City’s departments • Focus on business objectives • Identify productivity bottlenecks • Determine requirements with highest ROI

9. Taxonomy • Based on interviews, the site’s initial taxonomy was defined: • A main Intranet portal site collection • Publishing sites for each major area • City Wide • Extranet • Department • Quick Links • MySites

10. Content Management • Designed a custom master page for the site’s common headers and menus • Defined page layouts that would provide the basic organization of content on the different site pages • SharePoint’s out-of-box content editing and approval processes were implemented to publish content to the Intranet

11. Search • Single Content Source • Used Crawl Rules to exclude sensitive or erroneous content • BA Insight’s Longitude Search for SharePoint implemented to enhance the out-of-box search capability • Page ranking • AND / OR Search Options • Enhanced filtering • Page previews

12. Other Features • Document Management • Implemented out-of-box • Configured information management policies and workflows • Collaboration • Team Sites • Discussion Boards • Custom web parts to integrate external applications

13. Extranet • A new site was provisioned to create a different look and feel for Extranet users • Used Alternate Access mapping and SharePoint security to limit Extranet users to read-only access • Non-City personnel were given Active Directory accounts and placed in a separate OU

14. Intranet Hardware • High Availability Farm • 2 Web Front End Servers • 1 Index Server • 2 Clustered SQL Servers Clustered SQLServer WFE Servers IndexServer

15. Training • Synergy provided training for: • Site Managers • Content Managers • Office Integration • Training based on implementation • Goal to train users on business practices

16. Governance • An operating manual for managing the Intranet and Extranet • How content should be organized • How security should be maintained • Style guidelines (colors, font, etc.) • Dimensions for design elements • Workflow procedures • Usage policies • Practice guidelines

17. Lessons Learned • It is difficult, but critical, to collect input from all stakeholders in a SharePoint implementation • If you expect people to use SharePoint, you have to train them to use it • There are a number of powerful SharePoint tools available from third parties • Building engagement with users is key