Providing leading collaboration and social tools in order to synergize your existing informational assets.

I have to admit that I used to sprout this kind of crap as well, because I though that it made me sound smart. But honestly when speaking to CEO’s, CIO’s and End Users they don’t want to hear this non-sensical garbage. What they want to hear as stories and examples of where SharePoint made a measurable and tangible difference in an organization.

So I have changed my tune! SharePoint Business Value comes in many forms but here are the ones that seem to resonate with clients that I talk to. They are simple one liners that I can quickly relate to users to help them understand the various capabilities that the platform offers:

Co-Authoring RFP Documents before a deadline

Its 6 people editing a single document a one time. Its the time savings meaning that people get to go home on time. Its that the Executive Assistant can format the document at the same time that others are making changes. It’s the difference between getting the RFP in on time, or missing a big business opportunity:

Recognizing a Face

Its about coming in on the first day of a new job and having people greet me because they saw my profile featured on the Intranet. Its about become part of a new organization quicker since I know information about my workmates. Its knowing that even though I have never met a person that I work with everyday I know what they look like.

Finding Experts

Its finding experts in the organization so that I don’t have to research information that others are intricately familiar with. It’s knowing who to talk to in an organization. Its find out that who you know is sometimes more important than what you know!

Find what I was looking for

It’s being able to find a document that I was working with only a couple of hours ago without tearing my hair out. Its about being able to use views in order to see content in a completely different way just by using metadata. Its really about just finding the content when I need, quickly.

Driving Change

Its being able to communicate a message to all staff in one location. About providing them the ability to engage with executives by providing comments to announcements or blog articles. About knowing what is happening in the organization by following particular keywords.

Automating A Process

Its about helping people do what they are good at, and automating stuff that takes time. Its about being automatically notified when to review a document. Its knowing where a document is in a review cycle without needing to email 10 people.

So what are your examples? Let me know what they are maybe we can make this a great resource to demonstrate simple, tangible examples of the business value that SharePoint can bring.

In this case study the client was  a large engineering firm that did extremely complex work. Many of the senior engineers had a wealth of knowledge around certain areas but most tended to work in long term project teams. In some cases long term project work meant that teams formed and rarely did other outside of the project know of the incredible wealth of knowledge that was been uncovered.

The issue this organization faced was that the junior engineers frequently had to perform research on various items – dam tailings for example. Whilst they could find content that referred to a specific topic area how did they know that they could trust the content? What if they had questions about the topic area? A considerable amount of time was spent researching topics that could simply be circumvented by the wisdom that a senior engineer could impart, but who were these people?

The solution implemented was to leverage the SharePoint 2010 User Profile capabilities and allow users to fill in their areas of expertise. It also allowed them to insert other pertinent information such as their qualifications, past projects and experience. The User Profile fields that were created relied on an open taxonomy whereby users had the option of reusing an existing term or adding their own. Considerable cost savings were realized because users were essentially creating their own taxonomy.

Various expertise shown in each Users Profile

All the fields were then exposed in search allowing all employees to search for users by expertise. Now junior engineers could quickly and easily not only find relevant content, but also relevant experts for a topic area.

Profile information available in search results

The Outcome

An interesting part of this is that the User Profile were leveraged for tangible business use. Too many organization fails to see the possibilities that these social tools can provide from a pure business context.

Two significant outcomes occurred as part of this social endeavor. Firstly there was a huge saving in time and increase in quality of the work that junior engineers did. Now not only could they find static content but they could tap into the vast wealth of experience that existed in the organization. Previously only long serving staff knew who the person in the know was, the social features of SharePoint democratized the process so that all staff could tap into that fountain of experience.

Secondly it quickly became apparent where areas of improvement needed to happen. In fact some Senior Engineers were receiving so many requests that they wanted to be removed from the system. However a better approach was established. The senior engineers started a blog on their MySite that contained answers to many of the frequently asked questions they were receiving. All of a sudden the gold mine of tacit knowledge trapped in workers became a tangible commodity that the organization could use.

The Process

The implementation of this particular initiative was relatively simple from a business standpoint and consisted of the following elements:

1. Determine the type of information that the organization wanted to capture
2. Determine the taxonomy of the information (Closed set of options, completely open or a hybrid approach)
3. Communicate the need for all staff to fill in their profile
4. Provide training on how to fill in the profile and how to search for experts

The most important part was the communication that this tool could be leveraged by anyone in the organization and that it should be kept up to date.

Conclusion

This case study is a great example of how out of the box SharePoint features can provide tangible business value. The cost savings of being able to access experts when needed can be immense, although it can be difficult to measure quantitatively.

Here are some tips from my experience that can help overcome this.

Encouraging Executive Adoption

One of the most fundamental mistakes that organizations make when rolling out profiles is not leading by example. Users will not follow if the executive team is not leading by example and the most powerful statement that a CEO or CIO can make in adoption of User Profiles is to ensure that they are up to date and to actively use it.

Bear in mind the the CEO’s profile will probably be the profile that will be visited the most, so it has to be filled in according to the policies the organization has established. If the CEO is not inline with the policies then it is highly unlikely that the organization will follow. Remember that actions speak louder than words and a profile that is completed from the CEO has immense sway over the perceptions of others.

Another tip is that if the executive team has assistants that could fill in their profile, SharePoint 2010 allows you to define an assistant on the profile that then can fill in the details without other users knowing. Sneaky, but in the battle for adoption, very valuable. Check out the post here.

Effective Communication

You need to communicate what the purpose of the User Profile in the organization. A bad example of communication is this:

As part of our SharePoint roll out each user has a profile. Please be sure to fill out the fields necessary in your profile by March 23rd 2010

Thanks,
Mr Horrible CEO

A much better example is to state why users should fill in their profile and what is in it for them:

As part of our ongoing attempts to tap into the amazing information in our organization each employee now has their very own user profile! Your user profile contains a wealth of information such as past projects, your skills, expertise and social interests.

We encourage you to fill in the profile so that you can find like minded individuals easier, find experts in topics your are interested in, see who worked in previous projects and help us all learn more about each other to strengthen the ties in this wonderful organization.

Thanks,
Mr Awesome CEO

Highlighting Functionality

Another approach is to highlight additional functionality that a complete User Profile provides such as activity feeds, people search, colleagues in common,organizational chart and others.

Expertise finding is particularly valuable for many organizations and having a complete profile is obviously a pre-requisite to this. By highlighting the business value that expertise finding provides, then tying this back to SharePoint functionality with people search, users can make the link that unless they fill in their profile they will not be found.

Social Programs

A interesting example I saw at one organization was the social clubs would only be approved and funded if a corresponding number of employees had their User Profiles filled in with their interest specified in this area.

Conversely in one organization Human Resources would poll users profiles and create events based on the interested contained. In this example they found that many people had a love of scotch in the organization so they bought someone in for the day to talk about the process of making scotch whisky ( unfortunately no one could drink )

Featured Employee

Another frequent approach is to use a User Profile to create a ‘Featured Employee’ that can be shown in an area of high visibility- usually the home page of an Intranet.

Serveral organization I have worked with have used this to great effect within their organization in the following ways:

• One organization had a ‘Friends Leaving Us‘ list that drew information from a User Profile called ‘Retire Date’. When any employee was within a month of retiring they would get free meals at the cafeteria. However they could only get on the ‘Friends Leaving Us’ list by having their entire profile populated
• Another organization used these Web Parts on the home page of various projects sites that would cycle through employees that met a specific criteria. In this case a field called ‘Current Projects‘ was listed and once a web part was configured with the project name, all employees that matched the criteria would be shown at random. It was a great way to introduce project members to each other.

I hope that you enjoyed some of these tips and tricks with getting employees to fill in their profile. In the end you have to ensure that this information is providing business value to your users. If the value is apparent then employees will populate and continue to keep their profiles up to date.

The Challenge

Where to start?

Class it up!

However, I am not entirely convinced that social tools ala Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn (status updates, following colleagues, commenting, and news feeds) can provide measurable business value. I’ve heard colloquial accounts and give merit to the arguments that they help capture organizational knowledge, that they contribute to the organizational story and that they connect employees across boundaries (both physical and hierarchical). Still, I’m on the fence.

I can barely keep up with my Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn streams; scratch that, I can’t keep up with my Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn streams. I use lists, and groups, and sign-up for summary emails and notifications; I use HootSuite and have apps on every mobile device I own. Not matter what tools I am using to try to synthesize the information, I have been unsuccessful to date (and I have no kids, only 1 job, and a decent amount of free time). I’m young, technically savvy and really love the connectivity of these platforms. I’m totally behind the idea and yet, I kind of suck at it. I just can’t keep up; the amount of information is exhausting.

So, in terms of consuming, I don’t do a great job. And in terms of contributing, also not so hot. With so many ways to contribute, and no measurable impact tied to any one specific avenue, it’s hard to know where to focus my effort. Because I’m not a active contributor (multiple interactions a day), I feel that when I do contribute, it just falls into a black hole of data.

This begs the question, if I can’t even keep up with social communities in my personal life, how on earth do enterprises get their employees to adopt and effectively use social tools within the organization? Personally, I think they will have a pretty tough time doing so.

I think that social tools would provide real business value within the enterprise if users were only exposed to information that was relevant to them, if they were better able to filter the information available to expose only what they need and if they had better parameters given to them about what type of content they should be contributing. I believe that it will be the gamification of the intranet that will help get us there (especially in terms of what type of content users should be contributing).

Gamification

So what’s so exciting about gamification? Game theory has long been used to explain economic behaviour and is used to explain political and sociological behaviour as well. It is not a new idea. What is new however, is the application of gaming techniques to everyday tasks and behaviours.

Gamification is the infusion of game mechanics, game design techniques and/or game style into anything (gamification.org). The term is typically used to describe situations where  game play elements are incorporated into non-game situations to solve problems, change behaviour or engage audiences.

Some common examples of gamification are:

• Loyalty Programs – for every dollar you spend at our store, you collect points. Enough points and you get a prize.
• Black Credit Cards – if you’re special enough, you get a black credit card. You get special status, status that others are also trying to achieve.
• Foursquare – if you visit a location enough you earn a badges and points, and you can even be granted a mayorship for visiting more than anyone else.

Most online social communities also have some form of gamification built into their system: CNN iReports hands out badges, Twitter displays the number of followers you have, etc.

So if marketers have been using these techniques for years on consumers, what is the next frontier? The corporation and the internal consumer! I believe that gamification will be a significant component in the next evolution of intranet design.

Gamification of the intranet will allow the business to assign value to certain tasks and reward those that perform those tasks most efficiently, most often, and most successfully. Reward systems automatically imply which tasks are of the highest value. This will allow the business to chose which user activity is most important to their success and build an entire game around achieving it.

Gamification in SharePoint

For example, if knowledge management is an important component to the success of your intranet and an important factor in helping users better perform their jobs, metadata is extremely important. Making sure that users always tag content with the appropriate metadata though is easier said than done. Users are busy and don’t always see the value in spending additional time tagging their content. Here’s an example of how metadata tagging could have gamification elements applied to it:

Game:

• Metadata tagging

Rewards:

• Users that assign the most metadata earn the most badges
• Users with the most badges are featured on the homepage or receive other rewards (i.e. money, gift cards, extra vacation days… in can be anything as long as your user base values it)
• Users with certain badges become leaders of a metadata community of practice (COP)
• Users with the most badges are featured on the metadata community of practice (COP) leaderboard

Badges:

• “The metadater” – Tagging x percent all of their uploaded content with metadata
• “The metadata groupie” – Ensuring that x percent of content that they edit is tagged
• “The search sheriff” – Submitting x number of search feedback forms to improve findability
• “The metadata adventurer” – Tagging x number of pieces of content on their team site
• “The taxonomy professor” – Submitting x number of taxonomy feedback forms suggestions or corrections

Now, not everyone in the organization is going to fall over themselves to start tagging content with metadata. However, those with either a propensity to do so, or those that are attracted to the rewards offered by the game, will. And your intranet content goes from being haphazardly tagged with metadata to systematically being tagged with metadata by educated and enthusiastic users.

Besides having better metadata, a great side benefit of this game is that you start to build organizational capacity around taxonomy, metadata, and search. You build a community of users that care about this as a component of the intranet and will advocate for it on your behalf. They are more likely to educate their peers of the value of metadata and those that are most keen will start to search out additional information on taxonomy, metadata and search. And eventually, you will be able to recruit your metadata power users to developing new badges and new components of the game.

This is just one example of what I believe to be boundless opportunities for gamification within the enterprise.

Gaming is fun, it’s collaborative, and it’s motivating. I believe that by appropriately injecting it into our work lives (rewarding the most valuable business behaviours), we will see an increase in productivity and efficiency.

I would love to hear your thoughts!

Further reading

Gamification for the intranet:

• Attini Badges

Gamification startups:

• Badgeville
• Rypple

Gamification articles:

• Enterprise 3.0: Moving From Engagement to Participation Through Gamification (CMS Wire)
• Seth Priebatsch: The game layer on top of the world (TED Talks)

I use many of the techniques presented when running requirements gathering workshops for SharePoint and one that I am particularly fond of is the Cover Story game.

A clear, compelling vision for SharePoint is a must if want to have the best chances of success. However simply asking a bunch of stakeholders the question “So what is the vision for SharePoint?” is probably not going to get you the results that you are hoping for. An effective way to get users to describe their vision for SharePoint is the Cover Story game. As taken from the Dave Gray’s blog:

Cover Story is a game about pure imagination. The purpose is to think expansively around an ideal future state for the organization; it’s an exercise in visioning. The object of the game is to suspend all disbelief and envision a future state that is so stellar that it landed your organization on the cover of a well-known magazine. The players must pretend as though this future has already taken place and has been reported by the mainstream media. This game is worth playing because it not only encourages people to “think big,” but also actually plants the seeds for a future that perhaps wasn’t possible before the game was played

The reason that this works particularly well for SharePoint is that there are a number of possible visions that an organization may have for the platform. The Cover Story game gives you enough structure to ensure that you get tangible examples without constraining users from being able to really explore the many possible end states.

Running the game

In order to play the game you break down your users into groups of between 4 and 6. Ensure that each group has markers and get them to fill in the template below which is usually printed on a big poster stuck to a wall.

Explain the object of the game is to define each category on the template:

• Cover: Tells the story of their big success
• Headline: The substance of the cover story
• Sidebars: Interesting facts about the story
• Quotes: Quotes from potential end users of the solution
• Brainstorm: documenting initial ideas (this is important!)
• Images: Supporting the content with illustrations

At the end of the time period, usually an hour, get the groups to present their cover story, essentially their vision of SharePoint, to the rest of the groups and then discuss.

Real World Example

I ran this game with a large financial organization (lets call them FinCorp) that was implementing a search solution on the SharePoint platform. Seeing how search can be leveraged in different ways to address different needs I was interested to determine the vision of the search solution. Here are some of the results:

Headlines

• “FinCorp Search provides slick, smart service”
• “Fincorp search promotes knowledge sharing with other departments thus driving down costs”
• “FinCorp search reduces the time to find experts and allowing greater customer satisfaction”
• “FinCorp search allows users to find what they need and allow them to express the opinions on search”

Some pretty interesting statements there and after drilling down further a number of different possible visions presented themselves. If you notice search was leveraged in a few different ways: promoting knowledge sharing, finding experts, allowing people to express the opinion on search. It was not all about just ‘Search will help me find stuff quicker” but it was really more about being able to connect people and share knowledge easier. All great information for the SharePoint Analyst when the time comes to prioritize the areas for requirements elicitation.

Quotes

• “Not only can I find WHAT I need, but I can find WHO I need as well”
• “I love it that I can connect with other employees  to find a running partner through our people search”
• “As a new employee I can put a name to a face quickly so I become part of FinCorp’s family quicker”
• “I knew that we had the information somewhere inside FinCorp, now I know where”
• “Not only did I find what I was looking for, but I also found related content that led me to new ideas”

Once again the quotes were interesting. A strong theme that emerged was that searching for people was just as important as content (great information for you search requirements gathering plan as a focus area) and that finding related content was almost as important as the content that you were looking for.

However some other interesting themes emerged. For FinCorp helping people connect, both socially and professionally, was very important and search can be leveraged for that as well. In addition this organization was trying to become more agile and innovative in its practices. Exposing related content and popular keywords was also very important.

The Outcome

So what was the outcome of this workshop for us:

1. We knew that since people were just as important as content that we really had to target requirements gathering activities at both content but also all the elements for a successful people search solution ( User Profiles, Taxonomy Terms, Custom Profile Fields and so on)
2. We found that by introducing a ‘Related Keywords’ webpart on the search result page that users will be exposed to other items of interest, encouraging them to explore topic areas outside their immediate interest
3. We allowed users to rate their search experience and suggest best bets which was hugely popular

Of course I haven’t done a great job in explaining the many details of the game but I would encourage you to buy the Gamestorming: A Playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers and Changemakers book and read it for yourself. The Cover Story exercise really promotes people thinking outside the box in an environment that allows for great conversation and ideas to come forth.

If you are starting on your SharePoint journey and need your stakeholders to articulate their vision for SharePoint then try using this technique, you will find that it will product some fantastic results.

Entitled “Effective Requirements Gathering for Search in SharePoint 2010” I will dispel some commonly held myths around search and provide some simple tips and tricks such as:

• Why bother gathering search requirements at all?
• How to make sure that your search requirements make sense
• Various techniques for eliciting requirements
• How to translate business/user requirements to functional specifications that can be implemented

It’s going to be a whirlwind 30 minutes of requirements gathering goodness so make sure you register and if you have any feedback please feel free to contact me.

Register here

Unfortunately most Governance plans, assuming they exist, don’t consider search from a vision, communication, operational and improvement perspective. Of course not having clear governance around search is one of the six reason your search may suck.

So what should a Search governance plan consist of and do? Well here are my ramblings on the matter:

Vision

What is the vision for your search beyond ‘Finding stuff easier’ or ‘Google like search’?

Your vision for search should be part of the overall vision for SharePoint within the organization. From a purely search perspective the vision of search should communicate the following:

• What are we trying to achieve with search: Is it to connect people ( spending more effort on people search), is it to find content quicker ( consistent metadata and taxonomy), is it to promote innovation ( federated results and custom results pages)  or is it something else?
• What is the roadmap for search: When will new content sources be bought on line? When will external content be indexed? Will we be implementing FAST or a third party product?
• How can users influence search within the organization: What means are there to suggest improvements to search? How will search be tuned? Who will be responsible for a great search experience?

Criteria for content being indexed in the organization

“Just because you can doesn’t mean you should”

Too many organizations go on an all out indexing binge when they get SharePoint. In your governance plan you need to establish a clear criteria around what is going to be indexed and what is not. Some things to remember:

• Indexing Content is NOT free. The more content that you index and expose to users the more difficult it is to control the accuracy and relevancy of your search results. You need more hardware. You need to manage it better. You need to consider DR more.
• Don’t mix high value content with old garbage: Only index content that will provide value, tangible value to users. There is no point indexing quality data and content accessed once per year to present to users in the same scope.
• Establish clear criteria for indexing content: You need to establish a clear criteria about what content will be indexed and what shouldn’t be. In my experience unless the business can justify high value use cases for said content, its not going to be indexed.

Who is responsible for search?

The responsibility should be part business and part IT

The best search implementations that I have seen have both a business and a technical side that is responsible for search. A good search should be robust and stable from an infrastructure perspective, whilst valuable and accurate from a business perspective.

A good SharePoint Analyst when dealing with search will do the following:

• Gather requirements for best bets, keywords, scopes, refinements and all the other good search stuff
• Match search capabilities to configuration and identify possible gaps
• Work as an evangelist to promote search throughout the organization

Combined with a technical person that is responsible for:

• Keeping search running (back ups, indexing, disaster recovery)
• Determining how requirements should be configured or implemeneted

Keep the Default ( ‘All Sites’) Search Scope Holy

Don’t dump high value results with old crap and expect your search to be great

Not really part of governance but in my mind this is the biggest reason that search sucks for most users in SharePoint 2010. There is simply no reason for the default search scope to contain every single piece of content that you have indexed. This search scope should ONLY contain high value, frequently used items.

For less frequently accessed content use scopes to allow users to search for content, without tainting the default search scope. Here is an example of how various scopes can be leveraged to provide the ability to search for different type of content, whilst ensuring that search is effective for all.

Of course there are many more items that you should consider but hopefully this gets the creative juices flowing

Personally I view Paul as a mentor, a fellow lover of scotch and a visionary. So I am thrilled to bringing him to beautiful Vancouver Canada for not just one, but two, courses in February 2012.

Firstly Paul will be running his popular and amazing SharePoint Governance and  Information Architecture Master Class on February 6-7th 2012. Two full days real world examples, knowledge and techniques.

Secondly Paul will also be running an Issue Mapping Master Class on Feb 9-10th 2012. This course will teach you to learn to deal with complex problems using the technique of Issue Mapping.

I’m going to be frank. If you are associated with Business Analysis, Project Management or SharePoint these are the two most valuable courses that you will probably attend. My experience with Paul was eye opening, insightful and super valuable.

To get a brief insight into Paul’s mind see the video below:

How do I register?

• To register for the SharePoint Information Architecture and Governance Master Class simply click here.
• To register for the Issue Mapping Master Class simply click here

How can I help promote this?

There are a couple of twitter hashtags that we have set up to help promote this event. I would love to see these tags trending on twitter one day

However feel fee to use the #SPIAYVR tag for the Governance Master Class and the #IMYVR tag for the Issue Mapping class.

I have some questions

Feel free to contact me at michalpisarek@sharepointanalysthq.com and I will answer all your questions. If you are a company looking to send multiple people down then please let me know and I can also assist in helping out in getting some great accommodations in Vancouver and be your guide!

What do others think?

If you have been to a class run by Paul or have seen him present then you know what to expect. However here are some reviews for others that lavish praise:

• Wes Hackett’s review
• Ben McMann’s review
• My review
• Brendan Newell’s review
• Other Reviews

Last Thoughts

If you have any questions at all, or wish to help spread the word, then please get in contact with me via the many ways that exist. I really, really want to make sure that all attendees and Paul have a great time so I am here to help.

To those coming I look forward to meeting you all in Vancouver. I will also be organizing some post event gatherings as well featuring some great food and libations!

Being able to control the types of files is essential to any organization to ensure that only the correct type of content is stored within the platform. Many organizations encourage their users to move content to SharePoint, however they do not want users moving their entire ITunes library or video collection to the platform.

Another issue is of maximum file size. The ability to control the maximum size of file that can be uploaded to SharePoint is a must for many organizations. In MOSS 2007 database administrators were frequently hesitant to store large files within SharePoint simply due to the fact that databases are not optimized for the storage of large BLOB files. Although Remote Blob Storage provides a great deal of flexibility where BLOB files can now be stored we still want a mechanism to control the maximum size of files.

So our problem statement is “Can we control both the type and size of content that gets stored within SharePoint 2010?”

The Solution – Blocked File Types and Maximum File Size

SharePoint 2010 comes with some out of the box tools to help us solve the issue that we have.

Configuring Block File Types

Ton configure the types of file that we would like to block navigate the Central Administration->Security->Define Block File Types

From here we can choose to define the various types of files that we will not allow user to upload. Just enter in one per line. For this example I am going to add zip files so users will not be able to upload zip files.

You don’t need to put the dot in front of the extension and also these settings apply to the entire Web Application. Keep in mind that SharePoint 2010 also blocks about a 100 file types by default as well.

Now if a user tries to upload a file that is blocked they will receive nice informative error message:

Configuring Maximum File Sizes

Configuring maximum file sizes is just as easy but done in a slightly different location within Central Administration. Navigate to Central Administration->Manage Web Applications->Select your Web Application->General Settings

At the bottom of the page is your Maximum Upload Size. Set it to whatever value you like and press OK. The default value for a Web Application is 50MB in case you were wondering:

Now if a user uploads a file size greater than the allowable maximum they will receive an error:

Other thoughts

As you can see it’s quite easy to configure these setting from an Administrator perspective and it will help you govern your environment. However a few important things to note:

• The maximum file size is subject across all files, you cannot configure individual file types to different sizes.
• Frequently a Digital Asset Management system will exist in its own Site Collection because it will need to have a higher maximum upload file size than other content within a SharePoint installation
• Since these settings are at the Web Application level all Site Collections will be subject to the file type and size restriction
• RBS has a hard limit of 2GB. Regardless of whether you are using RBS or a SQL database you will only be able to retrieve a 2GB file.