I just returned from the 13th annual KM World conference this week and listened to a really interesting keynote from Andrew McAfee (the "king of Enterprise 2.0" according to KM guru Tom Davenport). McAfee summed up his talk with a list of basically how to get it Enterprise 2.0 wrong: Read more
Imagine a scenario where you need to collect information on forms where carrying a computer is difficult or prohibited - court personnel collecting information in correctional facilities, construction personnel collecting walk-through information on job sites, or collecting data in a drug clinical trial - but where you want the results to be used electronically. The solution: Capturx for SharePoint Server from Adapx. Read more
In his keynote speech at the SharePoint 2009 Conference, taking place right now in Las Vegas, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer called SharePoint "magical." The upcoming SharePoint 2010 release is certainly that - but it's also overwhelming. There are incredible improvements for SharePoint developers and end users alike, but there are also new opportunities to lose focus along the way towards building useful collaboration solutions. Read more
PartnerPoint, a virtual community of Microsoft Partners from around the world, announced a very cool virtual event platform this week. Read more
I had a form in production that a client was using to track requests for items that required justification. During testing, we noticed that once the form was submitted, the rich-text field in InfoPath displayed as a Single Line of Text field in SharePoint but the client was sure that all justifications would be short. Famous last words. Several users wrote novels and when (oops!) we added an approval to the request directly in SharePoint, we lost all but the first 255 characters of the novel! Read more
In early September, Knowledge@Wharton published an article called 'Locals,' 'Cosmopolitans' and Other Keys to Creating Successful Global Teams that anyone using SharePoint for team collaboration, especially global teams, should carefully review. Although the advice is geared towards global teams, any team will benefit from the useful suggestions summarized in the article. Read more
This week, a friend asked me for my thoughts on a really interesting question: should you enable the "require check out before editing" feature in MOSS 2007. The feature is a really good one if version conflicts are a business concern - by requiring check out before a user can edit a document, you completely eliminate the risk of accidentally overriding another editors comments with your own. But, the feature has some really annoying user experience implications ... Read more
When it comes to social computing in the enterprise, it's absolutely critical to be sure that the technology you chose solves a real business problem - not someone else's problem, but a real business problem in your organization. To see any value from your social computing investment, people have to participate. To encourage participation, the technology has to be easily accessible from the user's "comfort zone." Read more
On November 16, 2009, I will deliver a pre-conference workshop at KMWorld 2009 in San Jose, CA where I will review best practices for creating meaningful information architectures for SharePoint solutions. The workshop will include some fun exercises and I promise to try to de-mystify the process of creating a successful IA for your SharePoint sites. To encourage you to join me there, InfoToday has provided a link to a $200 discount for the conference Read more
Microsoft has published some excellent resources to help site designers customize site navigation. Many of these resources are currently featured on the MOSS 2007 home page. Here's a guide to what's available. Read more
This past week, I've been putting together the itinerary for our family vacation. My two oldest children live in different cities and I need to document all the arrangements so that they will each know what is going on and when they need to get on airplanes. I finally got around to using a service I signed up for months ago and I am totally hooked - TripIt. This is an amazing resource for vacation planners and road warriors like me - and it even has a social networking component. Read more
Even as an experienced information architect, I know that I will never get the design precisely "right" the first time. I always use paper prototypes to walk through a design. But even a design that has been reviewed and accepted by the "client" from paper can benefit from actual usability testing. This week, we did a very simple usability test that proved once again that a little bit of effort can yield major results in improving "finability" in SharePoint deployments. Here is what we did ... Read more
An interesting article in Knowledge@Wharton this past week reminded me about how important change management is to effective SharePoint deployments. In this article, a change management expert at BP comments on why she believes that the corporate world is “addicted” to serial change management programs that consume lots of energy and resources but ultimately fail – only to be followed by another initiative in a year or two. Read more
Last week, I had a chance to get a demo of a cool product for designing and maintaining taxonomies for SharePoint sites called MetaVis Architect. The tool is designed for information architects – people who have the responsibility for designing an information taxonomy for a SharePoint site. Read more
Anyone with “contribute” or “member” privileges for any page of your SharePoint site can be a web content producer. That’s really a great thing, but writing for the web is not the same as writing for print, especially when it comes to Announcements. Here are a few tips for creating great SharePoint Announcements. Read more
For the past month, my laptop (Dell XPS M1210) has been having audio issues - beeping at me when the sound is muted, unable to play You Tube videos or DVDs but able to play songs in iTunes. Windows Media Player message said that "no audio device was installed," which, of course, wasn't true. After hours trying to upgrade drivers, change settings, assign defaults, uninstalling programs I thought might have caused a driver conflict and basically giving up, I installed Windows Vista Service Pack 2 this morning and to my great surprise and delight, everything works perfectly once again! Read more
This week, I had a conversation with a client about creating an “Ask Management” question and answer forum and we debated the appropriateness of using a SharePoint discussion board “out of the box.” The primary question: would the fact that any user could post a response, thereby creating a much broader conversation, but without necessarily only “authoritative” responses, achieve the desired outcome – an open exchange with business leadership and increased “transparency?” Read more
On June 26, 2009, I’m going to give a talk on Governance Planning for SharePoint Solutions at the Washington D.C. SharePoint Users Conference . This event is a great opportunity to learn from and exchange best practices with the DC-area SharePoint community so please join me there if you are in the area. If not, there are some great virtual ways to connect with the growing SharePoint community. Read more
This week, we had a situation where the client had a sign-up sheet for a volunteer activity that she wanted to post to her SharePoint intranet site. Participants needed to edit the document to indicate the tools that they would bring to the service activity. She posted the document to a site where most users had read-only access and then, to ensure that the users could update the sign-up list, she added her entire audience to the Members group on the site without realizing that this didn’t just give them permission to edit the sign-up sheet, but to edit any document or list on the site! Read more
I first wrote about the topic of whether corporate executives should have an internal blog back in February of 2007. I wish I’d seen the Dilbert cartoon on Debbie Weil’s blog back then, but I found it last week so I am sharing it here. It makes my point pretty succinctly: to be useful, an executive blog needs to be authentic. Read more
Hanley is an independent consultant and president of her own firm, Susan Hanley LLC, where she specializes in the design and development of portal solutions and knowledge management consulting.
She is co-author of Essential SharePoint 2007: Delivering High-Impact Collaboration. Read a free chapter of the book.
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