Designing an Effective Information Architecture SharePoint 2010

1. Designing an Effective Information ArchitectureSharePoint 2010

2. What we’re aiming for… • What? • Why? • Who? • When? • How? • Tools

3. What is Information Architecture? • Brings together content, objects, size, scalability, taxonomy, metadata, navigation • High-level planning • Don’t get too detailed • Very often neglected • It’s NEVER OVER

4. Why spend time on IA? • Risks if you don’t • Decreased usability/findability • Performance/reliability issues • Lack of user adoption • Future enhancements can be costly • Benefits if you do • Consistency, usability, reliability, security • Good architecture = Good experience

5. Who will take these responsibilities? • IA Design • Planning Management • Infrastructure/Storage • Metadata • Content Types • Social • Navigation & View • Security & Auditing • Taxonomies (Closed or Open) • Search (Managed Properties, Scopes, Search Centers) • Identify & Create Records (Legal Requirements) • Retention & Holds (Litigation) • Importing Information (Batch Loads) • Rich Media

6. When… • Up front: Create at least a basic plan as soon as possible. • Costs increase exponentially over time. • As you progress, implement iteratively • Treat it like governance • Meet regularly • What has changed? • What works/doesn’t work anymore.

7. How… • Invite • Stakeholders must be involved • Not too many • Listen • Understand requirements (audience, legal, etc.) • What do you mean by that? • Keep an open ear for metadata • Visualize • Existing environment • Card sorts/whiteboard

8. How… (cont.) • Communicate • Options • Pros and cons (there is always a trade-off, no ‘cake and eat it too’) • Agree • Build a consensus • Get it in writing • Stick to it • Execute

9. Questions to ask…

10. Questions to ask (cont.) Control • What is the cost of not finding information? • If it isn’t available, how important is it? • Can the audience contribute to the architecture? (Open vs. Closed) Structure • Cost of creating content vs. finding content

11. What to think about… • Scalability • Limits – Number of site collections, items in a list query limits, total items, overall database performance. • Usability/Findability • Two ways to get to data: • Search = Metadata • Navigate = Visualization • Manageability • Authoring experience • Distribution • Centrality • Empower authors/content managers

12. What to think about… (cont.) • Security • Granularity vs. Performance • Permissions need to be checked for all objects being rendered • Granular permissions can be a nightmare • Design Resiliency • Under-plan: Won’t survive the current solution. • Over-plan: Won’t survive the next solution (e.g. too many content types) • Balance of priorities, volatility, and what ‘can be known’ • Future flexibility vs. current needs – Focus on building a solution for general flexibility, rather than trying to identify every possibility.

13. Keep Perspective • Realize it will be wrong • It has to be, because you can’t possibly know everything • Communicate that expectation • Get it as good as you can for today, with flexibility for tomorrow. • Plan to fix it over time

14. Enabling the Architecture • Hierarchy • formally ranked group: an organization or group whose members are arranged in ranks, e.g. in ranks of power and seniority • Hierarchy Approches • Business Unit – Easiest, but dangerous • Functional – Domain (Role) e.g. HR - Employee forms vs. Manager forms • Hybrid – Business may be needed, but structure the architecture so that it can ‘flex’ to a different model.

15. Enabling the Architecture • Taxonomy • grouping of organisms: the science of classifying plants, animals, and microorganisms into increasingly broader categories based on shared features. • Taxonomy Approaches • Departmental = Easy to store (creators) • Functional = Easy to retrieve (consumers) • A natural, healthy, conflict between the two • At what level is it useful? • Think of our buddies up there: Do we need to classify them as “Rabbit”? • It depends! Hierarchy/content determines taxonomy…

16. Taxonomy • Taxonomy vs. “Folksonomy” • Taxonomy = Scientist • Folksonomy = Layman • Benefits • Improved usability • Relevant searches • Faster navigation • Consistency, consistency, consistency

17. Enabling the Architecture • Content Types • Syndication – Create content type ‘hub’ that entire organization can use. • Publish/Subscription model. • Document Sets – “Super-Folders” that behave like a content type • Groups documents as a single unit • Versioning as a whole

18. Content Types • Property Promotion – Pulls properties from documents and promotes them into SharePoint for filtering, workflow actions, etc. • External Content Types - Multiple content types that come from an external system (as if it is inside SharePoint)

19. Enabling the Architecture • Folders vs. Metadata • You can set metadata based on folder structure • You can use content organizer to create a folder structure based on metadata

20. Enabling the Architecture • Navigation • Visualization of the IA, Taxonomy, Hierarchy • Should be highly controlled at the top level, and flexible/allowed to change at the ‘leaf level’ • Determines your initial design – OOB navigation is site-collection specific

21. Navigation • Will it scale? (Depth of navigation) • Need to monitor throughout to adapt to changing requirements. (Nav= Performance) • Plan on improvements through end-user feedback • Intuitive = Success

22. Folders vs. Metadata • Folders are fine if you expect all users to navigate in the same way • File explorer • Other applications can interact. • If you use folders, keep it shallow (cognative memory) • Still have the 256 URL limit. • If you want to allow for multiple navigation schemes, you need metadata

23. Enabling the Architecture • Term Store • Database that contains taxonomy information • Each Includes: • Groups – Containers for Term Sets (security controlled) • Term Sets – Containers for terms (can determine whether open/closed) – Pushed like content types • Terms – Predefined values that contain taxonomy objects

24. Term Store • Structured • Specific, managed data, but less flexible • Ensures proper use/compliance, familiarity • Unstructured (‘Folksonomy’) • Allows users to participate (add, tag) • Builds/exposes relationships that were not previously envisioned • Can be used for Metadata-based navigation • Metadata Validation (Based on your rules)

25. Enabling the Architecture • Content Organizer • Allows for automatic routing rules for submitted documents • Drop-Library: Customers have a single ‘drop-location’ in which document is routed to the correct location based on metadata. • Implemented as a feature, must be activated • Auto-enforces 5,000 items per folder rule

26. Enabling the Architecture • Social Features • Stream of social networking activities • Community-driven • Follow what colleagues find useful/interesting • Comments – Improves content. Communicates to the author about usefulness. • Tags – Improves searchability • Ratings – Assess value of content.

27. Enabling the Architecture • Rich Media • Automatic Image Upload (Automatically uploads images referenced by a document during upload) • EXIF Data Promotion – Data that accompanies images can be promoted into SharePoint • File Dialog – Open and close documents, insert into SharePoint directly from the file dialog • Previews (view/play in place • Image Preview • Thumbnail Previews • Video Preview

28. Learn more… • SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Content Management Implementers' Course • http://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/sharepoint/hh126808 • Or Bing: “SharePoint 2010 ECM”