Tips for Improving SharePoint Governance in your Organization
The 21apps.com Blog recently posted, “3 Ways to Apply SharePoint Governance in Your Organization.” The author discusses how to ensure your organization has a shared vision for an ongoing successful SharePoint platform. The first way is to take a closer look at your governance documents:
Hopefully any governance document you have is written in “plain English”, succinct and relevant? Maybe you’ve even been brave enough to publish it as some kind of wiki. Whatever medium and format you choose to have any SharePoint governance documentation, please ensure that you apply continuous improvement principles to it. Most SharePoint solutions are emergent as in they evolve as people and organisations “learn”, adapt, evolve and pivot; your governance documentation must be in a format to evolve with these business and organisational shifts.
The need for governance boards, including Strategic and Tactical groups, is also discussed. The article brings up some valid points and also provides a number of handy links to get you going on governance development.
SharePoint is no doubt a powerful platform to manage your vast document collection. But to also add a powerful search and navigation feature, consider a third party solution to round out your SharePoint system. We recommend the tightly integrated suite of solutions available at Smartlogic. The semantic technology behind the Semaphore Content Intelligence Platform improves precision and recall on search results by adding complex classification capabilities to add metadata to the search index.
Ken Toth, May 18, 2012
Realize Productivity Gains by Analyzing Top SAP Transactions in SharePoint
In “Top 20 SAP Transactions and Quick Wins Using SharePoint,” the author looks at SAP Workload Monitor logs and analyzes the aggregated data. A list of the top 20 transactions based on actual usage data aggregated from more than 250 SAP customers worldwide is included. Number one on the list? Tcode VA02 – Change Sales Order. The author offers this feedback about the data:
A really interesting aspect of this list is that it includes eight display transactions. In other words, some of the most frequent use of the SAP GUI is simply to retrieve information and not perform any updates on the system. We are all familiar with the well-known usability issues of the SAP GUI. Having to navigate and master this generic interface for quick lookups and retrieval of business data, often while performing work in other tools, is an unnecessary burden on productivity.
The list may be worth reviewing to help you realize productivity gains by surfacing SAP through SharePoint. Faster services to customers, less staff frustration, and higher productivity can also be results of an efficient search system. Consider Smartlogic as a cost-effective and comprehensive search solution and means to gain productivity. Semaphore for SharePoint has “components that semantically enhance the user experience in any consuming application to deliver the most powerful and flexible navigation along with the most accurate search results.” Read more at Smartlogic.
Ken Toth, May 17, 2012
Quick Guide to Scheduling Web Analytics Reports in SharePoint
Neil King looks at Web Analytics and reports that can be provided to end users in his recent article, “More Fun with SharePoint Web Analytics.” King discusses the basic Web Analytics reports that are the sort of thing you can hand to a client, but then he explains the road block he hit:
So the next stage was to get the Schedule Web Analytics Reports workflow running and send the reports to a test user for analysis, this is when the fun started, no matter what we did the workflow simply refused to work, all we were getting was “An error has occurred in” and no reports, nothing in the ULS logs, nothing in the Event Viewer and nothing of any help in the Workflow History list, really handy, we knew that ‘normal’ workflows such as Approval worked fine on this system, so it was a bit baffling.
The test account did not have a mailbox so after the switch to a different account with a mailbox, the Schedule Web Analytics Report worked fine. The article is worth a look if you’ve experimented with Web Analytics reports or are interested in starting.
Understanding and using analytics is a great advantage in any organization. It seems the experts at Smartlogic also understand the benefits of analytics. Here you can read about the advantages of using Semaphore for SharePoint and the “comprehensive text analytics including entity extraction and natural language processing tools to deliver better performing taxonomies in a fraction of the time.” Point your browser to www.smartlogic.com to learn more.
Ken Toth, May 17, 2012
Compilation of Top Technology Websites Built on SharePoint
The TopSharePoint.com Blog has compiled a list of stellar Web sites as examples in their post, “Best Technology Websites on SharePoint.” The author explains the inspiring collection:
For this web design inspiration jolt, I decided to continue our series of industry specific showcase with a collection of 50 beautiful and innovative technology related companies with websites built on SharePoint.
Techxx, Pantone, and dataBridge are just some of the example sites in the list. The inspiration gallery is a great way to review other sites and get ideas for your development projects.
To give your Web site a powerful search feature with a user-friendly experience, consider a third party solution like Smartlogic. The Semaphore Search Application Framework is a “a great search experience out of the box by allowing users to tweak and customize to meet application specification requirements with minimal development effort.” Navigate to www.smartlogic.com to read more about content management solutions from Smartlogic.
Ken Toth, May 16, 2012
Understanding the Difference Between SharePoint Publishing and Collaboration
In “SharePoint Publishing vs. Collaboration – The Difference in Basic Words” from the SharePoint Tutorial blog, Andreas Glaser fleshes out the details of publishing and collaboration. Glaser explains:
Publishing isn’t some kind of template or Site Definition…it’s a mechanism changing the authoring and deployment experience of your web content sites. Regarding branding publishing allows you to set Master Pages and Page Layouts in a more flexible way or to upload your own custom layouts via the User Interface using no code. A publishing environment is more like a static website used to display information which does not change very often. A collaboration environment is more dynamically regarding the information storage or exchange. Lists and libraries are extensively used in a collaboration environment.
The author also adds that if content changes dynamically, consider a collaboration site so users can extensively use lists, libraries, share a calendar, have discussion, and review tasks.
One simple way to get encourage collaboration is by integrating a powerful search feature into your SharePoint system so users can efficiently find and reuse information. The experts at Smartlogic really understand the benefits of metadata. Here you can read about the comprehensive solution, “Tagging information with metadata significantly enhances its findability. Metadata also improves the consistency and quality of the output so content can be repurposed and reused slashing time it takes to create new content.”
Ken Toth, May 16, 2012
How to Provision SharePoint 2010 Navigation and Quick Launch
Yaroslav Pentsarskyy brings us another troubleshooting guide in, “How To: Auto-Provisioning SharePoint 2010 Navigation,” over at the ShareMuch.com Blog. The author explains:
When you have to provision a SharePoint site with a pre-defined template, one of the most common items you will be asked to add is navigation. After all, your users want to see their quick launch and global navigation, way before the rest of the “lorem ipsum” pages are in place since those are core elements of the site user interface.
Adding quick launch and global navigation is a good way to enhance the user experience, and Pentsarskyy’s article is a good place to start. But we also know that users can benefit from faceted search results, related topic navigation, best bets, and concept expansion. A cost-effective way to incorporate search benefits is by adding an integrated third party solution. Smartlogic fits seamlessly into SharePoint and adds a rich set of features to boost the search and navigation experience. Read more at www.smartlogic.com.
Ken Toth, May 16, 2012
Speculation on Microsoft SharePoint 15 Beta Availability in June
In “Office 15 and SharePoint 15 Beta Availability,” Bjorn Furuknap speculates on the possibility of a beta version of SharePoint available in early June. Furuknap has this to share on the speculated beta version release date:
However, up until now, this has been pure speculation, and Microsoft has officially only said “this summer”, which can mean anything up to the end of August. That changed recently when the program for an Austrian SharePoint conference came out. In that program, SharePoint and Office 15 are on the schedule, and sessions are delivered by Microsoft employees and MVPs. If the NDA isn’t lifted by the conference, it will be extremely difficult for them to say anything. A public conference on SharePoint 15 with no NDA content would be very quiet indeed.
Given Furuknap’s research into Microsoft announcements, document releases, conference schedules, and job announcements, it seems he has pieced the puzzle together to support his observations. The read may be a good one if you’re looking to stay current in the SharePoint 2013 loop.
SharePoint is no doubt becoming the industry standard for both big and small information management. To really extend SharePoint’s capabilities, consider Smartlogic for a complete search and navigation experience in your farm. The Semaphore Content Intelligence Platform enriches metadata turning your vast content into valuable and accessible business knowledge that employees can reuse.
Ken Toth, May 16, 2012
MCT and Semaphore Forge Golden Age in Content Delivery
McClatchy-Tribune Information Services is a leading media content service, and part of the renowned McClatchy Company, which today owns 30 daily newspapers in 29 U.S. markets. The McClatchy Company dates back to 1857 and the California Gold Rush, when James McClatchy helped found one of the area’s first newspapers, “The Sacramento Bee”, becoming editor within a week. The company expanded in the 1920’s with the founding of Fresno and Modesto newspapers, covering California news for over a century. In the 1970’s and 1980’s the company expanded again, purchasing news publications in Washington State and Alaska; a trend which has continued to recent years. The most notable purchase was the June, 2006 acquisition of Knight Ridder, which added 32 new publications (20 of which McClatchy retained for their desirable markets).
MCT Direct is the U.S. and web content service provided by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services, and offers news stories, photographs, graphics, themed content packages, paginated products, illustrations, and feature articles including editorials and specialized columns, in a wide variety of subjects. More than 60 newspapers in the United States and abroad provide content to MCT’s materials, along with a number of internal staff members who also generate content. MCT in turn supplies this media to over 1,200 clients worldwide for use in print and online publications.
In a media market with so many subjects of interest and delivery mediums, there has been an ongoing trend by media outlets to specialize in niche content. The “specialized” approach demands a richer stream of high quality news and commentary designed for the needs of a specific audience, which can range from business needs to developments in art or culinary matters. MCT was not immediately set up to offer a focused information stream of such narrow scope, as their categorization schemas worked in a broader, generalized way.
In order to not only keep up, but take full advantage of the trend for specialization, MCT carefully selected Smartlogic’s semantic platform Semaphore for the job. Semaphore provided a customized experience for the company, based on the variety of media and formats in their storage. Topical classification of MCT’s stored materials has been made possible through a combination of Semaphore Ontology Manager, Semaphore Classification Server, and Semaphore Semantic Enhancement Server. First, the Ontology Manager processes the digitized media materials for a searchable list of related words and concepts detected within the vast content to establish not only the topics of each piece but the relation of one piece of media to another. The selection of related keywords creates a set of metadata that allows for precise and specific searches that would be impossible without an advanced software solution.
Next, the Classification Server generates a series of rules to read the content (existing in over 200 formats) and decipher the words tagged in the Ontology Manager and their relationships in order to generate meaningful, useful categories including title, body, headings, articles, sentences, words, and others. The Semaphore Enhancement Server is the interface then used by MCT staff to search and filter all of the content that has been made available by the other tools.
With the power of Smartlogic’s Semaphore at their disposal, MCT Direct can spend less time searching for desired media and more time focusing on the needs of their clients, which can only lead to further success in expansion and customer satisfaction.
Ken Toth, May 15, 2012