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Welcome to the
Minnesota SharePoint
User Group
Agenda
• Survey Results
• Upcoming Schedule
• Taxonomy – A Business Perspective
• Taxonomy – A Technical Perspective
• Q&A
Survey Results – User Group Members
User Group Members
25%
IT
Other
75%
Survey Results – Business Drivers … ABC’s
Business Drivers
29%
Access to information
50%
Business Process
Collaboration
21%
Survey Results -- Objectives of User Group
• Learn from others
• Best Practices
• Find out what’s new
• Training
• Learn innovative uses
Upcoming Schedule
• Next Meeting – Captaris TeamPlate – 3rd Party Workflow Solution
• July 27th at Microsoft’s Bloomington Office – 9:00 AM to 11:00 AM
Taxonomy – A Business Perspective
•Topics
• Definition & Theory
• Portal Pains
• Taxonomy; Structure vs. View
• Suggestions on Getting Started…
• What does lack of structure cost?
• Best Practices
Taxonomy – Definition & Theory
Portal – ”…a doorway, and entrance, or a gate”
 Where are your doorways?
• Enterprise, Division, Business Unit, Project, Event, Document?
 Scope – Depth vs. Breadth (both?)
• Audience & Purpose (informational; personalized; workplace)
Taxonomy – “…the science, laws, or principles of classifications”
Practical Definition
“Taxonomy is a conceptual framework for organizing enterprise or
companywide content so our employees, partners, and customers can
locate what they need easily!”
Portal Pains – “Side effect of no/poor taxonomy”
Sound Familiar?
• “I just can’t find the data I’m looking for.”
• “Our portal has a ton of data but no information!”
• “The intranet data is not relevant to me.”
• “Search results are inconsistent and erroneous.”
• “Every business unit “site” is a discovery process. There’s no site
branding or page design standards.”
It’s time to get organized!
Taxonomy: Structure vs. View
Taxonomy Structure
Taxonomy View
 Multi-level; hierarchy; relational
 Visual representation of taxonomy
structure
 Used to categorize information
 Integral part of content management
solution
 Foundation for a successful search
function
 View can mirror structure or be
completely different
 Not restricted to visual presentation as
a hierarchy
 Can have multiple views of same
taxonomy structure
Keys:
• “Who is your audience and how do they want to consume your content?”
• View should be derived from consumer’s usage patterns
Practical Suggestions for Getting Started…
1. Form a Team
•
•
•
Subject matter experts from business
Technical representation
# of participants varies with size of organization & project scope
2. Define Scope
•
•
•
Content (e.g. company wide, divisional, department, project, etc.)
How will taxonomy be used?
Who is information consumer(s)?
3. Create Taxonomy
•
•
Documented; Awareness; Education (i.e. how do I implement?)
Structure before View(?)
4. Implementation
•
•
Consistency; Discipline!
Content population – don’t underestimate effort!
What does lack of structure cost?
Cost can be qualified as (ZDNet.com):
• Time wasted in unsuccessful searches,
• Low return on investment in information collection/storage efforts,
such as data warehousing and content management, because
searchers cannot find information,
• Poor decisions made due to inaccurate or incomplete information,
• Frustrating user experiences potentially damaging brand loyalty,
customer/partner relationships, and internal user relationships.
Taxonomy – Best Practice Suggestions
1. Create, Publicize, & Monitor Taxonomy Structure/View
2. Involve Subject Matter Experts from Business
3. Don’t allow “View” to derail “Structure”
4. Content Population – Educate & Maintain; Don’t Underestimate!
Taxonomy – A Technical Perspective
•Topics
•Taxonomy and SharePoint
•Areas & Topics
•Portal Listings & Groupings
•WSS Sites and the Sites Directory
•Demo: Areas, Topics, Listings, WSS Sites & the Sites Directory
•The Topic Assistant
•Demo: The Topic Assistant
•SPS Searching
•Demo: SPS Searching
•Custom Search Web Part
•Demo: Custom Search Web Part
Taxonomy and SharePoint
•How does SharePoint Portal Server answer the
business questions related to Taxonomy?
Areas
•SharePoint Portal Server – a framework:
Topics
•Structuring Information
•Viewing/Categorizing Information
Content
•Searching
•Targeting/Pushing Information
Libraries
Listings
Searching
Audiences
NE Corp – The Demo Portal Environment
NE Corp
Home
News
Markets
Utilizes Grouped
Listings
Topics
HR
Locations
Products
SQL
IT
Office
Sales
Sites
Utilizes Area
Contents (subtopic navigation)
Com. Of
Prac.
Custs.
WSS
Operations
.NET
SPS
CRM
Communities of Practice Top-level
Site Collection
WSS Site
Collection
Other Community Collaboration Sites
SPS Community Collaboration Site
(and sub-sites)
Document Library w/
Common Meta-data
Areas & Topics
So what is the difference? Why give
two names to seemingly the same
thing?
•Areas
•Framework for your portal’s
structure
•Provides portal navigation,
hierarchy, and categorization
•Provides both storage structure and
logical view of your organization’s
taxonomy.
•Core Areas
•Home
•*Topics
•News
•Sites Directory
Core Areas: Home, Topics, News, Sites, etc.
Areas & Topics (continued)
•Topics
•Hierarchy of Information Categories for your
organization
Area Contents Web Part
Area Details Web Part
Grouped Listings
•Typically created under the default “Topics” Area
•Directly visible on the portal Home Page via
secondary navigation
•Specialized Area that contains the following core
Web Parts:
•Area Contents (hierarchy of sub-areas)
•Area Details (description and contact
information for the Topic)
•Targeted Highlights from Community subtopics
•Grouped Listings (grouping of links to
content and experts that have been
associated/submitted to the Topic)
Topics: May cross divisional-boundaries and
functional areas
Targeted Content Web Part
Areas & Topics (continued)
•Best Practices
•Gather information from all roles within your organization to define your
domain
•“How people think about information will heavily influence how they
will want to browse for information.” SharePoint Portal Server 2003
Resource Kit
•Hierarchy should be based on static information
•Limit the number of top-level Areas
•Limit the depth of your Topic hierarchy to 3 or 4 levels
•Identify subject matter experts and delegate responsibility for managing
content
•IT can’t solve every problem – Domain expertise is a must
Portal Listings & Groupings
Portal listings provide a mechanism to aggregate
and group links to relevant content and subject
matter experts.
•Aggregate and organize content
ASP.NET 2.0
•
Web Part Development
enhancements that
Whidbey provides
•
General ASP.NET
enhancements that
Whidbey provides
•Links to documents (w/in Portal or public file
shares)
•Links to libraries (i.e. Portal and WSS)
•Links to sites (i.e. WSS, Internal, External)
•Links to people (Profiles crawled from AD
Import)
•Provide logical grouping
•Highlight
•General
•Expert
•Custom Groupings
Portal Groups (i.e., Development)
•Provide access to content through different views
•1 document can be linked to multiple Topic/Area
Listings via submission model.
Portal Listings (Links to sites, people, etc.)
Portal Listings & Groupings (continued)
•Submission Model - “Submit to
Portal Area”
•Search Results
•Document/Image Libraries
•Documents
•WSS Sites “connected” to
portal
•Approval Model
•Managed in the Area/Topic
•Publishing
•Audience Targeting
•Important Note: currently, portal
listings are not cleaned up when the
linked content is deleted; however,
you can manage listings that exist
across multiple areas in a central
location.
WSS Sites & the Site Directory
The Site Directory acts as your Portal’s white
pages for both Windows SharePoint Services
and external sites.
•Built-in functionality for browsing and searching
sites that have been submitted to or created from
the Site Directory.
–WSS Sites
–Other internal non-portal sites
–External sites (i.e. competitor’s sites)
•Browse by Division/Region or text search
•Site Directory is a list with custom behavior
•Customizable just like any List in SPS
–Custom meta-data
–Create WSS site form
•Sites included in the Site Directory are crawled
and stored in “Non_Portal_Content”
•WSS Sites that are created can be “Submitted to a
Portal Area”
How can I put them all together?
NE Corp
Home
News
Markets
Utilizes Grouped
Listings
Topics
HR
Locations
Products
SQL
IT
Office
Sales
Sites
Utilizes Area
Contents (subtopic navigation)
Com. Of
Prac.
Custs.
WSS
Operations
.NET
SPS
CRM
Communities of Practice Top-level
Site Collection
WSS Site
Collection
Other Community Collaboration Sites
SPS Community Collaboration Site
(and sub-sites)
Document Library w/
Common Meta-data
Demo
Areas, Topics, Listings, WSS Sites & the Sites Directory
The Topic Assistant
Let your portal automatically discover and
categorize your content.
•
Automatically organize documents into your
Portal Topics/Areas
–
•
•
•
•
links to content appear in Portal Listings as Pending
Listings.
“Suggests” listings based on existing categorized
listings in enabled Topics/Areas
Requires “Training”
– At least 2 Topics/Areas with at least 10
documents
Topics/Areas must be “Topic Assistant Enabled”
Requires approval/rejection
– Area Managers can view Pending listings
under Portal Listings management
Demo
The Topic Assistant
Portal Search & Scopes
•Quick review of terminology used:
–Content Index – physical storage of the indexed
content
–Content Source –content that is to be indexed (i.e. a
URL, a File Share, etc.)
•External Sites
•WSS Sites (those that aren’t “connected” to the
portal through the Sites Directory)
–Source Group – consists of one or more Content
Sources (i.e. Communities of Practice WSS Site
Collection)
–Search Scope – The union of Topics/Areas and/or
specific Source Groups (i.e. Communities of Practice)
•Scopes
–The union of one or more Source Groups and/or one or
more Topics/Areas
–Available as items in the Search drop-down
–Out-of-the-box there is one scope (All sources), and
one custom scope specific to the current Area/Topic
being displayed (This topic)
–Examples:
•IT Scope
–WSS Sites for IT
–IT Area or Divisional Portal
–External technology sites
•People
–All individuals in your organization
(User Profiles and Public My Site
Content)
All Sources – Portal AND Non Portal
Content
This topic – the current topic and all
sub-topics (or Areas)
Portal Search & Scopes (continued)
•NE Corp Custom Search Scope:
Communities of Practice
•Union of the Communities of Practice
Topic and sub-topics with the
Communities of Practice top-level WSS
Site Collection
•Intuitive access to relevant Information
NE Corp
Home
Communities of Practice Scope
News
Markets
Utilizes Grouped
Listings
Topics
HR
Locations
Products
SQL
IT
Office
Sales
.NET
SPS
CRM
–Directly available as a Scope from the
Home Page of the Portal
•Search Scope Management Screen
*Other companies have defined scopes
for Divisions that are setup as either
separate portals or portal areas along
with a corresponding WSS Site
Collection for the Division. (i.e. an HR
Portal Area UNIONED with an HR WSS
Site Collection)
Sites
Utilizes Area
Contents (subtopic navigation)
Com. Of
Prac.
Custs.
WSS
Operations
Communities of Practice Top-level
Site Collection
WSS Site
Collection
Other Community Collaboration Sites
SPS Community Collaboration Site
(and sub-sites)
Document Library w/
Common Meta-data
Portal Search & Scopes (continued)
•Searching is extensible – tailor the search
functionality to meet your end-user’s evolving
needs
•Advanced Searching
–Search on meta-data from crawled content
•Defined by:
–Meta Tags on sites
–Meta-data on lists/libraries
•Customizable
–urn:schemas-microsoftcom:office:office
–Define Keywords and Best Bets
•Identify keywords within your
organization’s domain and associate
content links
•Define synonyms for Keywords (i.e.,
SharePoint = SPS = WSS = Portal,
etc.) *even misspelligns
•Parse IIS Logs to identify what users
are searching for
User-determined grouping and ordering of
results.
Meta-data: based on properties
from crawled content
Best Bet indicated by a “Star”
Demo
Portal Searching
Custom Search Web Part
In order to demonstrate the extensibility of
Portal its search capabilities, we developed a
web part that provides a customized
advanced search experience.
•The Foundation
•Identified a standard document library to
use as a template
•Identified custom meta-data to associate
to documents within the library
•Department
•Document Type
•Keywords
•Configured meta-data properties through
“Manage Properties of Crawled Content”
•Implemented a web part with search
criteria form and search results grid
Custom Search Sample
Custom Search Web Part (continued)
•Behind the scenes…
•Implemented a utility that uses the custom search wrapper to provide an API to
the web part developer – The web part doesn’t need to handle the generation of
the SQL query string so that it has the potential to be reused.
•Implemented a custom search wrapper to hide the details of the SQL search
query string
•Implemented Web Part to consume the search wrapper, display the search form,
and display the resulting DataGrid.
Demo
Custom Search Web Part
Custom Search Web Part (continued)
The C# code will be made available “AS IS” on the User Group web site – knowledge of
search administration and web part deployment is required.
The web part makes the following assumptions about the environment:
1.
One or more document libraries exist with the specific meta-data (our template will be
available in the zip) The document library can only be used on Areas that have the Community
Template (Since the library is basic, it can easily be recreated for an Area template of your choice)
2.
The meta-data properties have been configured through site administration
3.
The web part assembly is installed in the GAC or elevate trust has been granted in the
web.config.
4.
The appropriate <SafeControls> entry has been added to the web.config.
Summary
•Utilize Areas & Topics for structuring your site’s content – gather information
from domain experts in your organization to aid in defining your taxonomy
•Consider Portal Listings & Groupings for organizing content in your
Areas/Topics and utilize the Topic Assistant to aid in the categorization of your
content. Remember, it is up to you to incorporate the assistant’s suggestions.
•Take advantage of the targeting functionality to push relevant content to groups
of users
•Use the Sites Directory as a white pages into your organization’s collaboration
environment
•Understand the power of searching in SharePoint Portal
•Checkout the sample source code for the custom search web part
Q&A