Governance Series - How to create a Single Source of Truth in SharePoint

I was in the SharePoint Community site last night and someone asked about maintaining a single source of truth.  One way to do it is to have a central repository for documentation; in SharePoint we would use a record center.  But it brings up a good point of how you would distribute those documents out to the team sites where they are actually used and manipulated.  The answer is simple, we create a new type of document library that can only contain links to documents.  We template it and save it as part of all our site templates instead of a regular document library.  In addition, we could add form and workflow functionality that would allow the users to upload files, but they would automatically be routed to the document repository; but that is for another time.

So how do we do this?  First we are going to need two sites with two document libraries one we will use as the source, the other as the link. In my example I will start with the "Linking" site first, but it really doesn't matter which site is first, only that the document exists in the repository prior to creating a link.

Linking Site

Ok, so we created a new site, lets say it is a team site template.  With a team site and most sites you get a document library named "Documents",  I am going to modify that library and make it a "Link Library".  Now don't confuse this with the "Links" app, which is just a list of hyperlinks.  At the end, I will add the steps to make it into a "Link Library" template so it can be reused.

Creating a Link Library from a Document Library

1. In the Document Library Click the Library tab then Click "Library Settings"
   
2. In the Settings page, Click "Advanced Settings"
   
3. In Advanced Settings, under "Content Types", "Allow management of content types?", Select "Yes", then scroll down and Click "OK"
   
4. Under "Content Types", Click on "Add from existing site content types"
   
5. Scroll through the list and Select the "Link to a Document" content type, Click "Add" and then Click "OK"
   
6. Under "Content Types" Click "New Button Order and Default Content Type"
   
7. Change "Link to a Document" from "2" to "1" and Click "OK"
8. Under "Content Types" Click "Document"
   
9. Under "Document" Click "Delete this content type"
   
10. When Prompted, Click "OK" to delete the content type
    

Your Library is now configured to create links to documents rather than documents themselves, but I have not addressed the issue of the upload button, but it is simple enough to hide the button or if you want a complete solution you can create a workflow to move uploaded files to a designated location in the repository; to me that is a much better option.  One caveat I want to point out is that the "Link to a Document" uses a URL, not a navigation pane, so you need to know where the document you are linking to is located, the advantage to this is it allows you to cross site collections and farms, but does not provide a great user experience.

Repository Site

The Repository site, like the Linking site contains a Document Library, unlike the Linking site, however, we are not going to manipulate it in the same way.  Instead, we are going to configure it to make it fit for our purpose, which is the storage of documents.  Now I am not going to tell you have to do that, because everyone is different, but some things that you might look at doing include setting up folder containers to classify documents that are uploaded. creating retention and disposition workflows and of course version control.

Test out the solution and let me know what you think.  Based on writing this, stay tuned, I think I like the idea of showing you the Nintex workflows that would go along with ths.

Follow me on twitter @DavidRMcMillan and @DevFactoPortals.  Feedback and suggestions are appreciated and encouraged.

ECM Governance - Post 5

I think it is official, I suck at blogs, but I promise to try to post more (not saying I will), but one thing you can be sure of is a tweet when I do.  I seem to be getting worse at this, rather than better, blog posts always end up being low on my priority list and the time between seems to increase, not decrease.  Today I wanted to finish off the definitions of the different principles and then we can move on from there, hopefully in a more timely manner.

Collaboration Principles

Collaboration principles are principles that describe the way in which we plan on using the Team, Project and other collaboration site capabilities of the solution. It should include things like the site design, which lists and libraries are standard, the security roles used in collaboration, Content Types for templates and anything else you want to control in the collaboration portion of your solution.

Collaboration principles are about the control of who can do what, where and when. They provide a foundation for collaborative interaction and as such are always used in your solution in some way. As an example of a Collaboration principle, I have included "Collaboration sites will inherit the top menu navigation from the parent site", which encompasses the fact that collaboration sites are more loosely controlled than portal sites and control revolves more around the user experience.  Later when we examine the application of policies, we will see that as we move down the hierarchy from portals to collaboration sites and then to my sites, we change from highly structured and restrictive control to a looser user enabled control, but more about that later.

Collaboration sites will inherit the top menu navigation from the parent site
Principle
Collaboration sites will inherit the top menu navigation from the parent site.

Implication
To maintain a consistent user experience, the same top menu is used throughout all collaboration sites, Site Administrators will have no control over navigation.

Business Process Principles

Business Process Management is a core function that every ECM needs and SharePoint is no exception.  The one caveat I have to say is that SharePoint sucks for creating workflows and forms, thank goodness they deprecated InfoPath, Nintex does a far better job in the forms area and makes it possible for power users (with training and mentorship) to create some complex workflows.  The developer will never disappear for the complex workflows, but his work is minimized, providing a better return for the organization.  Come to think of it, the ROI of a tool like Nintex seems like a good topic for another blog post, stay tuned for that too, lol.

Anyway, regardless of the tools used, BPM needs some structure around how workflows, integrations and forms are created, where they are stored, how they are executed and anything else you think will need a boundary around.  In this example I have created a principle for the management of alerts and notifications, which fall under business process management.  The principle is intended to reduce the overhead of managing alerts and notifications, but ensuring users are responsible for managing their own alerts and notifications.  Coupled with this principle are other principles around training for users and principles for notification and alert creation.

Each user is responsible for the management of alerts and e-mail notifications
Principle
Each user is responsible for the management of their own alerts and e-mail notifications.
Implication
While anyone can assign alerts to others, each user is responsible for the maintenance of their own alerts and notifications. Each user needs to ensure they receive the notifications they need.

Esthetic/Site Design Principles

Now I changed the name of this, many ECM governance practitioners will call this user experience, but for me, it is more than just the user experience and encompasses the brand, navigation, search style guides, master pages, XSL transformations and anything else that affects the look and feel of the solution, including site and page templates.  These rules are often the most important because they directly affect the user experience and adoption; no one like an ugly site. 

I remember a developer that once worked for me, he had recently come from China and I asked him if he could brand our product SharePoint site.  He said "yes" and with a slight head bow, immediately set to work.  He ended up spending the evening at home working on it, so when I came in the next morning, he proudly presented me with a SharePoint team site branded in bright red and gold, or as his cohorts called it the ketchup and mustard brand, very much like the 1980's McDonald's I grew up loving... but alas there was no Hamburglar anywhere on the site.

That little story illustrates why this is so important, every user has a different idea when it comes to look and feel and if I had simple used a governance principle that said his brand had to align with the corporate style guide, there would never have been an issue; well maybe.  I have included a couple examples in this case, one that identifies the importance of user experience, the other ensures no one thinks they can make up their own brand.

Prefer Findability over Authoring Convenience
Principle
Ensure that “findability” governs design decisions – optimize metadata and site configuration to provide the best value for the end-users, not just the content contributor.
Implication
In situations where design trade-offs must be considered (more metadata versus less, information above or below “the fold”, duplicating links in multiple places), decisions should be made to make it easier for end users rather than content contributors. “Findability” means designing sites so that important information is easily visible and that navigational cues are used to help users easily find key information. It also means using metadata to improve accuracy of search results. Both the “browse” and “search” experience for users will guide design decisions in initial site development and modification over time.

All publishing and collaboration sites will be consistently branded
Principle
All publishing and collaboration sites will be consistently branded.
Implication
In order to maintain consistency in the look and feel of the intranet, standardized brands will be used for collaborative and publishing sites and will not be modifiable by the site owners.

Content Principles

Where the Esthetic principles are the most important principles for user experience and adoption, content principles are about making the solution fit for purpose, after all this is an ECM we are taking about (emphasis on the "C"). In reality, my experience has proven that the content principles will out number all the other principles combined, why, we can every content type will need principles to define it. Whether we are talking about a metadata field, a vocabulary, taxonomy, document, list, image, template page or alert, it is all content and that means that principles that affect any part of the system will probably affect the content principles.

Because content principles are such a vast area, I have included several examples to help you get started, but understand even in the beginning this category is the main part of a governance document. Some of these you have already seen, which reinforces my point of overlap, yet I am sure you can see how they apply to more than one category.

All content is owned
Principle
All content must have a clearly identified “owner”.
Implication
Users need to know who to contact if content on a site is out-of-date or inaccurate. The content owner is accountable for all the content in a site and for ensuring it is up-to-date. Each site should have a clearly defined owner that is visible on the main page of each site.

Maintain a single source of truth
Principle
All content exists in only one location.
Implication
This means that the official version of a document is posted once by the content owner. For the reader’s convenience, users may create a link to the official copy of a document from any site, but should not post a “convenience copy”. Users should not post copies of documents to their personal hard drives or My Site web sites if they are already on a site.

In situations where some documents or records need to be available offline due to a very slow or inconsistent connection to the SharePoint sites, SharePoint Workspace can be used to make these records available offline.

Use built-in versioning
Principle
Edit documents in place. Do not download or make copies for editing, if possible.
Implication
Version control will be enabled in document libraries where prior versions need to be retained during document creation or editing. If prior versions need to be retained permanently for legal purposes, “old” versions of documents should be stored as records. Documents should be edited in place rather than deleted and added again, so that document links created by other users will not break.

Sponsors/Owners are Accountable
Principle
Site Sponsors/Owners are accountable, but everyone owns the responsibility for content management.
Implication
All content that is posted to a site and shared by more than a small team will be governed by a content management process that ensures content is accurate, relevant, and current. Site Sponsors/Owners are responsible and accountable for content quality and currency and archiving old content on a timely basis but site users are responsible for making Site Sponsors/Owners aware of content that needs updating.

Business Intelligence Principles

Business Intelligence principles encompass the use and presentation of BI data, reports, dashboards,  charts, graphs and KPIs.  They are intended as with any other principle to provide both consistency and ease of management, with the later being very important.

In this example, we define a principle that ensures we are controlling access to the BI tools, which require an enterprise license in SharePoint.

The Business Intelligence Centre can only be accessed by the BI User role
Principle
Only the BI User Role will have access to the BI Centre
Implication
To control the Enterprise license in SharePoint the BI Centre exists in it's own web application and can only be accessed by users who have the proper licensing.  The BI User role has been configured to ensure compliance with the Microsoft licensing model.

So anyway, this one took a long time, so I made up for it with more content, but I am trying to get my MVP, so I may need to blog a lot more, it doesn't do a lot of good knowing a bunch of stuff if I am not going to share it with the world.  Got to change the IT world, one client or reader at a time.

ps.  follow me on twitter, @DavidRMcMillan, I will post articles and where I will be speaking there.

ECM Governance - Post 4

Guiding Principles continued

Hi Everyone,

Last post I had a pretty short entry and it took a long time for me to get it out, unfortunately work sometimes gets in the way of my sharing of information as you can see I haven't posted in some time due to client constraints, anyway, this post I want to continue the descriptions of the different categories of guiding principles I have outlined for a SharePoint implementation (realize these are not the only categories, some may need to be added or some may not be needed, depending on the purpose of the solution being provided).

Last post we reviewed the General and Security principle categories, this post we will look at the following categories:

Document Management Principles

Publishing Principles

So let's get to it...

Document Management Principles

Document Management principles are principles that have to do with the way in which our solution should manage and control the creation and modification of documents in the system.  The reason it is not referred to here as records or information management is really a matter of scope. Document Management principles need to encompass records and information management (RIM), but it should also encompass content that is not part of the document or information strategy.  We are not going to rewrite the RIM (if one exists), but rather we will try to capture the principles behind why the architecture and strategy were implemented.  In addition, we will define principles for content that has not be defined in the RIM (like SharePoint lists) and configuration specific items, like the version control, check-in and check out and draft version rules.

The Document Management Principles are not meant to replace the RIM, but are meant to tie the RIM strategy and governance into the governance of the ECM solution (remember keep it simple and understandable).  In reality, the document management principles are probably one of the most numerous rules you will have in you ECM governance plan, as most of ECM is about the management of documents and content.  As an example of a document management principle, I have my number one rule for all governance (your governance plan will fail without it), "All Content is Owned." as it is outlined below.  Notice it is a principle that encompasses more than just records or documents, addressing all types of content; yet it still applies as a document management process because it affects the way people will work with documents and records.

All Content is Owned
Principle
All content must have a clearly identified “owner”. 

Implication
Users need to know who to contact if content on a site is out of date or inaccurate. The content owner is responsible for all the content in a site and for ensuring it is up to date. Each site should have a clearly defined owner that is visible on the main page of each site.

Publishing Principles

Publishing principles are principles that describe the way in which we plan on using the intranet and published site capabilities of the solution.  It should encompass plans for language variations, the way we are reviewing and publishing content and any other principles that may affect the configuration of the publishing and audience components of the solution.

Publishing principles are about the control of who sees what and when, they provide a foundation for portals and as such are only used when a portal solution is required.  As an example of a publishing principle, I have included "All portal and department site content is reviewed and approved prior to being published", which encompasses the fact that portal and department sites are highly controlled and all changes are reviewed and approved prior to being made available to users.

         All portal and department site content is reviewed and approved prior to being published
           Principle
           All content changes for publishing sites must be reviewed and approved before the changes can be published.
         Implication
         Content owners are responsible for updates, while site approvers are accountable for the correctness
           and appropriateness of the content being published.

Next post we will complete the definitions of the categories for principles and from there will move on to other important governance, like who does what in governance implementation and how we can make principles work within an organization.