Information Architecture Linden Daniels

Steps of a Successful Information Architecture Discovery Education Design Migration Monitor

DISCOVERY Information Architecture

Purpose of Discovery You don’t know what you don’t know Your customer may know less! Don’t assume that they are the experts Baseline How can you determine that your proposed IA is any better then the current solution? Dirty little secrets Current solution may contain inappropriate content Do you want to be responsible for migrating content that doesn’t belong? Transactional How do you guarantee nothing is lost in migration? You just need one user to complain that they cant find a document after the migration to ruin your relationship

Sources Web Based IIS Logs Analytics Software (E.g. WebTrends) Content Based File Shares Lotus Notes Other SharePoint Content DBs Other Document Management Systems

Web Analytics

Summary of User Usage ItemValueNotes Total Ops17,868,885 User Ops14,655,672(Excluding System Accounts) Unique Users3380Users Ops/User4336 Ops Usage15Months Ops/User/Month289Ops/User/Month 3.4Hours Usage/User/Month (70% Availability) Assumptions Average user will perform 120 operations in one hour Based on 70% Active Users

Existing Content Analysis

EDUCATION Information Architecture

Ways to Organise Content File Shares Taxonomy Document/Records Management Wikis/Blogs Publishing Content Don’t – Just use search Use search with prudent tagging Team Sites + Secret Ingredient

Content Governance Content Repository Size of Content Content Storage Storage Ease Content Retrieval Retrieval Ease File Share Replacement MediumHierarchy & Content  Navigation  Team Sites and Site Directory LargeHierarchy & Content  Filtering Navigation  TaxonomiesSmall Hierarchy, Content & Approval  Navigation  Doc/Records Management LargeMetadata & Content  Filtering  Wikis & BlogsSmallContent  Hyperlinks  Web Content Publishing Small – Medium Hierarchy, Content & Approval  Hyperlinks  SearchV. LargeNoneN/ASearch  Advanced SearchV. LargeNoneN/A Search & Filtering 

DESIGN Information Architecture

Containment Hierarchy Items Files, Folders, calendar items, contacts, customers, images, custom Lists Doc Lib, Pages, Events, Discussions, Surveys, etc… * Sites Wikis, Blogs, Team, Doc, Meeting Workspaces * Site Collections Internet, Intranet Portal, Wikis, Blogs, Team, Doc, Meeting Databases Content, Config, SSP, Search * Web Applications Central Admin, SSP Admin, Content Servers Web Front End, APP, SQL * Farm Internet, Extranet, Intranet

Software Boundaries yID=66438e a-bd76-a8052b394fe2 Limit Maximum value Limit type Notes Content database 300 per Web application Supported With 300 content databases per Web application, end user operations such as navigating to the site or site collections are not affected. But administrative operations such as creating a new site collection will experience performance degradation. We recommend that you use Windows® PowerShell™ to manage the Web application when a large number of content databases are present, because the management interface becomes slow and difficult to navigate. Zone 5 per Web application Boundary The number of zones defined for a farm is hard coded to 5. Zones include Default, Intranet, Extranet, Internet, and custom. Managed path 20 per Web application Supported Managed paths are cached on the Web server, and CPU resources are used to process incoming requests against the managed path list. If you plan to exceed twenty managed paths in a given Web application, we recommend that you test for acceptable system performance.

The Information Architecture

Current Lists & Libraries WEBDAV Protocol handles a maximum url of 260 characters Web Folders use WebDAV protocol Users treating SharePoint as a file share replacement, primarily use Web Folders Large Site Collections have many sublevels and are more prone to reaching this limit Use Smaller Site Collections

MIGRATION Information Architecture

Migration What tools to use? 3 rd Party? Custom Code? Manually??? Fidelity Record all documents from old system + new system Keep an audit of the migration Backup of old system? Communications Plan How long will system be offline Training on new system Coexistence Can users use both systems for a period of time? Can they edit in both systems?

MONITOR Information Architecture

Is the New Solution Better? Track Content Is more content being uploaded/edited? Track Usage Are more users spending more time on the system Are they doing more uploads/downloads/searches etc. Build reports so customer can assess value of system over time Can also determine is system is use correctly