* IF MOSS can satisfy the needs of the San Jacinto Girl Scout council, it will likely be a good platform for many mid- to large-size companies as well
Just after John Fontana’s article “Microsoft SharePoint taking business by storm” ran at the end of March, I had the opportunity to spend a few days at a Microsoft Technology Center (MTC), learning about Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS). Fontana says that MOSS could be the next “must-have technology, offering companies tools for building everything from collaborative applications to Internet sites.” After my in-depth working session at the MTC, I have to agree; SharePoint 2007 is an exciting platform.
I’m a volunteer member of the IT Committee for the nation’s largest Girl Scout council. Located in southeast Texas, the Girl Scouts of San Jacinto Council (GSSJC) organization serves more than 70,000 girls and 19,000 adult volunteers – a total of almost 90,000. The organization is expected to reach a membership of 100,000 within the next few years.
As you can imagine, an organization of this size has a lot of communication needs. For instance, girl members and their troop leaders and parents need to share information about projects and activities. The council staff members need to communicate with each other and to the volunteers about services, events and other things. The council provides information to the general public to recruit new members and volunteers and conduct fund raising. The list of who needs to communicate what to whom is almost endless.
The GSSJC IT Committee is investigating Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) to see if this product can be the council’s communication platform now and well into the future. The Dallas Microsoft Technology Center (MTC) recently hosted a group of us from GSSJC to discuss our requirements and how MOSS might be able to address them.
I’ll admit, after reading John Fontana’s article “Microsoft SharePoint taking business by storm,” I was hopeful about MOSS 2007 living up to its new reputation of being the next must-have technology. While it’s still too early to tell – we haven’t put our hands on it yet – we all came out of the two-day session with the belief that MOSS will do just about everything we need it to do, and then some. Putting my analyst hat on, I’d say that if MOSS can satisfy the needs of this Girl Scout council, it will likely be a good platform for many mid- to large-size companies as well.
Let me give you an idea of what GSSJC is asking this platform to do. Maybe you’ll recognize some of your own needs here.
Like a corporation, the 90,000 members of the council are organized into groups that have specific communication needs, such as user forums for group discussions and workspace areas for shared files. Where a corporation has workgroups, departments, divisions and business units, a Girl Scout council has troops, service units, areas and regions. So for instance, the 4,000 troops within GSSJC represent a need for 4,000 separate Web sites and user forums hosted by MOSS.
Our Microsoft technical representative didn’t bat an eye at these needs. Four thousand (or more) Web sites hosted on a single SharePoint 2007 platform? No problem. He recommends that we use page layouts (templates) to get so many Web sites up and running quickly.
The council staff members want to use SharePoint as an automated workflow tool. For example, let’s say the Programs Department is developing a Career Fair for the girls. A planner develops a budget for the event, and it has to be sent to a department head for review and approval. From there it might go to the council Treasurer who might set aside funds from the annual budget. SharePoint accommodates these requirements easily with an interactive form for the budget data and workflow that channels the document through the approval process.
We spent a lot of time talking about user authentication. Unlike a corporation, the members of the council – think of them as employees if you like – have to renew their membership every year. If they don’t, many of their network privileges must be revoked. Complicating the matter even more is the fact that members can have multiple roles (e.g., troop leader, cookie manager, parent) with varying rights (can access cookie sales application but not peanut sales application). While GSSJC does use Active Directory, and this can be used to facilitate user authentication for the SharePoint applications, the council still has to allow minimal rights to members of the public (i.e., guests) who are not in Active Directory.
Despite the hours-long discussion about user authentication and how complicated it can get, we left feeling reassured that everything would work, despite some need for customization. The technical consultant diagrammed everything and explained how all the user privileges could work.
Speaking of customization, that’s a scary word to an organization that only has a fulltime IT staff of four people. We want to do a lot of work with our SharePoint implementation without having to do a lot of custom programming or HTML coding, and without having to buy add-on products. Once again, the Microsoft technical consultant assured us that most of our desired functional requirements can be met with little to no custom programming through the use of forms, page layouts, master pages and other built-in techniques.
Our next step is to undertake a proof of concept project. We plan to test the user authentications scheme, given it’s the most complicated part of our system. Assuming that works well, and assuming funding comes through to purchase the necessary hardware and software, I expect that GSSJC will adopt MOSS 2007 as our major communication platform. Hopefully, in a year, I can update you on our fabulous progress.
