INTRANETS: THE SUCCESSES AND THE FAILURES By Michael Doyle

MICHAEL DOYLE SharePoint Architect Worked for EPA, Intel, Propoint, HCA, Deloitte, US Navy, CA State Lottery, Air Resources Board, Waggener Edstrom, etc. Website: Exam Ref: Customizing My Site (2010) Other Books SharePoint 2010 Inside Out SharePoint 2010 Inside Out Tale of Two Stones

WHAT IS AN INTRANET?  A single stop to deliver information to your organization  A collaboration tool  A publishing platform for departments to deliver information

WHY WOULDN’T I USE SHAREPOINT?  Total cost of ownership  Ability to support implementation  Large investment in other technology that you can leverage  Animosity toward previous implementations may make success improbable

CHOOSING THE RIGHT OR WRONG PLATFORM  What version of SharePoint  Foundation (gone in SP2016)  Standard  Enterprise  Office 365  Should I even use SharePoint?

OFFICE 365 BENEFITS  A whole lot cheaper  Can bundle with other Office 365 products  No server maintenance  Much lower skill requirements

OFFICE 365 CONCERNS  No control over search crawls  No server side code  No access to database  Additional branding concerns  Issues of slowness (especially random unexplained slowness)  Have to go to Microsoft with any server issues

INTRANET FAILURE: PROGRAMMER EXCLUSION  Even if the goal is to minimize the amount of programming necessary it is important to include your programming staff in the development of your intranet  Invite them to meetings  Adapt to their talents  Get some specific training on SharePoint

INTRANET FAILURE: ASSUMING FEATURES WON’T BE MISSED  Don’t assume you know what features that users find useful  Roll out upgrades to small groups of “friendly users”  Survey end users and walk through functions with them

INTRANET SUCCESS: REPLACING LINK IN SHAREPOINT 2013 Format as a number.

INTRANET FAILURE: INCONSISTENT NAVIGATION  Inconsistent navigation confuses end users  It wastes time and time=money  People are creatures of habit so use that to your advantage

CONSISTENT NAVIGATION  Can use custom providers such as XML Files, Web Services, or Databases  SharePoint interface to manage navigation is easy to use but limited (per site collection and two levels)  Writing your own is pretty straight forward with lots of examples online

INTRANET FAILURE: 7 CLICKS TO FIND A COMMON FILE  PDFs were not indexed (could not use search to find document)  The common forms and regulations were all in PDF form  Manual navigation took up to 7 clicks to locate a needed form or regulation

ONE click is still the goal for important items. Popular items (my sites, search, tagging) need to be easy to get to and in familiar places Easy access to the home page from anywhere on the intranet

INTRANET EXAMPLES

INTRANET EXAMPLE 1

INTRANET EXAMPLE 2

INTRANET EXAMPLE 3

INTRANET FAIL: TRYING TO SUPPORT TOO MANY BROWSERS Chrome

INTRANET FAIL: CLUTTERED UP INTRANET  Remove items that don’t add value in an intranet setting  Check boxes  Headers  Unused space (i.e. Office 365 header)

INTRANET ON THE CHEAP  Using the Standard version (or even the free version)  Going with the Team site template  Cleaning up the landing page  Client Side Scripting

HIDE THE CHROME IN O365  .ms-core-navigation { DISPLAY: none }  #contentBox { margin-left: 0px }   _spBodyOnLoadFunctionNames.push("HideBrandingsuite");  function HideBrandingsuite()  {  document.getElementById('suiteBarLeft').style.visibility = 'hidden';  document.getElementById('suiteBarRight').style.visibility = 'hidden';  document.getElementById('s4-ribbonrow').style.visibility = 'hidden';} 

CHROME REMOVED EXAMPLE

INTRANET SUCCESS AND FAILURE: ENABLING SHAREPOINT DESIGNER Powerful tool for editing pages and creating workflows. Free to download Dangerous in the wrong hands Can make the intranet unusable Can slow down the intranet for all users Need governance to control users

TURNING OFF SHAREPOINT DESIGNER At the Site Collection Level (can be done at the web application level too) Must be site collection admin to change settings

INTRANET FAILURE: STALE CONTENT  An intranet is only successful if people know to go to it  Fresh content means not only adding but updating and deleting  Updating content has to be part of a person’s responsibilities and not an ad hoc task (People need to be required to update the content)

INTRANET SUCCESS: FEATURE STORIES KEEP PEOPLE COMING BACK

INTRANET SUCCESS: PERSONALIZED CONTENT Links to commonly used items such as Timesheets and Paychecks Personalized information such as vacation available Picture links to person’s My Site

SECURITY GUIDELINES  Security Groups in SharePoint Groups  Minimize the number of groups  Security is a means to an end. Don’t over do it.  Third party products can definitely help to manage security.

INTRANET FAILURE: TWO MANY SECURITY GROUPS  Company intranet (of 400 people) had over 120 groups that were not being used at all and growing almost daily. This made figuring out security very difficult and at some point would cause slowness in the system

OFFICE WEB APPS Provides thumbnails On SP2010 and SP2013 Allows multiple users to edit file at the same time Office Web Apps for SharePoint 2013 requires a separate server

INFOPATH FORMS  Best bang for the buck of any service  InfoPath Web forms saves time and money  Client not required  Worth the cost of the Enterprise edition  Don’t program if you don’t have to InfoPath is supported until 2023

INTRANET SUCCESS: MY SITE CUSTOMIZATIONS

MY SITE CUSTOMIZATION CAVEATS  Lots of work  Politically charged  Powerful momentum from social networking  Less is definitely more  2010, 2013 and even O365 are all vastly different in their look and feel

CONTENT DATABASE SUCCESS GUIDELINES  Size should be guided by disaster recovery guidelines  General rule of thumb is still below 200 gig  New technology can make content databases in the terabyte size  BLOB storage. Really make sure you can recover these files.

Questions 37