Welcome to the Minnesota SharePoint User Group

1
Welcome to the Minnesota SharePoint User Group
2
Agenda

• Survey Results
• Upcoming Schedule
• Taxonomy A Business Perspective
• Taxonomy A Technical Perspective
• Q A

3
Survey Results User Group Members
4
Survey Results Business Drivers ABCs
5
Survey Results -- Objectives of User Group

• Learn from others
• Best Practices
• Find out whats new
• Training
• Learn innovative uses

6
Upcoming Schedule

• Next Meeting Captaris TeamPlate 3rd Party
  Workflow Solution
• July 27th at Microsofts Bloomington Office
  900 AM to 1100 AM

7
Taxonomy A Business Perspective

• Topics
• Definition Theory
• Portal Pains
• Taxonomy Structure vs. View
• Suggestions on Getting Started
• What does lack of structure cost?
• Best Practices

8
Taxonomy Definition Theory

• Portal a doorway, and entrance, or a gate
• Where are your doorways?
• Enterprise, Division, Business Unit, Project,
  Event, Document?
• Scope Depth vs. Breadth (both?)
• Audience Purpose (informational personalized
  workplace)
• Taxonomy the science, laws, or principles of
  classifications
• Practical Definition
• Taxonomy is a conceptual framework for
  organizing enterprise or companywide content so
  our employees, partners, and customers can locate
  what they need easily!

9
Portal Pains Side effect of no/poor taxonomy

• Sound Familiar?
• I just cant find the data Im looking for.
• Our portal has a ton of data but no
  information!
• The intranet data is not relevant to me.
• Search results are inconsistent and
  erroneous.
• Every business unit site is a discovery
  process. Theres no site branding or page design
  standards.
• Its time to get organized!

10
Taxonomy Structure vs. View

• Taxonomy Structure
• Multi-level hierarchy relational
• Used to categorize information
• Integral part of content management solution
• Foundation for a successful search function

• Taxonomy View
• Visual representation of taxonomy structure
• View can mirror structure or be completely
  different
• Not restricted to visual presentation as a
  hierarchy
• Can have multiple views of same taxonomy
  structure

• Keys
• Who is your audience and how do they want to
  consume your content?
• View should be derived from consumers usage
  patterns

11
Practical Suggestions for Getting Started

• Form a Team
• Subject matter experts from business
• Technical representation
• of participants varies with size of
  organization project scope
• Define Scope
• Content (e.g. company wide, divisional,
  department, project, etc.)
• How will taxonomy be used?
• Who is information consumer(s)?
• Create Taxonomy
• Documented Awareness Education (i.e. how do I
  implement?)
• Structure before View(?)
• Implementation
• Consistency Discipline!
• Content population dont underestimate effort!

12
What does lack of structure cost?

• Cost can be qualified as (ZDNet.com)
• Time wasted in unsuccessful searches,
• Low return on investment in information
  collection/storage efforts, such as data
  warehousing and content management, because
  searchers cannot find information,
• Poor decisions made due to inaccurate or
  incomplete information,
• Frustrating user experiences potentially
  damaging brand loyalty, customer/partner
  relationships, and internal user relationships.

13
Taxonomy Best Practice Suggestions

1. Create, Publicize, Monitor Taxonomy
   Structure/View
2. Involve Subject Matter Experts from Business
3. Dont allow View to derail Structure
4. Content Population Educate Maintain Dont
   Underestimate!

14
Taxonomy A Technical Perspective

• Topics
• Taxonomy and SharePoint
• Areas Topics
• Portal Listings Groupings
• WSS Sites and the Sites Directory
• Demo Areas, Topics, Listings, WSS Sites the
  Sites Directory
• The Topic Assistant
• Demo The Topic Assistant
• SPS Searching
• Demo SPS Searching
• Custom Search Web Part
• Demo Custom Search Web Part

15
Taxonomy and SharePoint
Searching

• How does SharePoint Portal Server answer the
  business questions related to Taxonomy?
• SharePoint Portal Server a framework
• Structuring Information
• Viewing/Categorizing Information
• Searching
• Targeting/Pushing Information

Areas
Topics
Content
Libraries
Listings
Audiences
16
NE Corp The Demo Portal Environment
17
Areas Topics
Core Areas Home, Topics, News, Sites, etc.

• So what is the difference? Why give two names to
  seemingly the same thing?
• Areas
• Framework for your portals structure
• Provides portal navigation, hierarchy, and
  categorization
• Provides both storage structure and logical view
  of your organizations taxonomy.
• Core Areas
• Home
• Topics
• News
• Sites Directory

18
Areas Topics (continued)

• Topics
• Hierarchy of Information Categories for your
  organization
• Typically created under the default Topics Area
• Directly visible on the portal Home Page via
  secondary navigation
• Specialized Area that contains the following core
  Web Parts
• Area Contents (hierarchy of sub-areas)
• Area Details (description and contact information
  for the Topic)
• Targeted Highlights from Community sub-topics
• Grouped Listings (grouping of links to content
  and experts that have been associated/submitted
  to the Topic)

19
Areas Topics (continued)

• Best Practices
• Gather information from all roles within your
  organization to define your domain
• How people think about information will heavily
  influence how they will want to browse for
  information. SharePoint Portal Server 2003
  Resource Kit
• Hierarchy should be based on static information
• Limit the number of top-level Areas
• Limit the depth of your Topic hierarchy to 3 or 4
  levels
• Identify subject matter experts and delegate
  responsibility for managing content
• IT cant solve every problem Domain expertise
  is a must

20
Portal Listings Groupings

• Portal listings provide a mechanism to aggregate
  and group links to relevant content and subject
  matter experts.
• Aggregate and organize content
• Links to documents (w/in Portal or public file
  shares)
• Links to libraries (i.e. Portal and WSS)
• Links to sites (i.e. WSS, Internal, External)
• Links to people (Profiles crawled from AD Import)
• Provide logical grouping
• Highlight
• General
• Expert
• Custom Groupings
• Provide access to content through different views
• 1 document can be linked to multiple Topic/Area
  Listings via submission model.

21
Portal Listings Groupings (continued)

• Submission Model - Submit to Portal Area
• Search Results
• Document/Image Libraries
• Documents
• WSS Sites connected to portal
• Approval Model
• Managed in the Area/Topic
• Publishing
• Audience Targeting
• Important Note currently, portal listings are
  not cleaned up when the linked content is
  deleted however, you can manage listings that
  exist across multiple areas in a central
  location.

22
WSS Sites the Site Directory

• The Site Directory acts as your Portals white
  pages for both Windows SharePoint Services and
  external sites.
• Built-in functionality for browsing and searching
  sites that have been submitted to or created from
  the Site Directory.
• WSS Sites
• Other internal non-portal sites
• External sites (i.e. competitors sites)
• Browse by Division/Region or text search
• Site Directory is a list with custom behavior
• Customizable just like any List in SPS
• Custom meta-data
• Create WSS site form
• Sites included in the Site Directory are crawled
  and stored in Non_Portal_Content
• WSS Sites that are created can be Submitted to a
  Portal Area

23
How can I put them all together?
24
Demo Areas, Topics, Listings, WSS Sites the
Sites Directory
25
The Topic Assistant

• Let your portal automatically discover and
  categorize your content.
• Automatically organize documents into your Portal
  Topics/Areas
• links to content appear in Portal Listings as
  Pending Listings.
• Suggests listings based on existing categorized
  listings in enabled Topics/Areas
• Requires Training
• At least 2 Topics/Areas with at least 10
  documents
• Topics/Areas must be Topic Assistant Enabled
• Requires approval/rejection
• Area Managers can view Pending listings under
  Portal Listings management

26
Demo The Topic Assistant
27
Portal Search Scopes

• Quick review of terminology used
• Content Index physical storage of the indexed
  content
• Content Source content that is to be indexed
  (i.e. a URL, a File Share, etc.)
• External Sites
• WSS Sites (those that arent connected to the
  portal through the Sites Directory)
• Source Group consists of one or more Content
  Sources (i.e. Communities of Practice WSS Site
  Collection)
• Search Scope The union of Topics/Areas and/or
  specific Source Groups (i.e. Communities of
  Practice)
• Scopes
• The union of one or more Source Groups and/or one
  or more Topics/Areas
• Available as items in the Search drop-down
• Out-of-the-box there is one scope (All sources),
  and one custom scope specific to the current
  Area/Topic being displayed (This topic)
• Examples
• IT Scope
• WSS Sites for IT
• IT Area or Divisional Portal
• External technology sites
• People
• All individuals in your organization (User
  Profiles and Public My Site Content)

28
Portal Search Scopes (continued)

• NE Corp Custom Search Scope Communities of
  Practice
• Union of the Communities of Practice Topic and
  sub-topics with the Communities of Practice
  top-level WSS Site Collection
• Intuitive access to relevant Information
• Directly available as a Scope from the Home Page
  of the Portal
• Search Scope Management Screen
• Other companies have defined scopes for
  Divisions that are setup as either separate
  portals or portal areas along with a
  corresponding WSS Site Collection for the
  Division. (i.e. an HR Portal Area UNIONED with
  an HR WSS Site Collection)

29
Portal Search Scopes (continued)

• Searching is extensible tailor the search
  functionality to meet your end-users evolving
  needs
• Advanced Searching
• Search on meta-data from crawled content
• Defined by
• Meta Tags on sites
• Meta-data on lists/libraries
• Customizable
• urnschemas-microsoft-comofficeoffice
• Define Keywords and Best Bets
• Identify keywords within your organizations
  domain and associate content links
• Define synonyms for Keywords (i.e., SharePoint
  SPS WSS Portal, etc.) even misspelligns
• Parse IIS Logs to identify what users are
  searching for

30
Demo Portal Searching
31
Custom Search Web Part

• In order to demonstrate the extensibility of
  Portal its search capabilities, we developed a
  web part that provides a customized advanced
  search experience.
• The Foundation
• Identified a standard document library to use as
  a template
• Identified custom meta-data to associate to
  documents within the library
• Department
• Document Type
• Keywords
• Configured meta-data properties through Manage
  Properties of Crawled Content
• Implemented a web part with search criteria form
  and search results grid

32
Custom Search Web Part (continued)

• Behind the scenes
• Implemented a utility that uses the custom search
  wrapper to provide an API to the web part
  developer The web part doesnt need to handle
  the generation of the SQL query string so that it
  has the potential to be reused.
• Implemented a custom search wrapper to hide the
  details of the SQL search query string
• Implemented Web Part to consume the search
  wrapper, display the search form, and display the
  resulting DataGrid.

33
Demo Custom Search Web Part
34
Custom Search Web Part (continued)

• The C code will be made available AS IS on the
  User Group web site knowledge of search
  administration and web part deployment is
  required.
• The web part makes the following assumptions
  about the environment
• One or more document libraries exist with the
  specific meta-data (our template will be
  available in the zip) The document library can
  only be used on Areas that have the Community
  Template (Since the library is basic, it can
  easily be recreated for an Area template of your
  choice)
• The meta-data properties have been configured
  through site administration
• The web part assembly is installed in the GAC or
  elevate trust has been granted in the web.config.
• The appropriate ltSafeControlsgt entry has been
  added to the web.config.

35
Summary

• Utilize Areas Topics for structuring your
  sites content gather information from domain
  experts in your organization to aid in defining
  your taxonomy
• Consider Portal Listings Groupings for
  organizing content in your Areas/Topics and
  utilize the Topic Assistant to aid in the
  categorization of your content. Remember, it is
  up to you to incorporate the assistants
  suggestions.
• Take advantage of the targeting functionality to
  push relevant content to groups of users
• Use the Sites Directory as a white pages into
  your organizations collaboration environment
• Understand the power of searching in SharePoint
  Portal
• Checkout the sample source code for the custom
  search web part

36
Q A