Welcome to the Minnesota SharePoint

User Group

• Survey Results

• Upcoming Schedule

• Taxonomy – A Business Perspective

• Taxonomy – A Technical Perspective

• Q & A

Agenda

Survey Results – User Group MembersUser Group Members

75%

25%

IT

Other

Survey Results – Business Drivers … ABC’sBusiness Drivers

50%

21%

29%

Access to information

Business Process

Collaboration

• Learn from others

• Best Practices

• Find out what’s new

• Training

• Learn innovative uses

Survey Results -- Objectives of User Group

• Next Meeting – Captaris TeamPlate – 3rd Party Workflow Solution

• July 27th at Microsoft’s Bloomington Office – 9:00 AM to 11:00 AM

Upcoming Schedule

•Topics

• Definition & Theory

• Portal Pains

• Taxonomy; Structure vs. View

• Suggestions on Getting Started…

• What does lack of structure cost?

• Best Practices

Taxonomy – A Business Perspective

Portal – ”…a doorway, and entrance, or a gate”

Where are your doorways?

• Enterprise, Division, Business Unit, Project, Event, Document?

Scope – Depth vs. Breadth (both?)

• Audience & Purpose (informational; personalized; workplace)

Taxonomy – “…the science, laws, or principles of classifications”

Practical Definition

“Taxonomy is a conceptual framework for organizing enterprise or companywide content so our employees, partners, and customers can locate what they need easily!”

Taxonomy – Definition & Theory

Sound Familiar?

• “I just can’t find the data I’m looking for.”

• “Our portal has a ton of data but no information!”

• “The intranet data is not relevant to me.”

• “Search results are inconsistent and erroneous.”

• “Every business unit “site” is a discovery process. There’s no site branding or page design standards.”

It’s time to get organized!

Portal Pains – “Side effect of no/poor taxonomy”

Taxonomy Structure

Multi-level; hierarchy; relational

Used to categorize information

Integral part of content management solution

Foundation for a successful search function

Taxonomy: Structure vs. View

Taxonomy View

Visual representation of taxonomy structure

View can mirror structure or be completely different

Not restricted to visual presentation as a hierarchy

Can have multiple views of same taxonomy structure

Keys:

• “Who is your audience and how do they want to consume your content?”

• View should be derived from consumer’s usage patterns

1. Form a Team• Subject matter experts from business• Technical representation• # of participants varies with size of organization & project scope

2. Define Scope• Content (e.g. company wide, divisional, department, project, etc.)• How will taxonomy be used?• Who is information consumer(s)?

3. Create Taxonomy• Documented; Awareness; Education (i.e. how do I implement?)• Structure before View(?)

4. Implementation• Consistency; Discipline!• Content population – don’t underestimate effort!

Practical Suggestions for Getting Started…

Cost can be qualified as (ZDNet.com):

• Time wasted in unsuccessful searches,

• Low return on investment in information collection/storage efforts,

such as data warehousing and content management, because

searchers cannot find information,

• Poor decisions made due to inaccurate or incomplete information,

• Frustrating user experiences potentially damaging brand loyalty,

customer/partner relationships, and internal user relationships.

What does lack of structure cost?

1. Create, Publicize, & Monitor Taxonomy Structure/View

2. Involve Subject Matter Experts from Business

3. Don’t allow “View” to derail “Structure”

4. Content Population – Educate & Maintain; Don’t Underestimate!

Taxonomy – Best Practice Suggestions

•Topics

•Taxonomy and SharePoint

•Areas & Topics

•Portal Listings & Groupings

•WSS Sites and the Sites Directory

•Demo: Areas, Topics, Listings, WSS Sites & the Sites Directory

•The Topic Assistant

•Demo: The Topic Assistant

•SPS Searching

•Demo: SPS Searching

•Custom Search Web Part

•Demo: Custom Search Web Part

Taxonomy – A Technical Perspective

Searching

•How does SharePoint Portal Server answer the business questions related to Taxonomy?

•SharePoint Portal Server – a framework:

•Structuring Information

•Viewing/Categorizing Information

•Searching

•Targeting/Pushing Information

Taxonomy and SharePoint

Areas

Topics

Content

Libraries Listings

Audiences

NE Corp – The Demo Portal EnvironmentNE Corp

Home

News Topics HR IT Operations Sales Sites

Markets Locations Products Custs.Com. Of

Prac.

SQL WSS Office .NET SPS CRM Document Library w/ Common Meta-data

Utilizes Grouped Listings

Utilizes Area Contents (sub-topic navigation)

WSS Site Collection

Communities of Practice Top-level Site Collection

SPS Community Collaboration Site (and sub-sites)

Other Community Collaboration Sites

So what is the difference? Why give two names to seemingly the same thing?

•Areas

•Framework for your portal’s structure

•Provides portal navigation, hierarchy, and categorization

•Provides both storage structure and logical view of your organization’s taxonomy.

•Core Areas

•Home

•*Topics

•News

•Sites Directory

Areas & Topics Core Areas: Home, Topics, News, Sites, etc.

•Topics

•Hierarchy of Information Categories for your organization

•Typically created under the default “Topics” Area

•Directly visible on the portal Home Page via secondary navigation

•Specialized Area that contains the following core Web Parts:

•Area Contents (hierarchy of sub-areas)

•Area Details (description and contact information for the Topic)

•Targeted Highlights from Community sub-topics

•Grouped Listings (grouping of links to content and experts that have been associated/submitted to the Topic)

Areas & Topics (continued)

Topics: May cross divisional-boundaries and functional areas

Area Details Web Part

Targeted Content Web Part

Area Contents Web PartGrouped Listings

•Best Practices

•Gather information from all roles within your organization to define your domain

•“How people think about information will heavily influence how they will want to browse for information.” SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Resource Kit

•Hierarchy should be based on static information

•Limit the number of top-level Areas

•Limit the depth of your Topic hierarchy to 3 or 4 levels

•Identify subject matter experts and delegate responsibility for managing content

•IT can’t solve every problem – Domain expertise is a must

Areas & Topics (continued)

Portal Listings & GroupingsPortal listings provide a mechanism to aggregate and group links to relevant content and subject matter experts.

•Aggregate and organize content

•Links to documents (w/in Portal or public file shares)

•Links to libraries (i.e. Portal and WSS)

•Links to sites (i.e. WSS, Internal, External)

•Links to people (Profiles crawled from AD Import)

•Provide logical grouping

•Highlight

•General

•Expert

•Custom Groupings

•Provide access to content through different views

•1 document can be linked to multiple Topic/Area Listings via submission model.

Portal Listings (Links to sites, people, etc.)

Portal Groups (i.e., Development)

ASP.NET 2.0 • Web Part Development

enhancements that Whidbey provides

• General ASP.NET enhancements that Whidbey provides

Portal Listings & Groupings (continued)•Submission Model - “Submit to Portal Area”

•Search Results

•Document/Image Libraries

•Documents

•WSS Sites “connected” to portal

•Approval Model

•Managed in the Area/Topic

•Publishing

•Audience Targeting

•Important Note: currently, portal listings are not cleaned up when the linked content is deleted; however, you can manage listings that exist across multiple areas in a central location.

WSS Sites & the Site DirectoryThe Site Directory acts as your Portal’s white pages for both Windows SharePoint Services and external sites.

•Built-in functionality for browsing and searching sites that have been submitted to or created from the Site Directory.

–WSS Sites–Other internal non-portal sites–External sites (i.e. competitor’s sites)

•Browse by Division/Region or text search•Site Directory is a list with custom behavior•Customizable just like any List in SPS

–Custom meta-data–Create WSS site form

•Sites included in the Site Directory are crawled and stored in “Non_Portal_Content”•WSS Sites that are created can be “Submitted to a Portal Area”

How can I put them all together?NE Corp

Home

News Topics HR IT Operations Sales Sites

Markets Locations Products Custs.Com. Of

Prac.

SQL WSS Office .NET SPS CRM Document Library w/ Common Meta-data

Utilizes Grouped Listings

Utilizes Area Contents (sub-topic navigation)

WSS Site Collection

Communities of Practice Top-level Site Collection

SPS Community Collaboration Site (and sub-sites)

Other Community Collaboration Sites

DemoAreas, Topics, Listings, WSS Sites & the Sites Directory

The Topic AssistantLet your portal automatically discover and

categorize your content.

• Automatically organize documents into your Portal Topics/Areas

– links to content appear in Portal Listings as Pending Listings.

• “Suggests” listings based on existing categorized listings in enabled Topics/Areas

• Requires “Training”– At least 2 Topics/Areas with at least 10

documents• Topics/Areas must be “Topic Assistant Enabled”• Requires approval/rejection

– Area Managers can view Pending listings under Portal Listings management

DemoThe Topic Assistant

Portal Search & Scopes•Quick review of terminology used:

–Content Index – physical storage of the indexed content–Content Source –content that is to be indexed (i.e. a URL, a File Share, etc.)

•External Sites•WSS Sites (those that aren’t “connected” to the portal through the Sites Directory)

–Source Group – consists of one or more Content Sources (i.e. Communities of Practice WSS Site Collection)–Search Scope – The union of Topics/Areas and/or specific Source Groups (i.e. Communities of Practice)

•Scopes–The union of one or more Source Groups and/or one or more Topics/Areas–Available as items in the Search drop-down–Out-of-the-box there is one scope (All sources), and one custom scope specific to the current Area/Topic being displayed (This topic)–Examples:

•IT Scope–WSS Sites for IT–IT Area or Divisional Portal–External technology sites

•People–All individuals in your organization (User Profiles and Public My Site Content)

All Sources – Portal AND Non Portal Content

This topic – the current topic and all sub-topics (or Areas)

Portal Search & Scopes (continued)•NE Corp Custom Search Scope: Communities of Practice•Union of the Communities of Practice Topic and sub-topics with the Communities of Practice top-level WSS Site Collection•Intuitive access to relevant Information

–Directly available as a Scope from the Home Page of the Portal

•Search Scope Management Screen

*Other companies have defined scopes for Divisions that are setup as either separate portals or portal areas along with a corresponding WSS Site Collection for the Division. (i.e. an HR Portal Area UNIONED with an HR WSS Site Collection)

NE Corp Home

News Topics HR IT Operations Sales Sites

Markets Locations Products Custs.Com. Of

Prac.

SQL WSS Office .NET SPS CRM Document Library w/

Common Meta-data

Utilizes Grouped

Listings

Utilizes Area

Contents (sub-

topic navigation)

WSS Site Collection

Communities of Practice Top-level

Site Collection

SPS Community Collaboration Site

(and sub-sites)

Other Community Collaboration Sites

Communities of Practice Scope

Portal Search & Scopes (continued)•Searching is extensible – tailor the search functionality to meet your end-user’s evolving needs•Advanced Searching

–Search on meta-data from crawled content•Defined by:

–Meta Tags on sites–Meta-data on lists/libraries

•Customizable–urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office

–Define Keywords and Best Bets•Identify keywords within your organization’s domain and associate content links•Define synonyms for Keywords (i.e., SharePoint = SPS = WSS = Portal, etc.) *even misspelligns•Parse IIS Logs to identify what users are searching for

Meta-data: based on properties from crawled content

Best Bet indicated by a “Star”

User-determined grouping and ordering of results.

DemoPortal Searching

Custom Search Web PartIn order to demonstrate the extensibility of Portal its search capabilities, we developed a web part that provides a customized advanced search experience.

•The Foundation

•Identified a standard document library to use as a template

•Identified custom meta-data to associate to documents within the library

•Department

•Document Type

•Keywords

•Configured meta-data properties through “Manage Properties of Crawled Content”

•Implemented a web part with search criteria form and search results grid

Custom Search Sample

Custom Search Web Part (continued)•Behind the scenes…

•Implemented a utility that uses the custom search wrapper to provide an API to the web part developer – The web part doesn’t need to handle the generation of the SQL query string so that it has the potential to be reused.

•Implemented a custom search wrapper to hide the details of the SQL search query string

•Implemented Web Part to consume the search wrapper, display the search form, and display the resulting DataGrid.

DemoCustom Search Web Part

Custom Search Web Part (continued)The C# code will be made available “AS IS” on the User Group web site – knowledge of

search administration and web part deployment is required.

The web part makes the following assumptions about the environment:

1. One or more document libraries exist with the specific meta-data (our template will be available in the zip) The document library can only be used on Areas that have the Community Template (Since the library is basic, it can easily be recreated for an Area template of your choice)

2. The meta-data properties have been configured through site administration

3. The web part assembly is installed in the GAC or elevate trust has been granted in the web.config.

4. The appropriate <SafeControls> entry has been added to the web.config.

•Utilize Areas & Topics for structuring your site’s content – gather information from domain experts in your organization to aid in defining your taxonomy

•Consider Portal Listings & Groupings for organizing content in your Areas/Topics and utilize the Topic Assistant to aid in the categorization of your content. Remember, it is up to you to incorporate the assistant’s suggestions.

•Take advantage of the targeting functionality to push relevant content to groups of users

•Use the Sites Directory as a white pages into your organization’s collaboration environment

•Understand the power of searching in SharePoint Portal

•Checkout the sample source code for the custom search web part

Summary

Q & A