Building an FAQ for End UsersAn Evolution of an idea

#SPSBE03

Paul Hunt

April 18th, 2015

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Thanks to our sponsors!

Who Am I?

• SharePoint Architect for Trinity Expert Systems

• Co-organiser of SUGUK London Region

• Member of the SharePoint community since 2007

• In my spare time I’m a woodturner, making Pots, Pens and artistic pieces!

• Paul Hunt

• Twitter: @Cimares

• www.myfatblog.co.uk

• www.trinityservice.co.uk

Who is this session for?

• FAQ – Basic Evolution End Users

• FAQ – Intermediate Evolution End Users/Power Users

• FAQ – Advanced Evolution Power Users

IT Pros/Devs

Agenda – Part 1

• Building an FAQ Foundations

Site Columns/Content Types

Metadata

Basic Configuration

Single site/Single list

Intermediate Configuration

Integrated search

Configuring Search Centre

Agenda – Part 1

• Building an FAQ Advanced (This is the code bit!)

Transforming the List view

Transforming the integrated search

Adding expert search

Transforming the Search Centre experience

• #SPCSR Help from the community

Room Survey – Skill Levels

Foundations

Service Applications

Managed Metadata

• Provides a central repository of terms for classification of data.

User Profiles

• Stores detailed information about a user.

• Commonly integrated with one or more identity stores.

• Can be extended

Service Applications

Enterprise Search

• Allows us to find information using simple or complex queries.

• Work across site collection boundaries.

Site Columns

Column Name Type

FAQ Subject Managed Metadata

Answer Summary Single line of text

Answer Publishing HTML**

FAQ Answer Type Choice

Content Type(s)

Content Type Name Columns

SPFAQ Title

FAQ Subject

Summary Answer

Answer

FAQ Answer Type

Content Type(s)

http://contoso.sharepoint.comhttp://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/hr http://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/sa

les

Content Type Publishing

On-Premises

• Needs to be set-up! Configure Feature

Tell MMS where it is

Given it’s own Site Collection

Office 365

• Already configured!

• Wait up to 60 minutes! – Hourly timer job

Content Type Publishing

Internal Name Pain

Internal Name Pain!

The_x0020_number_x0020_of_x0020_

Internal Name Pain!

• Internal names get encoded once, then URL encoded when displayed in the browser adding to the confusion!

• The internal name of The_x0020_number_x0020_of_x0020_

• Is actually displayed in the browser as :-The%5Fx0020%5Fnumber%5Fx0020%5Fof%5Fx0020%5F

Internal Name Pain!

• Multiple long field names lose meaning

The_x0020_number_x0020_of_x0020_0

The_x0020_number_x0020_of_x0020_

Internal Name Pain!

• Creating your fields carefully will save you this pain!

• SharePoint 2013 introduces some new pain with the quick edit list functionality.

Internal Name Pain!

I’m not a dev!

• Why should I care?

I’m not a dev!

• Your developers (if you have them) will love you!

FAQ Basic

• Building the foundations Site Columns & Content Types

• Build using the Custom List template Add our Content Type

Configure Metadata Navigation

Configure Ratings

Configure list view

• Additional option Versioning/Content Approval

DEMO – FAQ Basic

FAQ Intermediate

• Expanding on the Basic configuration Enhance the item page using linked search

Content By Search Web Part **

FAQ Intermediate

• Expanding on the Basic configuration Improving the Search Centre experience

Enabling Metadata Refinement

Enhancing visibility of results

DEMO – FAQ Intermediate

FAQ Advanced

• Building further functionality Enhancing the User Experience

List view web part display templates

Search Display templates for the linked search

Search Display templates for the Search centre

Adding value using People search Configuring SME selector in Profile

Adding the Managed Property

FAQ Advanced

• The List View Display Template

Allows us to control look and behaviour

FAQ Advanced

• Search Display Templates for the linked search

FAQ Advanced

• Adding value using People Search Enhancing the user profile with a new field

Values taken from FAQ MMS values

FAQ Advanced

• Adding value using People Search New User profile column is added to search

Allows us to Search for FAQSME:SharePoint

FAQ Advanced

• Adding value using People Search Enhance the FAQ entry with related experts view

DEMO – FAQ Advanced

In Summary

• Basic and Intermediate demos built using configuration only

• Advanced demo built using low skill techniques

• Future enhancements Versioning/Content Approvals for control

Cross site collection usage

Document based FAQ lists

Combined List Items/Document FAQ lists using search

#SPCSR

www.facebook.com/hashspcsr

https://github.com/spcsr

Questions?

http://spsbe.be/

Thank you!