SharePoint Project : Keys of the Success
After many SharePoint projects for my customers these last years, i have seen a lot of customers who are lost when they have to use SharePoint. Why this problem ? I would not generalize but there are still two things that come up frequently :
A) People are not trained to SharePoint by their company
However like any new software you provide to your users, they need to learn how to use it, if not they going to be refractor to it. Which "IT" or "Dev" never hear this sentence ; "It was better before" (people say that because they mastered the old program, using it maybe since 10 years).
SharePoint is a powerfull tool like a Swiss Army knife which can help you in many situations, so please teach your users how to use it and don't forget ! all project need communication. I like to say to my IT coworkers : "Tell what you going to do, do what you said, say what you did". Another key of Success in a SharePoint project is to customize it to make it easier to use for your users, how to do that ?
B) SharePoint user oriented navigation
Most of times SharePoint Farms setup as EDM (Electronic Document Management, or also Called CMS) have the same skeleton:
A site collection with a navigation to access subsites
A homepage with a lot of informations, Compagny news, PKI, pictures and a lot of links to browse the other websites of the compagny.
All that is usually not dynamic and configured with default style of SharePoint, that's not enough fun and attractive for users when you compare to what we can found on Internet now.
Users are now used to see websites more dynamic so please don't think only about functional matter but also about design.
In details : We filter the informations on the screen of the users by using some criteria like : Job, Location, time etc.. before we were just filtering by using file security.
To give an example :
You are following sales report on SharePoint, it will be great to have a page showing reports of your sector and not the reports of all your coworkers but if you are the manager you will want to see the reports of your whole team.
Here it's my way to do it (there is a lot of different ways):
1) Sober design and functionnal :
Create a clean and simple visual interface as a home page with buttons representing large sections of which the user will need in his work everyday.
2) Manage subscriptions :
Allow users to subscribe and unsubscribe to groups (which will be SharePoint audiences).
Thus it is him who decides the informations he will see.
Example :
You work for a big compagny and you read news on the SharePoint, is it really important to see human ressources news of another office (maybe located in the opposite of the World)?
3) Content Queries :
Browsing SharePoint by using Tiles or Category buttons (like on pictures of this blog post) make things easier for users and if they browse from a smartphone or a tablet it's very more convenient than trying to click on a small text :).
My advice will be to create pages with Content Query webparts to automatically filter the information by the user connected, and after you connect your tiles to these webpart pages.
That's all for today, if you have any questions you can post a comment or send me an email, you will find my address email in the contact page of the website.
Sylvain J.
www.devandapps.com
