Friday, November 11, 2011

Ten, seven, three, one GO! Delivering Sharepoint on 11/11/2011 - part 1 of 11 as seen by Boris the SharePoint-Architect.com

SharePoint 2010, SharePoint 2007, SharePoint 2003, SharePoint 2001... GO!

I just recently had a SharePoint Service Line strategy planning meeting on a customer site.. and somehow that brought back some memories... so this post was prepared in a bit different style... and the 11/11/11 is a great date to reflect those 11 years+ of my SharePointing :)

It has been an amazing SharePoint ride so far! And it's getting even better! Yahooo!
 With my first SharePoint project kick-off in August 2000 (and first SP sneak-peak in March'00) and project for 2000 users and 3 languages delivered in March 2001 (early adopters rock!) we were just getting used to the name SharePoint... Resilience? Scalabilty? DR? yeah right! But the usability was definitely there and we still did deliver a kick-a...rchitecture solution... and even resolved a major challenge after MS support team in Munich gave up... whatta ride!

"Tahoe" as it's project code name was... used to be Microsoft's "state-of-the-art" built on a WebStore with webparts... and it all started for me as a Head of MS department with MS Partner company in Slovenia :)

With all ups and down's on previous and current SharePoint versions... and 106 projects later (btw.. I am on #107 at the moment... deploying for 50k users on a 6MIO investment project...) the SharePoint 2010 is boosting with new features and capabilities almost on daily basis!

Moreover tomorrow's SharePointSaturday UK (#spsuk) will feature one of the SharePoint Online top evangelists... Steve Fox, MS Consulting Services Director... a man with 1000 and 111 tasks on his mind who still has time to write a book about the next steps that every SharePoint developer should at least flick-through... Developing Microsoft SharePoint Applications Using Windows Azure does offer a brief overview of the next SharePoint's big steps...

Intranet, extranet, internet, mobile and digital in general.. are the fields where SharePoint will allow you to excel if you plan, design, develop, deploy, support (and improve) the project correctly...

But in order to get there, there are quite few areas (52 on my list) that one will need to consider at some point before, during  or after the project...in order to keep things a bit more structured.. I will focus on 11 major areas - at a VERY high level and with large organizations in mind (which may not rule out the use of ideas in smaller companies):
  • 01 - SharePoint Service Line  - The SharePoint Universe, Vision, Strategy and the Team
  • 02 - SharePoint Project Management & Agile Approach - Implementation of Change
  • 03 - SharePoint Business Analysis - Understanding the Needs
  • 04 - SharePoint Content, Process and Lifecycle - the 5W's of SharePoint
  • 05 - SharePoint Versions and Features - Playing with Super Billy's Sports Bag
  • 06 - SharePoint Solution Design - Scoping the Beast
  • 07 - SharePoint Infrastructure
  • 08 - SharePoint Development & Testing
  • 09 - SharePoint Service Deployment, Transition, Support & Management
  • 10 - SharePoint Reusability - Existing and 3rd Party Solutions
  • and 11 - Celebrations - Life after SharePoint - the SharePint part of life... my favourite! :)

Saturday, September 17, 2011

SharePoint Governance

‘SharePoint Governance’ means a lot of different things to a lot of different people and for the most part they are all just a little bit wrong! 
Governance in the SharePoint world is most definitely the ‘new black’, it’s what the cool-kids on 
Twitter are talking about, disagreeing with and almost fighting over! But do they really know what they’re talking about?


Everyone has their own opinions about what Governance in a SharePoint context is and I believe that each of those people is looking through their own lens based on their individual anchor bias (a form of cognitive bias), some examples include:
  • SharePoint Governance is about architecture, infrastructure, disaster recovery
  • SharePoint Governance is about Project and stakeholder management
  • SharePoint Governance is about Information Architecture and security
  • SharePoint Governance is about telling the users what they can and can’t do
  • SharePoint Governance is about running a viable SharePoint Service and having a sound Service Catalog (and related SLAs)
Each view is perfectly valid, but is not the whole story and in some cases I would venture to state that focussing on just one of these ‘views’ is more detrimental to the business than ignoring governance completely!

Lets explain what I mean; firstly Wikipedia states:
The word governance derives from the Greek verb kubernáo which means to steer and was used for the first time in a metaphorical sense by Plato.
Based upon that definition, let’s unpack this using a sailing analogy, especially as I am Boris Kapitanovic (Capitano)...

If you have any appreciation of sailing you will realise that there’s a host of factors that influence your success in racing a sailing boat around a course, these may include:
  • Having the boat set-up correctly
  • Having a fast boat
  • Being great at sailing
  • Taking the weather into consideration (wind strength, direction etc)
  • Knowing where you are
  • Awareness of obstacles (other boats, shore etc)
  • Be fit
  • Knowing the course (where you’re trying to get to)
  • Use great tactics
  • Steering the boat the right way.
This is not unlike designing, implementing and maintaining a SharePoint platform. But to be successful at sailing you have to focus continually on all these aspects (and more), so let’s look at what happens if you focus on only one of those facets?
  • I’m a great Sailor, years of experience – I’m sailing faster than the competition, but I’m sailing fast, in the wrong direction, I don’t follow the right course, I miss out marks, I get disqualified!
  • I’m an awesome tactician – Tactically I’m sailing really well, but I’m not looking at where the wind is and everyone is sailing faster than me and I didn’t notice that island… bump…sink…fail!
  • I have a fast boat – My boat is the newest, most expensive, fastest and is full of go-faster gadgets, but I don’t know how to sail very well, the sails are flapping and I’m not sure where I’m going…. the boat goes very slowly, I didn’t finish the race, I’m not a winner!
As you can see in sailing, just concentrating on one thing isn’t going to guarantee you success and in SharePoint land it’s exactly the same.
Very few people (in my opinion) are looking at Governance as a whole i.e. what is Governance in the context of the SharePoint Platform, what I’ll call for the purpose of this and future posts ‘SharePoint Governance 3.0′.

Based upon our experience and thinking on this, we feel that ‘SharePoint Governance 3.0′ is made up of five equally important elements in no particular order:
  • IT Assurance
  • Project Governance
  • Information Governance
  • Technology & Business Alignment
  • Service Governance
  • Continuous Improvement
If we implement SharePoint spending equal amounts of focus on all of these elements, then we can truly say that our SharePoint environment is being effectively governed and is delivering measurable business value.

Let me take a few minutes to prove to you that these are all equally important elements of SharePoint Governance 3.0, by painting some scenarios where we’ve missed out one crucial element:

Scenario 1 – No IT Assurance
This one’s easy… Power-cut, no back-up taken for the last few weeks, CEO has lost his revisions to the annual report he is giving tonight.
Or what about poorly spec’d server farm, organisation is in rapid growth, system performance is poor and the users can’t do their jobs effectively.
So, we can agree we need IT Assurance – Check 1

Scenario 2 - No Project Governance
If there’s no project governance, and you don’t know what you’re meant to be delivering or why, then how will you know when the project ends and is successful? Upwardly cycling project costs, expanding time-scales and no measurable business value? Your boss is not going to be happy and just wait until Finance hear about the money you’ve wasted!
So, we can agree we need Project Governance – Check 2

Scenario 3 – No Information Governance
Your SharePoint project is successfully delivered (thanks project governance). The business stakeholders and end users are now let loose on the platform (in conjunction with the right level of change management and training). But we didn’t have time to define an Information Architecture, we haven’t been tuning the search results and everyone’s getting frustrated about the meta data they have to add to the content. We’ve tried to measure business value, but the results aren’t what we were expecting, content is all over the place, no-one can find anything and people just aren’t using SharePoint any more.
So, we can agree we need Information Governance – Check 3

Scenario 4 – No Technology and Business Alignment
Our IT department wanted SharePoint so they’ve implemented a new intranet on the platform, based on the features of the old technology solution, like-for-like. We’re a growing business and our business model and working practices have significantly evolved over the last few years. Adoption of the new platform is poor, we can’t hit the ROI figures we presented to the board and some teams are complaining that they are less efficient.
So, we can agree we need Technology and Business Alignment – Check 4

Scenario 5 - No Continuous Improvement
Our project life-cycles are typical of many other businesses. Business problem identified and then wait a few months while we plan, gather requirements, design solution, implement and then we find that the requirements have changed…Business problem identified and then wait a few months while we plan, gather requirements, design solution, implement and then we find that the requirements have changed…Business problem identified and then wait a few months while we plan, gather requirements, design solution, implement and then we find that the requirements have changed…
This approach isn’t solving our business problems, it rarely delivers business value and the ROI of the SharePoint platform isn’t being met. The business aren’t bought into the IT changes we make, they don’t see the value of SharePoint and business cases are becoming more demanding each time.
So, we can agree we need Project Governance – Check 5

Conclusion
As we can see a SharePoint project is likely to fail, cause organisational issues, not deliver business value or require loads of financial investment to maintain if we miss any of those 5 essential elements, therefore it makes sense that Governance is very much like my sailing analogy and the reality is that in our context (SharePoint) is defined as follows:
The Definition of SharePoint Governance 3.0 is…
A guiding, facilitative and inclusive approach to implementing the SharePoint platform and delivering measurable business outcomes that support the organisational strategy by  combining:
-  IT Assurance
-  Project Governance
-  Information Governance
-  Technology & Business Alignment
-  Service Governance
-  Continuous Improvement
Now we have a definition can we just get on with delivering great technology that changes the way people work and facilitates organisations achieving their ‘Big Hairy Audacious Goals’!

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Where is the Intranet Collaboration Template in SharePoint 2010

by Fabian Williams

Synopsis

So I am on a client site this week yet again and I am doing an Envisioning, ADS, and a SharePoint Intranet Base Install.  Now that I am about to talk Taxonomy and Information Architecture, we touched on just having a few sites to begin with so they are not overwhelmed,  but more importantly I only have a limited time on this project and there are quick wins that I can have by using that old Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) templates called “Intranet Publishing Portal Template” which was under the Publishing Tab for Creating Sites. Now in SharePoint Server 2010 that Template is not in the GUI under that Tab, however you can get to it and provision a site using that Template using PowerShell

Disclaimer

I have seen a few conversations by folks in the community that I have great respect for taking the position of both using that Template for provisioning new sites in the SharePoint 2010 world v/s NOT using that Template and rather using the newer templates on Microsoft SharePoint 2010
Microsoft does have some guidance on it on the Technet Planning Sheet Sites
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262410.aspx
Pay attention to the last paragraph on the page which reads in part…
“Some Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 site templates, such as the site directory, news, and collaboration portal templates, are not available as an option in SharePoint Server 2010…These templates are also still available as options in the UI if the SharePoint Server 2010 farm is upgraded from Office SharePoint Server 2007. Otherwise use the social tagging features in SharePoint Server 2010 to get much of the functionality provided in these templates”

How To

SO here we go…
If you are provisioning a Site Collection for an Intranet Site in SharePoint 2010 “I have seen” where folks use Templates out of the Tabs of either of the below two screenshots below. There are several food for thought as to using one over the other; one way is to start out with a Blank Site and just activate the features you need accordingly.
clip_image001
New SharePoint Site
clip_image002
New SharePoint Site

Powershell to the Rescue

So you can, with three (3) commands gain access to the Template that you had in MOSS, see below for the command and execution
clip_image001[4]
Just to Verify; run the following command and look 9 from the bottom
clip_image002[4]
To actually provision the site you need to run yet another PowerShell command as indicated below which identifies the template of choice with the other parameters needed.
clip_image003
And BoooYaaaH you have your Intranet Collaboration Site Created in SharePoint 2010 with all the starter sites at your disposal.
clip_image004

In Closing

Remember I told you. Microsoft does not have this in the GUI for whatever reasons which means that I did above is probably unsupported or has issues buried somewhere, or maybe not. The truth of the matter is that I dont know.
Use at your own risk
I welcome any questions, comments, rants :-)

Cheers!

SharePoint 2010 - Which Site Template Is Right For my Intranet?



When MOSS 2007 came out I created a blog post very similar to this one.  It turned out to be one of my most popular posts and I received many comments and private emails thanking me for putting the post together.  Since the post helped out so many folks I decided to create an updated version for SharePoint 2010.

SharePoint 2010 ships with many predefined site templates you may use to create site collections and sub sites. Sometimes the out of the box site templates will meet the needs of your project. Other times, the out of the box site templates may need to be enhanced.
Knowing which site template has the functionality you need to deploy, or use as a baseline for a custom site definition, is one of the key decisions you make when you architect a SharePoint deployment. This being said, it is important to understand the templates SharePoint 2010 comes with out of the box and what sub sites, lists and pages they support.
This post outlines the site templates SharePoint 2010 comes with out of the box and what sub sites, lists and pages they support.  As usual, I’ve documented several useful pieces of information developers will find handy when working with the out of the box SharePoint site templates.
If you install Silverlight on your machine you’ll be presented with a fancy new interface to create sites (shown below).  As you can see, SharePoint 2010 offers some guidance when creating new sites by providing descriptions and preview images for each out of the box template. However, not all of the descriptions list which resources the site comes provisioned with and the preview images are no help at all. See the image below, I think you will agree.
site creation screen
To better understand the inventory of out of the box site templates, I created a site collection based on each out of the box site template. After creating 29 different site collections (that’s 6 more than MOSS 2007 if you are keeping track) I realized it would be hard to remember what each one looks like and what resources they offer. So, I decided to take some screenshots and document the site templates.

Preview Images

If you care to see what all of the preview images look like, you can find them in the following directory on your SharePoint server:
C:Program FilesCommon FilesMicrosoft Sharedweb server extensions14TEMPLATELAYOUTS1033IMAGES
The file names for the preview images corresponding to each site template are listed in the tables below.

A More Detailed Look

If you care to see what each of the home pages for the site templates look like you can download screenshots of each and every site template in this zip file. The screenshots should provide you with a good understanding of the different layouts that come with each out of the box template.  This should save you a lot of time creating each type of site template on your own machine!
Here’s an example, showing the new Business Intelligence Center; oh how fancy!
Business Intelligence Center

Important planning information related to the out of the box site Templates!

Available Sub Site Templates

The next table lists the WEBTEMP XML fragment files each site template and configuration are defined in, the concatenated template and configuration string you need when making sites with the site template programmatically, and the file name of the preview image. If you wish to change the out of the box preview images I recommend backup up the existing preview images, then replacing them with your new preview images that have the same file names. Feel free to use the images I created from screenshots of each site template’s out of the box home page to do so. You can download them here.
Note: You may have to perform this process again after a service pack is applied in the future. Editing the various WEBTEMP files that come out of the box is not a recommended approach; that’s why I recommend this approach.
As I mentioned before, knowing which sub sites, lists, and pages are available within a given site template are key peices of information you will want to know when you architect a SharePoint solution.  The table below displays which sub site templates are available for a given parent site template.
Select a site template to filter the table:

Available Sub Site Templates Site Definition Config Concatenated String Preview Image Name Defined in this WEBTEMP File
Team Site STS 0 STS#0 stts.png WEBTEMP.XML
Blank Site STS 1 STS#1 stbs.png WEBTEMP.XML
Document Workspace STS 2 STS#2 stdw.png WEBTEMP.XML
Blog BLOG 0 BLOG#0 stbg.png WEBTEMP.XML
Group Work Site SGS 0 SGS#0 stgb.png WEBTEMP.XML
Visio Process Repository VISPRUS 1 VISPRUS#0 custprev.png WEBTEMPVISPR.XML
Basic Meeting Workspace MPS 0 MPS#0 stmw.png WEBTEMP.XML
Blank Meeting Workspace MPS 1 MPS#1 stbm.png WEBTEMP.XML
Decision Meeting Workspace MPS 2 MPS#2 stdm.png WEBTEMP.XML
Social Meeting Workspace MPS 3 MPS#3 stsm.png WEBTEMP.XML
Multipage Meeting Workspace MPS 4 MPS#4 stmm.png WEBTEMP.XML
Assets Web Database ACCSRV 1 ACCSRV#1 WEBTEMPACCSRV.XML
Charitable Contributions Web Database ACCSRV 3 ACCSRV#3 WEBTEMPACCSRV.XML
Contacts Web Database ACCSRV 4 ACCSRV#41 WEBTEMPACCSRV.XML
Issues Web Database ACCSRV 6 ACCSRV#6 WEBTEMPACCSRV.XML
Projects Web Database ACCSRV 5 ACCSRV#5 WEBTEMPACCSRV.XML
Document Center BDR 7 BDR#0 preview.png WEBTEMPBDR.EN-US.XML
Records Center OFFILE 1 OFFILE#1 strc.png WEBTEMPOFFILE.XML
Business Intelligence Center BICenterSite 0 BICenterSite#0 bicenterlogo.png WEBTEMPPPSMA.XML
My Site Host SPSMSITEHOST 0 SPSMSITEHOST#0 perstemp.gif WEBTEMPSPS.XML
Personalization Site SPSMSITE 0 SPSMSITE#0 stps.png WEBTEMPSPS.XML
Enterprise Search Center SRCHCEN 0 SRCHCEN#0 template_srch_cntr.png WEBTEMPSPS.XML
Basic Search Center SRCHCENTERLITE 0 SRCHCENTERLITE#0 template_srch_cntr_lite.png WEBTEMPSRCH.XML
FAST Search Center SRCHCENTERFAST 0 SRCHCENTERFAST#0 template_srch_cntr_lite.png WEBTEMPSRCH.XML
Enterprise Wiki ENTERWIKI 0 ENTERWIKI#0 IPPT.gif WEBTEMPSPS.XML
Publishing Portal BLANKINTERNETCONTAINER 0 BLANKINTERNETCONTAINER#0 IPPT.gif WEBTEMPSPS.XML
Publishing Site CMSPUBLISHING 0 CMSPUBLISHING#0 stpb.png WEBTEMPSPS.XML
Publishing Site With Workflow BLANKINTERNET 2 BLANKINTERNET#2 stpw.png WEBTEMPSPS.XML

New Site Templates

The following site templates are new to SharePoint 2010.
Group Work Site
Visio Process Repository
Assets Web Database
Charitable Contributions Web Database
Contacts Web Database
Issues Web Database
Projects Web Database
Business Intelligence Center
Enterprise Search Center
Basic Search Center
FAST Search Center
Enterprise Wiki

Deprecated / Removed Site Templates

The following site templates are deprecated or removed in SharePoint 2010.
Wiki Site
Site Directory
Report Center
Search Center with Tabs
Search Center
Collaboration Portal
News Site

Available Lists

Similarly, the table below displays which lists are available for a given site template.
Select a site template to filter the table:

Available Lists
Asset Library
Dashboards Library
Data Connection Library
Document Library
Form Library
Picture Library
Process Diagram Library (US Units)
Report Library
Slide Library
Translation Management
Wiki Page Library
Agenda
Announcements
Calendar
Circulations
Contacts
Custom List
Custom List in Datasheet View
Decisions
Discussion Board
External List
Import Spreadsheet
Issue Tracking
Languages and Translators
Links
Microsoft IME Dictionary List
Objectives
PerformancePoint Content List
Project Tasks
Status List
Survey
Tabs List
Tasks
Text Box
Things To Bring
Administrator Tasks
Distribution Groups

Available Pages

Finally, the table below displays which types of pages are available to create within a given site template.
Select a site template to filter the table:

Content Page Publishing Page Web Part Page
Yes No Yes
Yes Yes Yes
No No No

Buried Treasure: Hidden Templates!

Many of the site templates listed in the following table are left over from the previous versions of SharePoint and are marked obsolete. However some of them may be created programmatically. I included the list of all the hidden site templates here for reference.
Hidden site templates (not including Global template or Central Administration):
Site Template Name Site Definition Configuration Concatenated String Preview Image Name Defined in this WEBTEMP File
Wiki Site WIKI 0 WIKI#0 wikiprev.png WEBTEMP.XML
Tenant Admin Site TENANTADMIN 0 TENANTADMIN#0 WEBTEMP.XML
Access Services Site ACCSRV 0 ACCSRV#0 bsprev.png WEBTEMPACCSRV.XML
(obsolete) Records Center OFFILE 0 OFFILE#0 strc.png WEBTEMPOFFILE.XML
Shared Services Administration Site OSRV 0 OSRV#0 WEBTEMPOSRV.XML
PerformancePoint PPMASite 0 OSRV#0 rchome.png WEBTEMPOSRV.XML
SharePoint Portal Server Site SPS 0 SPS#0 spshome.gif WEBTEMPSPS.XML
SharePoint Portal Server Personal Space SPSPERS 0 SPSPERS#0 perstemp.gif WEBTEMPSPS.XML
Contents Area Template SPSTOC 0 SPSTOC#0 spshome.gif WEBTEMPSPS.XML
Topic Area Template SPSTOPIC 0 SPSTOPIC#0 spshome.gif WEBTEMPSPS.XML
News Site SPSNEWS 0 SPSNEWS#0 spshome.gif WEBTEMPSPS.XML
Publishing Site BLANKINTERNET 0 BLANKINTERNET#0 stpb.png WEBTEMPSPS.XML
Press Releases Site BLANKINTERNET 1 BLANKINTERNET#1 stpb.png WEBTEMPSPS.XML
News Site SPSNHOME 0 SPSNHOME#0 template_news.png WEBTEMPSPS.XML
Site Directory SPSSITES 0 SPSSITES#0 template_site_dir.png WEBTEMPSPS.XML
Community Area Template SPSCOMMU 0 SPSCOMMU#0 spshome.gif WEBTEMPSPS.XML
Report Center SPSREPORTCENTER 0 SPSREPORTCENTER#0 strp.png WEBTEMPSPS.XML
Collaboration Portal SPSPORTAL 0 SPSPORTAL#0 WEBTEMPSPS.XML
Profiles PROFILES 0 PROFILES#0 WEBTEMPSPS.XML
Basic Search Center SRCHCENTERLITE 1 SRCHCENTERLITE#1 template_srch_center_lite.png WEBTEMPOSRV.XML

Leverage this information to create SharePoint sites programmatically

The concatenated template and configuration string is used when creating sites programmatically. See the last line of code below for an example.
//Create a new SPSite object corresponding to your top level site
SPSite newSite = new SPSite("http://dev");
 
//Create a new SPWeb object from the newSite object
SPWeb newWeb = newSite.OpenWeb();
 
//Return the collection of sub sites
SPWebCollection subSites = newWeb.Webs;
 
//Create a new sub site by adding it to the sub site collection
//The new site will have the following metadata:
//Full URL once created: http://dev/newsite
//Name: New Site
//Description: This is the description for my new site.
//Local ID set to 1033 – English
//Site Template: Team Site
//Use Unique Permissions: True
SPWeb newSubWeb = subSites.Add("newsite", "New Site", "This is the description for my new site.", 1033, "STS#0", true, false);

Once again, I hope this post comes in handy for you and saves you the time I spent digging through the SharePoint file system and creating dozens of SharePoint sites to find the information. All the information in this post comes from the public beta 2 version of SharePoint Server 2010.  I’ll update this post once SharePoint 2010 goes RTM.