John Heintz & Ben Durrant University of St. Thomas Libraries

What is SharePoint? SharePoint is Microsoft's collaboration and document management software often used for organizations' internal knowledge management--your organization's IT shop may already have this available for use. In practice we see it as a hybrid - somewhere between a website, Outlook, a file system and an Intranet. SharePoint is web-based and users interact with it via their web browser

Where we started elaborate shared documents folder structure externally-hosted wiki moribund intranet Outlook public folders: , documents, & calendars some public web pages paper-based reference & instruction statistics collection s Fragmented internal Knowledge Management structure

Where we started Desire for more robust, online statistics collection Group was evaluating software solutions, and added SharePoint to that analysis SharePoint used by tech student group, so folks had some familiarity SharePoint was the “official” supported IT solution for intranets

Goals Consolidate number of buckets for our internal content Learn about and use collaboration features Reduce paper-based processes and broaden availability of stats collection Develop criteria for what should be in SharePoint vs. Deptstore (UST’s shared document storage location) Explore using Announcement & Discussion features as alternative to , moving calendars from Outlook Develop apps: dynamic forms & lists vs. static docs Start with a manageable # of sites/functions/features

Process Representative work group: reference & instruction, circulation, collection management, digital initiatives Test site, opened up permission for experimentation Looked at other units’ sites Consulted SharePoint manuals, online documentation Lots of experimentation Test site allowed us to goof up and learn, then move to production site

Structure and Layout Desired functional rather than based on org. structure (e.g. collection management is a function engaged in by people in multiple units: reference, tech services, dig. initiatives) Ended up with hybrid: work units often wanted their own sites Used color schemes/themes to differentiate Internal only currently, staff and students.

System Permissions Needed selected student access But also needed to restrict to certain areas Minimized complexity of permission schemes per recommendation of our IT folks Staff can see/edit all Students can see only specific sites and edit only there Used MS Exchange network groups to manage permissions

SharePoint Components & Terms Document Libraries Shared files & folders, incl. photos Lists Announcements Calendars Tasks Links Discussions Contacts Custom Web parts Main area to view snapshots of content from lists & libraries, rss feeds, etc.

Other Capabilities Standard vs. custom views, filtering Alerts Connection to Outlook Open in Explorer view for file management Edit in spreadsheet or database view Export list content to spreadsheet or database All site content is searchable

Staff & student training Staff meeting presentations Special training on Question tracking functions Informational documents

Home and Bulletin Board Landing page and gateway to the structure Bulletin Board includes events calendar and blog feed Hope to use eventually for unofficial communications Use announcements to reduce traffic: birthday celebrations, happy hours, where Ben’s band is playing, etc.

Admin Staff travel form from intranet Custom forms/lists Workflows Staff contact list Professional development & conference notes Emergency plans Conference room scheduling calendar Eventually personnel evalution process forms & policies

Circ/ILL Policies and procedures Student site schedules training materials contact info commonly used links discussion boards

CollDev Collection management materials Liaison tool kit Benchmark institutions link lists Tools for selectors Reference copies of e-resource licenses

Digi/Tech Tech documentation from various sources Links lists Library/UST systems Image resources Web usage stats in doc library

Ref/Instruction Doc libraries for assignments Custom lists for reference question tracking & instruction session statistics Reference desk scheduling calendars Research project collaboration site (visible only to team members)

Question & Instruction Tracking Replaced paper-based stats collection Used by staff and student workers at all service points More detail: librarian/student, actual q & a Searchable: can be a knowledge base Filters: quickly see items by person, library, question type, etc. Easily export stats for internal and external reporting Can use to identify system/database/web site problem areas, troublesome/recurring assignments, etc.

Question Tracking Issues Technical: how to build capacity and performance filters and views reporting Policy: who and what to count daily and ongoing monitoring and action

Oddities/Issues Learning curve Permissions URLs of folders and files Security groups and issues Rationalizing your buckets New way of organizing Typical MS product, many bells & whistles, 9 ways to do things

Potential future projects Need for public-facing functions? Forms or requests Pull more content/data in via data connections and rss feeds: SUSHI data, statistics dashboards, changes to subject guides, etc. Rewrite some legacy applications

Conclusion It’s a work in progress Fewer buckets: have shut down the old intranet, old wiki, old shared Outlook calendars Some things have worked well and some not Different rates of build-out of the various sites One of more active user departments on campus Anyone else using SharePoint? How?

Questions & Discussion

Screenshots of Selected Sub-sites