There is no worse feeling for an IT professional than to finally convince your boss or your client to purchase a solution that will grow and expand with them only to find yourself shrugging your shoulders when a situation comes up that you did not contemplate. There is sometimes no way of telling how "good" a solution will be received. You go into most implementations expecting an epic battle for the minds and hearts of users. I actually believe a few times I caught a glimpse of Aragorn and Gimli on my flank during such implementations. (Or perhaps it was the lack of sleep, who knows?)
But there is that rare occasion when a new technology is received well by all and actually grows beyond your expectations. SharePoint is a good example of such a technology. It is one of those things that catch like wildfire and then you find yourself without enough time or resources (aka employees) to keep up with the growth. Often in our work environments, the idea of any kind of self-service site creation would result in decapitation by the marketing department. This is understandable to some degree. They often will spend months alongside the IT department planning the look and feel of a client experience. So short of working 20 hour days how do you keep up with all the requests to build new sites within SharePoint? Sometimes the best solution is not within the application itself but a third-party tool. SharePoint Solutions offers a solid alternative to the default "self- service" option found in SharePoint.
It's Site Provisioning Assistant for SharePoint 2007, gives users a process for:
No it is not the extra set of hands you sometimes really need. However, having the ability to keep a uniform process for requesting, tracking and provisioning sites helps greatly. The provisioning profiles answer many of the necessary questions to ensure that a site stays streamlined and logical.
No doubt we can all look to some IT project that started out with a clean dataset only to look like you did nothing after three months.
Site Provisioning Assistant is a worth a look and you can request a demo copy at SharePoint Solutions Software. You will need to register to get the demo.Â
Anything that helps to make your world "A Better Windows World."
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Ron Barrett is president of RARE-TECH, an IT Training and consulting company. He has been a technology professional for over a decade, working for several major financial firms and dotcoms. Barrett is a specialist in network infrastructure, security and IT management.
He is a co-author of The Administrator's Guide to Microsoft Office 2007 Servers, How to Cheat at Administering Office Communications Server 2007, and the Real MCTS/MCITP Exam 620 Preparation Kit and has been a contributor to Windows 2000 Enterprise Storage Solutions and Exam Cram –70-244-Supporting & Maintaining NT Server 4.
He has also contributed to several industry magazines and was featured in the book Tricks of the Windows Vista Masters. He has worked for Microsoft writing research and analysis documents for Windows Server 2008, Windows HPC, and PerformancePoint Server 2007. He has also created screencasts on Windows Server 2008 Administration for Linux Admins.
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The opinions expressed in this Weblog are those of the writer and may not represent the opinions of Network World.
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