Day 3 started off with back-to-back high-quality sessions around SharePoint Governance and Planning and Intranet best practices. After being involved (at various levels) with three major Enterprise-level SharePoint deployments, it was great to listen in on experts talk about the same pain and issues that I had experienced in the past. The sessions were in-depth and made me think about how the process of governance could be improved on.
SharePoint Governance: The first concept was building many web applications which serve different purposes. The example I can wrap my head around is when different departments have disparate needs: one wants short-term collaboration, another wants application functionality with Excel Services, and another wants to build their own web parts, so creating different web applications with different rules could be a stream-lined way to manage these sites. The initial thought would be that requires too much planning and work, but really seems to be a time-saving because a user will understand the rules in their Web Application and build accordingly. As for the IT group, they also know what exists in which area.
Intranet Best Practices: Second session was solely focused around Intranet best practices and centered around planning, communication, solving business needs versus providing technology solutions, and Information Architecture. The main take-away from this was that the business should drive Intranet creation and it’s very important to have an Executive that supports the goals (I totally agree with this), not IT, not a small group. An Intranet is a huge undertaking so it really needs executive support. There was a case study which showed how Del Monte USA created a successful, employee-process driven site and used many best practices and keep an iterative cycle of development.
Microsoft Services Online for SharePoint: Another session on the agenda was the case study of Coca-Cola Bottling centered in Atlanta. Their story was that their evaluation of the MSO platform, their acceptance of the pros and cons, and embracing the platform for all its potential. The Coca-Cola Company used the Cloud service for their intranet and collaboration in impressive style. The sites were branded, customized, and followed a proper development cycle within the Microsoft environment.
MSO is just SharePoint, but there are a bunch of restrictions and other considerations that need to be taken into view when customizing the User Experience (UX). The company accounted for growth and seems to be able to grow their investment with the newest features coming in SharePoint 2010.
I will blog more about MSO in the future, specifically about licensing and the future 2010 offering.
“Ask the Experts”: This was a special event where all of the different Microsoft teams answered attendee questions on a personal basis, everything from MSDN Documentation and Licensing to InfoPath Forms and SharePoint Storage and Capacity Planning. I asked a couple questions related to licensing and SharePoint Online and the Microsoft staff answered questions presented to them.
It was a great opportunity, because there are very few times you can talk to the engineers who developed the products. Thanks Microsoft.
Tomorrow is a half-day, so I will wrap up my Day 4 post during my time waiting for my 10:45 PT flight to depart for the Queen City (Charlotte, NC).