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SharePoint Jargon Is Not a Value-Add, Be Simple!

October 16th, 2013 No comments

As SharePoint evolves, so does its language!  For every new feature or workload Microsoft introduces in this great platform, a whole new buzzword is born. As a SharePoint consultant who has worked with dozens of enterprise customers for a decade, the one thing I have learned, over and over, is that using buzzwords or getting too technical is simply a bad sign in communicating with the business users.

Based on my experience business users only understand (and care for) six things in SharePoint:

  1. Sites: A central place for collaboration, communication, or storing information.
  2. People: Those who are involved in the site, either contributing information, facilitating the communication or consuming information.
  3. Apps: Those similar to what they have in their smart phone! I am sure you have heard this before: On my phone, I can find contacts alphabetically, give me a People Finder in search that works exactly the same! 
  4. Themes: Cosmetics, look and feel , basically everything that can make their ideas shine to the C-Level people.
  5. Search: The one that they use in Google or Bing sites with the exact same simplicity, speed and user experience.
  6. Metadata: Information about their information. Things like Author, Created By, etc.

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When you go beyond the basics, it becomes important to have an strategy to make complex matters simple for them to understand. Getting too technical? They don’t understand you. They don’t understand you, then they don’t trust you . If they don’t trust you, nothing will happen, regardless of how qualified you are to get the job done!

So, how should you spoon feed information to your business audience?  I use many techniques varying from one interaction to another. However, the following three techniques are pretty much always in common:

Prepare, Prepare and Prepare

I never EVER meet with a business user without having an agenda. That’s just a simple rule that I never forget. I share the agenda ahead of the time and communicate the outcomes that would like to achieve. Sometimes, I send them home work or a survey to get them THINK in advance.

The Power of Stories

For every topic in my agenda, I have got a supporting story to tell. I try to keep the stories short and add a few jokes here and there. Below is “The New Home Metaphor” and the story I tell my business users when walking them through content migration from file share to SharePoint:

Think of building your SharePoint site as building a new home for your family. You design the structure, layout, façade and other requirements of your new home based on the taste and needs of your family. Before you move in, you divide (classify) all of your possessions into boxes and label (tag) those boxes to indicate “what each box contains” and “where they will be going” in the new home. At the end of the day, what is in those boxes will represents your home and how modern or old-school it looks like. If you are moving into a larger home, you’ll likely take items that were in a single room and put them into multiple rooms. On the other hand, if you are moving into a smaller home, you may end up merging your belongings from several rooms and put them into one single room.

Then there is the “moving day”, and movers help you move into your new home. And that’s when the real work begins!  You want to keep things in order so you can find them faster. You upgrade your home appliance, clean up your home and handle the day-to-day maintenance. Some maintenance like lawn mowing is outsourced, and some is done in-house. You and each member of the family are just one tenant of the new home and you all need to share some facilities, therefore you all need to follow some rules and requirements. There are communication, training, spot checks and monitoring activities to determine if each member of the family is doing their job right.

And the story goes on. You get my point!

The Art of Drawing

I like whiteboard drawings to express myself and to back up my stories in a “visually telling” manner.

I use simple drawings when I feel that the client is overwhelmed and is unable to metabolize the flow of information.  For instance, I draw the following picture on the white board to present the high level structure of Managed Metadata as well as how it works in SharePoint.

MM

I draw the following picture to explain how content types are used as the  “information building blocks” of their sites . This picture is also useful when explaining the difference between managed terms and column metadata.

InformationClassification

Make them Feel Part of the Process

Let’s face it. No business user enjoys sitting there in an hour-long meeting, and listen to you talking about how much you are in  love with SharePoint. They quickly get bored and you lose their attention. Use different engaging techniques to make them feel they are part of the process. Conduct workshops, play games, use card sorting, make them draw something on the whiteboard (this one is a bit tricky)…I don’t know, do whatever you can if you don’t want to see them playing with their BalckBerries !

gesturing

Summary

SharePoint is complex! When working with business users, try not to make it more complex than what it is.  Most of business users never even have to know the details like what a web part connection is or how document set works behind the scene. Avoid getting too technical or using jargon simply because you’ll lose their attention.

Try to be simple and focus on helping them get the biggest bang for their buck!

 

 

Designing Your Taxonomic Hierarchy

June 5th, 2013 3 comments

When using taxonomic hierarchies to classify information, managed metadata is definitely your best friend.  In SharePoint, taxonomic hierarchies can be defined using  two methods:

  • Method A: Single Column Managed Metadata 
  • Method B: Multi-Column Managed Metadata

In this blog post, We will use NBA teams classified by  Conference, Division, and Team names and will examine the pros and cons of each  method. We compare each method from the following perspectives:

  • Tagging Experience
  • Making Changes to the Hierarchy
  • Metadata Navigation
  • Search Experience

Method A – Create the entire hierarchy from a single termset in a single metadata column. The single column then can be used for tagging in a Document Library.

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Method B – Create the metadata using separate metadata columns. Multiple columns will be used to define data in a Document Library.

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Tagging Experience

Method A – Adding data in this scenario is straight forward and very structured.  You work your way through the hierarchy and choose the tag to mark the data with.

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Method B – Adding metadata in this scenario requires more attention.  There is a higher change of making mistakes when adding data, because the hierarchy is split up across multiple columns and there is no relation between the columns.

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Making Changes to the Hierarchy

Method A – When changes occur in the hierarchy, the Term Store can be changed to reflect this change without having to change any of the existing data.  For example, moving Toronto to the Central Division.

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Method B – Using the same example to move Toronto to the Central division, in method B each record must be updated for this change to be completed.

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Metadata Navigation

As you probably know, metadata navigation was a big feature added to SharePoint lists and libraries in SharePoint 2010 . In SharePoint 2013, Microsoft took this to a whole new level, but that’s beyond the scope of this blog post.. For Lists in SharePoint two types of metadata navigation can be added: Navigation Hierarchies and Key Filters.

Method A – Navigation Hierarchies work very well in this case.  The navigation is easy to follow.

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Key Filters also work with method A, but get a little messy if you try to use too many terms.  The example below show a mix of divisions and teams.

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Method B – Navigation hierarchies do not work very well in the case of method B. Using the following hypothetical situation, if there were a Dallas Mavericks team in both the Southeast and Southwest divisions, from the navigation hierarchy alone you would not be able to filter for the one specifically in the Southeast or Southwest.  The only way to filter by the additional columns is to go to the divisions or conferences column and select the filter value, or use the Key Filters if they are turned on.  This leads to using multiple interfaces to get to the data you want which can become confusing.

 

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Key Filters for method B work very well because the filter criteria is neat and organized.

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Search Experience

Method A – When using Search with Method A, only the tag used as the metadata applies to the data.  Take for example a search on David West.  Searching for Indiana Pacers will find David West; however, searching for Central or East will not find this item.

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Another example is to search for James.  In the results returned the only tags available in the refinement panel are the metadata values “Miami Heat” and “Houston Rockets”

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Method B – For method B since more metadata is being used to describe the data, each metadata value can be used in the search.  David West can be found using Indiana Pacers, Central, or East.

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Also for the James search, the tags returned are for the Conference, Division, and Team.

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Summary

To summarize everything, when using a single column with a complete hierarchy, data entry and metadata hierarchy management are easy to do.  Metadata navigation is also more intuitive to use.  However, when it comes to the search less information is available to find your data. In another word, search experience isn’t that great!

And for multiple columns, the opposite is true.  Data entry and hierarchy changes require more time to complete (and it’s easy to make mistakes). Metadata navigation hierarchy is less intuitive although key filters work best here.  But, if you are looking for good search criteria multiple columns is the better choice.

Categories: SharePoint 2010, SharePoint 2013 Tags:

Document Set Creator Web Part

May 9th, 2013 No comments

When working with content types we all can agree that the user interface that SharePoint provides is not the most intuitive one. Specifically when creating a new document set! The problem is that the document set is a complicated concept for the end users to digest. The complexity of SharePoint user interface for working with document sets adds to this complexity!

Complexity makes your SharePoint solutions seem too hard and casts doubt regarding how practical they are.

Imagine a page the shows a list of content types, their approval tasks, and maybe some other web parts. The add new item link provided by the List View web part does not allow users to create Document Sets. The way to work around this is to click somewhere on the list view to get the ribbon menu to show up, then click on New and select the Document Set from the drop down. That would be so many clicks, and for sure the end users wont like it!

Solution: To make life easier you can create a single click button to do this instead. This button is simple and intuitive to use. The solution is to takes advantage of SharePoint client side object model (CSOM) to create a new item. The screenshot below shows this button on a Web Part page.

docsetbtn1

Here is the main code for the Web Part.

<style type=”text/css”>.ms-uploadbtnlink { width: 300px; }</style>
<div style=”width: 100%” align=”center”>
<div class=”ms-uploadbtnlink”>
<button onclick=” javascript:NewItem2(event, ‘<%= DocSetDetails %>’);return false;” type=”submit”><nobr>
<img alt=”Upload a Document” src=”/_layouts/Images/uploaddoc.png”/> &#160;<span><%= ButtonLabel %></span></nobr>
</button>
</div>
</div>

In the code behind the Document Set Details are created and passed into the NewItem2 function.

DocSetDetails = “” + SPContext.Current.Web.Url + “/_layouts/listform.aspx?ListId=%7B” + List.ToUpper().Replace(“-“, “%2D”) + “%7D&PageType=8&RootFolder=” + rootFolder.Replace(” “, “%20”) + “&ContentTypeId=” + ContentType;

Highlighted are the List ID (ListId) and Content type (ContentType).

It’s possible to create this solution using a content editor web part or directly injecting the JavaScript code in the page, but the point is to develop it once and reuse many times over, so instead of changing the html and dealing with url encoding and IDs, create a Web Part with a tool part that allows you to select the list and the content type you want to use.

docsetbtn2

You can download this Web Part from Codeplex : https://docsetter.codeplex.com/

Categories: SharePoint 2010, SharePoint 2013 Tags:

Now Available for Pre-Order:Professional SharePoint 2013 Scorecards, Dashboards, and Visualization

March 22nd, 2013 No comments

SP2013ScorecardIt’s very exciting to finish yet another book project on SharePoint 2013 with more emphasis on methodologies and business strategies you need to know for using balance scorecards, information dashboards, and data visualization.

The book has been divided into two sections. The first half of the book explains the basics of reporting and data gathering techniques. The second half shows how to actually create eye-catching, effective solutions with the tools available in SharePoint 2013.

  • Provides an overview of Business Intelligence (BI)
  • Explains how to import your data into a common data model and deliver data to business users by creating a semantic layer
  • Addresses self service BI with Excel and PowerPivot and reporting solutions with Access Services and Visio Services
  • Walks you through creating SharePoint 2013 BI solutions using Azure
  • Looks at creating score cards and dashboards using PerformancePoint

You can pre-order this book here.

Categories: General, SharePoint 2013 Tags:

Introduction to SharePoint 2013 App Development

January 10th, 2013 3 comments

I am speaking in East Toronto .NET User Group this coming Thursday. If you are around please come say hi.

Title: Introduction to SharePoint 2013 App Development

Apps are these new beasts in SharePoint 2013 that offer a lot of exciting new opportunities for developers. This session will provide an overview of the new developer features for Office and SharePoint including apps, the new cloud app model, development tools and when to use apps versus full trust solutions.

Date: Thursday, January 17, 2013 from 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM

Event Agenda
6:30 – 7:00 Socialize and refreshments
7:00 – 8:30 Presentation

Location
Pickering Central Library
Auditorium (2nd floor)
One the Esplanade
Pickering, ON L1V 6K7
905-831-6265 or 1-888-831-6266

Categories: SharePoint 2013 Tags: