By Shaun Morgan
Over the years I have come to realise that sometimes the best way to fully comprehend the significance of something is by hands-on, practical, experience. And so it is with Microsoft SharePoint. If you sit down and read the sales blurb on the Microsoft site, you’ll get some idea about what this product can do for your organisation. But to truly appreciate its power and versatility, get it installed and encourage the early adopters to play.
But here’s the paradox. SharePoint can seemingly do everything and virtually nothing. It’s extremely easy to use, yet intricate and complex. It can be all things to all people and also highly customised. As such, SharePoint is not well understood by those organisations which adopt it and users often miss key features and functionality, according to IT Expert magazine that is.
In other words, the in-built functionality is ready to use but you need to proactively migrate your systems and processes in order to take advantage of SharePoint’s capabilities. In this regard, the deployment of SharePoint is about people as much as systems. It’s a platform to facilitate innovation – at least for those who enjoy solving problems and extending the organisation’s knowledge management capabilities. But once understood, and exploited to its full potential, SharePoint promotes close collaboration, focussed discussion and team-working across the organisation.
What does it actually do?
Let’s start with a high-level overview. According to the Microsoft website, SharePoint ‘provides a single, integrated location where employees can efficiently find organizational resources’. The location is a web based portal, usually set up as the organisation’s intranet – although SharePoint can also double up as a public facing website.
SharePoint is cleverly designed to integrate with Microsoft Office and Outlook – files sitting online (in Document Libraries) can be opened, edited and saved back to the portal. Okay, big deal...your shared network folders offer the same functionality. But SharePoint also allows you to easily track different versions, set access permissions and assign workflows to the document (e.g. stipulate a process of collaboration, approval and publication by appropriate individuals).
And there’s more. Workflow deadlines can appear in shared team calendars, that are synchronised to individual Outlook calendars. SharePoint discussion forums, blogs and wikis help build knowledge bases. Team sites, custom lists and surveys help capture, store, organise and present information and data – and there’s even a free eLearning component called SharePoint Learning Kit (SLK). Further customisation can be achieved with SharePoint Designer to create reporting tools and templates, without having to become a technical expert.
Basically, SharePoint is concerned with collaboration, portals (mini sites for teams or departments), web and enterprise content management (e.g. document and image management), enterprise search (i.e. finding stuff once you’ve uploaded it!) and workflow. As such, the business world is just better organised with SharePoint.
SharePoint 2010 on the way
SharePoint 2007 has been happily trundling along, but the new 2010 version is waiting in the wings, along with the new 2010 version of Office. According to the blogsphere, SharePoint 2010 should be launched around June 2010 time. Microsoft is promising a whole host of improved features including a more intuitive interface (with the same ribbon effect as Office), improved integration with Office (2010 version), enhanced mobile functionality (i.e. the ability to edit content offline and have it synchronised when reconnected to the SharePoint portal) and much more.
It does potentially leave you with a conundrum, however. Do you start now with SharePoint 2007 and upgrade at a later date, or do you hang on for the new 2010 version? Budget allocations, pressure of your business needs, potential disruption from further change and the pace of planning will be factors to influence that decision. In other words, the decision depends on your organisation’s state of readiness.
Taking the plunge
You’ve probably guessed that I’m a bit of a SharePoint fan. While this is true, my enthusiasm only ignited once I started to use it. I can’t deny that it took a little while to get a handle on it – to make the connection between day-to-day work and its features and functions. True, I needed to play with the features and learn from making mistakes. Yes, it helps having reasonably strong IT skills. But, in truth, no special technical knowledge is required to use it in your everyday business context.
It’s also worth considering the implications of allowing teams to develop SharePoint to meet their immediate operational needs. True, new and powerful approaches will emerge, but organic growth leads to different practices across teams and departments. As such, SharePoint might not be an appropriate platform to develop an enterprise wide application that requires specific compliance or highly bespoke functionality.
Is SharePoint worth the investment? If it’s used intensively and appropriately – as an integral part of your systems and processes – the investment will be justified. But you do need to be aware that the licensing models for SharePoint can be complex and expensive – costs depend on whether you licence for the number of users, or the number of devices; whether you use standard or enterprise versions, and whether you deploy SharePoint as an intranet (i.e. an internal system), or also as an extranet (i.e. an externally facing site). And, furthermore, you’ll need to purchase appropriate Office licences to gain maximum benefits from SharePoint.
The adoption of SharePoint is clearly not a minor undertaking, but a clear strategy, appropriate levels of funding and access to friendly advice, might lead to a transformation in business processes and improved outcomes for all.
Top tips to get you started:
• Set a strategic vision for the use of SharePoint in your organisation.
• Fully cost the implementation – from hardware requirements and licensing models to external advice and support.
• Ensure your technical team can install and configure SharePoint to work efficiently on your network.
• Map out your business processes (start small and work up) and begin to migrate them to SharePoint.
• Think lists – some of SharePoint’s key functionality revolves around the creation of lists (so an Announcement, for example, is just a list item with particular formatting applied).
• Encourage your innovators to explore and find the hidden gems.
• Learn how to link SharePoint to Outlook (it’s very easy and you’ll be impressed with the results).
• Do the social thing – social networking and social media are ‘all the rage’, so embrace SharePoint to harness the intelligence and creativity of your workforce.
• Cascade your internal expertise – a quick and easy way to build momentum for SharePoint uptake.
• Seek specialist advice – if you’re keen but really don’t know where to start, ask your Microsoft accredited supplier if you’re eligible for 1, 3, 5, 10 or 15 days free consultancy when purchasing your licences.
shaun.morgan@pdms.com
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