Establishing a SharePoint/Office 365 Support Infrastructure Summary

Over the years I’ve worked in a variety organizations both as consultant and in IT departments. I’ve worked with some great professionals that helped me better understand the support structures required to operate and support an application/service effectively. Sometime an afterthought, meeting ongoing support expectations in today’s ever changing business environment can be a having sufficient budget, sponsorship, managing contractors, full time staff and service organizations (Outsourcing) can be a headache. Though not the focus of this blog, I will outline the required support infrastructure and highlight risks where appropriate related to sourcing.

Where do you star? What do you have in place that you can leverage? Help Desk? Training? Communications? SharePoint user group? Great places to start assessing your current investments effectiveness and costs. For example:

• Help Desk – what does you help desk current support? Volume of calls? Satisfaction levels? Its ability to onboard a new application or service?
• Development and support – SharePoint’s one of the products that people want to heavily customize beyond simple branding. A design and development team will be required. Have team or third party provider?
• Training – what training is offered today? Satisfaction levels? Its ability to onboard a new application or service?
• Communications – what does the commination group do today specific to awareness? Simple corporate communications or do they have a role in end user education? Promoting new applications and services?
• SharePoint user group – have users groups formed organically or through official channels? What feedback do they have about support and training?

Thinking about the aforementioned items you could easily get to a state of analysis paralysis trying to boil the ocean as they say so how do you avoid it? Here are some key areas to focus on:

• Define the Support Infrastructure requirements, offerings, roles and responsibilities, deliverables, reporting and measures and game plan
• Corporate communications – this team will help you market your offering and collect feedback as you define, deploy and operate. Utilizing intranet, surveys, newsletters, emails to name a few the teams will help you engage end users.
• Training materials – for training materials you may choose to adopt materials that can be purchased from a third party such as Lynda.com or create your own. There are pros and cons with either approach such as customized environment or your organizations own processes which vender such as Lynda.com won’t have. They will have however a robust library of documents and videos available on demand which can take organization considerable time and cost to assemble. Weigh the pros and cons and go with what’s best for your situation.
• Videos and Documented guides and policy – At a minimum you’ll require usage policy that users must sign off on and comply with while using the applications. This could be data and security policy compliance and simple instructions regarding what to use the application for and what not to use it for. I suggest ongoing yearly recertification and sign off enforced by HR and managed through a Learning Management System (LMS). In addition, user guide must be available as the guide for using the application/service. The guides usually take the form of written documents and videos.
• Lunch and learns – these are events that communications or the product management team would chair. These are interactive forums for launching applications/services and conducting surveys.
• User Support/mentoring Groups – user groups are an effective tool for reaching deeper into an organization to educate and collection feedback on application/service related topics. Everything from how to get help, how to best use features and obtaining firsthand information from business regarding their priorities and expectation regarding the application/service.
• Help Desk – to assist with call handling, simple troubleshooting, monitoring and routing the help desk will require scripts and education. Make this a focus area and not an afterthought, not having a solid help desk will be problematic.
• Third Party – if you’re in a situation where you don’t have services to offer and must use third party provider to either provide all services or to augment when elasticity is required based on demand, suggest reaching out via RFI to determine which provider can best service your requirements.

Finally, the shit structure should match the operating requirements, specifically you will require teams to “follow the sun” as they say. For example:

• First shift – this team works from 9am-5pm Monday through Friday.
  • This might be the prime shift that covers majority of user population. For example North America based company.
• Second shift – this team works from 5pm-1am Monday through Friday.
  • This might be a secondary shift that provides support for off hours related work during maintenance windows which are usually after normal business hours. e.g maintenance window 8pm-6am.
• Third shirt  – this team works from 1am-9am Monday through Friday.
  • Same as above.

As the title suggests this is a summary, to execute on creating your infrastructure could be a simple operation if your organization has mature ITSM process, experienced staff and budget. Or you might be in a situation where limited resources exist and in that case a third party is required. Having solid plan in either case will help whereby the stakeholders are actively involved and onboard greatly helps in the efforts.

Have feedback or ideas, contact me roncharity@gmail.com

Migrating to Office 365 or SharePoint Online? Part 1A: End-user Training and Compliance

Migrating to Office 365 will have an impact on end users in several ways and to make sure their experience is smooth during and after the transition training and support must be provided. The training and support consists of the following for Office 365:

• Service offerings – explains what the service offerings are (e.g. Mobile Profession, Team Collaboration, Project Management, Business Application), how to chose and how to gain access to them. For example, your organization might offer all the applications available or a subset this all depends on business need, licensing you choose, funding available for support and your ability to support the various offerings. Publish this information on your SharePoint service information site such as a Collaboration Central or SharePoint Central.
• Usage compliance – explains what the users are responsible for as site owners and users. This training enforces data and security policy with end goal of passing audits or at a minimum preventing data loss, privacy incidents and overall good upkeep. HR must mandate this training and make it a requirements for new and existing employees yearly.
• Provisioning – outlines the step by step process for requesting the service in its various forms. For example, your organization packages basic and advanced services where you have bundled Office 365 applications. End users would have a place to go (e.g. Company provisioning site) and request either of these bundles for their project, team or department. The provisioning system would guide the end user through choosing option best for them; enter required data and obtaining required approvals. Ongoing it would also manage updates such as ownership, administration and compliance with data and security policy, provide reports to name a few. Publish this information on your SharePoint service information site such as a Collaboration Central or SharePoint Central.
• How to training – training materials such as videos, quick reference how-to, discussion groups and FAQs to name a few. Also how to get in touch with SharePoint user groups for additional help and support (Generally run by Product Management team or SME). The end goal being to augment help Desk support and prepare end users for Office 365 prior and post launch. You might chose to create new materials or subscribing to materials available from venders. For those with customized and or hybrid environments the training material must account for this and help the user to avoid confusion. There are online services available that might help such as WalkMe and Lynda.
• I will assume you have an eLearning site, publish instructions regarding how to access the eLearning courses on your SharePoint service information site such as a Collaboration Central or SharePoint Central. Also consider placing FAQs, Discussion areas and service related information on the site as well, make it the place to go for information and knowledge sharing.
• Support groups – these can be discussion groups, ad-hoc or scheduled Skype sessions that are team, departmental or regional in scope. Utilizes these groups end user have another option for obtaining support and learning. These group could be published on team, departmental or regional sites for ease of access. A Chairperson would help market and management the group to maximize reach and the end users getting value. Publish this information on your SharePoint service information site such as a Collaboration Central or SharePoint Central.

Have feedback or ideas? Contact me roncharity@gmail.com

Migrating to Office 365 or SharePoint Online? Part 2: Information Architecture and Control Plan

In Part 1, we focused on the discovery which focused on six critical reports that detailed your SharePoint farms and business data. Part 1 can be found here Migrating to Office 365 to SharePoint Online? Part 1: How to get started

Part 2 will focus on your Information Architecture for SharePoint whether it be SharePoint 201x and Office 365 or simply Office 365. The focus of this exercise is to document your organizations taxonomy (organizational lingo) and incorporate data and security policy as well. The desired outcome is a series of documents that will help you make decisions, set policy and its consistent enforcement and to configure your SharePoint 201x and Office 365 environment.

Why do organizations struggle with this topic? Information Architecture is a unique skill set very different from typical IT skills of technical infrastructure and applications. Information Architecture requires library science, facilitation and domain (e.g. Pharmaceuticals, health) knowledge because you’re dealing with information, its value in relation to job activities and its classification so it’s surfaced, protected and can be leveraged providing value to the organization. The value of such a role depends on how your organization views the value of its information, complying regulatory guidelines, passing audits successfully and your ability to leverage information assets. The value is compounded when you introduce cloud technologies because now you have a vehicle for storing data on a service residing within a vender’s data center – which introduces data protection risks.

So how do you get started?

1. Assemble a team that consists of the required skill sets (Information architect/tech architect/facilitator, scribe…) and business representation. In a small organization this team might consist of a SharePoint Service Manager, Records Manager, Cloud vender and representatives from each line of business. In a large organization team might consist of a SharePoint Service/Product Manager, Records Manager, Compliance Office, Security Officer, and Representatives from each line of business and service management team (Operation team and or service providers).
2. Review your organizations security policy and understand how that policy applies to protecting information – location, tagging, permissions and ownership chain. This information can be collected from a couple sources such as the Security team who should be able to provide data security guidelines and or policy documents and control plans. Also, auditor reports may also be made available which provides your insight regarding how your environment scored from an Auditors perspective. In general, auditors dislike the distributed permission control within SharePoint and the lack of ongoing data scanning and policy environment – view SharePoint as a black hole of sorts.
3. Review your organizations data policy and understand how that policy applies to retaining information, tagging and classification. This information can be collected from a couple sources such as the Records Management team who should be able to provide data protection and retention guidelines and or policy documents and control plans. Also, auditor reports may also be made available which provides your insight regarding how your environment scored from an Auditors perspective. In general, auditors dislike the distributed permission control within SharePoint and the lack of ongoing data scanning and policy enforcement – think control plan, more on that later.
4. Work with each line of business to itemize the documents, applications, people etc. they work with to get their jobs done. This exercise would be conducted for the major lines of business and departments and refined ongoing by working with department SMEs. For example, when I think about corporate information, the following questions come to mind. What information does the business collect? How is it used? How much of it is stored and where? Why is it kept? For how long? Here are some focused questions that will help but keep in mind you require someone that has done this before successfully:
   • What are all the different types of data and how are they classified? Do data owners exist for each data type or aggregate data collections?
   • How is data obtained? From whom? Why? Associated business process and or task?
   • What format is the data in? Application? Documents? Persons contact details?
   • How is data shared? With whom? Why? Associated business process and or task?
   • What are the business information availability requirements? Why?
   • What confidentiality, integrity, and availability requirements apply?
   • What is the legal environment surrounding the organization’s industry and the data it uses?
   • What issues have they experienced in the past?
5. Once you have completed steps one through four the information architecture for the SharePoint environment(s) is documented to include the environments purpose (e.g. Office for external team collaboration or business partner collaboration), web applications, site collections, site templates (with branding), content types and related meta data (e.g. Dublin Core) and settings such as quotas, permissions settings and information management policy settings. Additionally, a control plan detailing the Information Architecture upkeep roles (e.g. data custodians, provisioning, exception handling etc., monitoring (e.g. site security and data scanning), and enforcement and reporting must be created so that Governance knows how to steer and enforce the Information Architecture. Finally, document any risks that have not been addressed and assign ownership to an executive sponsor whose mandate is complying with data policies and maintaining end user experience.

It’s important to note that your Information Architecture will evolve over time, refining it is very much an iterative process. As they say you cant boil the ocean and if you try, it will be a frustrating and unsuccessful experience. Hence why a diverse team and executive support is so important. Most organizations I’ve been asked to help focus on plumbing and not user experience from an information and content perspective. What’s the use of a highly available environment if the content is hard to find and of no relevance to the business?

Want to read up on the topic?

• SharePoint Content Strategy – Delivering the Promise of Value
• Information Architecture for the World Wide Web: Designing Large-scale Web Sites
• The Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web and Beyond
• Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
• The Design of Everyday Things
• User and Task Analysis for Design
• SharePoint 2013 Information Management and Governance
• ARMA

Enjoy!

Collaboration Maturity Model – Experiences Designing High Performance Offices

With demand for collaboration solutions increasing, organizations that were early adopters can teach late adopters some valuable lessons regarding their experiences, both good and bad. Over the past ten years the industry has witnessed an increased demand for Information Worker solutions due to an increased mobilized workforce and traditional IT simplification projects. Generally, for Information Worker solutions to be successful, a multi-faceted approach (Governance, tools, people etc…) are required. From a Microsoft perspective, the core of collaboration for Microsoft is SharePoint technologies (Including Skype, Exchange, One Drive etc.). For IBM it was Domino but is transitioning to Web Sphere based solutions. In this Blog I will share some of my experiences working with clients since 2004, identify pitfalls and recommend an approach to use with clients once they have made the decision to adopt Information Worker tools. Note I developed this model in 2005.

What are Collaboration Solutions?
Having worked with Collaboration technologies since 1991 (Lotus Notes) and SharePoint technologies since 2001 I’ve noticed some trends and developed this model in 2005. Typically, when people think of Collaboration, they think SharePoint (or Notes) only, but to address most of the business problems that organizations are faced with today, their Collaboration service offering must include the following tools:

• SharePoint – Presence for collaboration, application integration and delivery, document management, workflow, search and social networking to name a few.
• Skype – Presence awareness, Instant messaging and video conferencing.
• Exchange – Messaging, calendaring and contact information as well as SMTP engine for SharePoint.
• Office 365  – The suite of applications.
• Mobile devices – Laptop, tablet, phone etc.

As with any tools, they are only as successful as the organizations ability to adopt them. Specifically, a change management program that introduces policy, training, mentoring and adoption measurement must also be in place – Search on my “user Adoption Framework” Blog for more information.

Office Design and Culture
A major component of collaboration is the culture, are people incented to share? Management endorses and nurtures the culture? Without these key cultural and behavioral items in place collaboration won’t happen. An executive funded and HR driven program is generally required with incentives, measures and adoption program. Note this is one of the toughest areas for some companies (especially old cultures) to address. Management in such companies is accustom to measuring performance by being in the office and at your desk – not productivity and meeting clearly defined objectives.

For office design the old style cubed and siloed office designs are replaced by an open concept for desk sharing, pods for teams to work, meeting rooms with AV enabled boards, phones etc. that enable people and teams to communicate no matter their locations. An office design company can assist with this area of concern but use caution as open areas can become unusable due to noise and crowding.

Maturity Model
That’s a handful of technologies and quite the undertaking to prioritize, design, deploy and operate! I prefer to model the technology adoption using a maturity model of sorts which introduces technology and change incrementally and is as follows:

1. Stage One – Establish/Ready the foundational IT services, technologies and operations. This technology includes authentication technologies such as AD, security such as VPNs and virus protection, server consolidation/optimization and storage and consolidation/optimization. Provide the basic devices and access to the corporate network. Also, user adoption plan developed to influence culture and measure adoption is developed.
2. Stage Two – Establish collaboration environments and develop rich information architectures that support communities (practice, professions, interest) and optimize them for efficient search and browsing. The access to the systems is optimized for mobile workers whereby anytime anywhere access is provided through laptops and smart phones as best makes sense. User adoption plan executed to influence culture and measure adoption is developed.
3. Stage Three – consolidate, integrate, leverage and retire duplicates from your application portfolio. Develop rich composite applications that leverage corporate data sources, documentation and workflows. Develop business focused social networks to truly leverage the organizations IP (products, services, knowledge, contacts etc…). Also, ongoing user adoption execution and measurement ongoing until target adoption levels reached.

Figure 1 depicts the model visually:

Figure 1: IW

Impacts of IW on IT and the Business
It has quite an impact on the business when staff and management adopt and integrate Collaboration tools into their day-to-day business tasks and operations. Let’s have a closer look at the impacts in more detail for both IT and the business:

• IT – several foundational technologies are required such as networking (internal and external), security, authentication, servers, storage, management and operations. Additionally, staffing for these technologies is required in order to provide help desk and other forms of support. Finally, service arrangements with outsourcing and leasing companies have an impact.
• Business – the staff and management are busy supporting clients and their business partners. Generally bound by policy and procedures (Company and regulatory to name a few…), they have day-to-day objectives and tasks to carry out. Remembering that people generally resist change (and like routines that don’t change) introducing new technology is viewed as disruptive (unless it’s fixing something that is terribly wrong).

The Typical Painful Journey
With so many areas to manage and the many possible impacts, it’s a handful for most organizations to manage successfully. Based on experience with organizations large and small, most don’t get it right and both IT and the business suffer for it. In many cases clients take the following approach:

• Attempt 1 – Consolidate Collaboration applications (Intranets, Portals, collaboration tools etc…). They move from 4-5 tools down to 1 or 2 and dump their data into the tools with little rigor applied. Operationalizing the tools generally means just opening the door and letting the tools sink or swim. It is focused on IT plumbing and not information and people. Culture isn’t ready, management micromanages and doesn’t support, staff don’t participate because management doesn’t support or provide direction. Adoption is usually 5-10% of planned audience.
• Attempt 2 – The sink or swim approach which generally leads to sinking. The tools becomes bloated with useless data, there are performance issues because of service capacity, navigation becomes difficult and search returns hundreds if not thousands of pages filled with useless data. Why? No user adoption plan, content strategy, information architecture, content management disciplines and governance of the service offering. Adoption decreases due to frustration, IT looks foolish.
• Attempt 3 – The realization that a mix of governance, content strategy, information architecture, process, policy and staffing is required for the service to be sustainable with any level of quality. Objectives are revisited, planning done accordingly and correctly, funding is allocated and a properly staffed team assembled – experience people and executive support from business, IT and service providers.

The path to success is a journey of trial and error:

So why do things go wrong?
Generally, organizations begin with a vision that is well intentioned but later degrades to let’s just get something done to meet the dates enforced on us my senior management. Also, much of Collaboration adoption is not well known as compared with Email (such as Exchange), which has been around for decades in some form or another. Exchange patterns and practices for requirements, design, deployment and operating are well known.

• Governance – a companies lack of appreciation or understanding of governance and maintaining the environment / sustaining the culture” – e.g. this is where training for end-users / administrators and Information Managers is required, how to operationally implement content management or collaboration based policies and standards. Basically Collaboration culture does not happen on its own – governance that is implemented and controlled nurtures it.
• Unrealistic dates – usually set by a new executive trying to make their mark or external factors that force dates (such as compliance).
• Unrealistic expectations – a vender oversells their product and or the solution marketing campaign within the organization was hastily assembled and delivered.
• Too many projects on the go – the average large organization has thousands of projects on the go at any given time. Understanding the collision points and dependencies is usually the challenge.
• Too many new technologies – new technologies are not well understood and their quirks/bugs are unknown. These sorts of unknowns can add weeks and or months to a project.
• Staffing and skill set shortages – with so many organizations running leaner these days, it’s difficult for them to juggle skills and ramp up for new technologies and or contracts when demand is high. Work all day and learn all night might be a good analogy!

A Best Practice Approach
Back to the subject of trends, when thinking about maturity models for Collaboration solutions, experience has taught me to architect and grow IW solutions using the following approach:

• Establish governance – this consists of executives, department management, department SME, PMO, Architect team and purchasing.
• Staff your team with experienced consultants – knowledge transfer is key to your staff and leveraging experience is key to reducing risks.
• Assign (dedicate a %) your staff to the project team – your staff won’t learn nor accept ownership unless they are involved.
• Understand your organization’s information management needs – many compliance officers are concerned that Collaboration solutions will complicate records management enforcement.
• Design a service model for Collaboration – approach Collaboration as a service offering and adopt a service level approach to developing your architecture.
• Content and Systems Strategy – in order to drive user adoption the user experience (and cost savings) must be compelling.
• Information Architecture – in order to build and sustain a usable and intuitive environment, the layout of the sites, pages and content must aggressively managed (governed) using content mgmt. disciplines and security as best makes sense.
• Collaboration architecture – the architecture for your IW solution whether it stands alone or is integrated with existing or new systems.
• Systems Architecture/Impact analysis for the infrastructure that will support the Collaboration solution.
• Realistic project charter and schedule – a project charter, schedule and staffing, amongst other PMI recommended process and artifacts.
• Tailoring this approach is key to success since many organizations will have completed work in some of the areas. Expect gaps but don’t force them to reinvent the wheel.

Summary
With the upward trend of Collaboration solution demand, we have an incredible opportunity to provide solutions based on Microsoft technologies and third-party solutions that bolster the solutions functionality, performance and manageability. The challenge? Lack of funding, priority, skill sets and quality execution – organization dogma and lets face it SharePoint is generally a tier 3 service (not critical to business). I’d like to hear from you regarding your thoughts on this Blog and ideas you have to improve the approach!

Have feedback? Would like to hear from you roncharity@gmail.com

Moving from Paper and Microfiche to Electronic Records Management

Many companies have a legacy of microfiche that encompasses millions of images stored in temperature controlled records management departments. Companies use the microfiche for records management purposes so they can comply with regulatory bodies. The process of creating microfiche is cumbersome, costly and in some cases a health risk due to the photographic equipment and chemicals – not to mention the real-estate required for such a service.

This blog will cover the process of creating and retrieving records using Microfiche and an Electronic Document and Records Management (EDRM) system so that you will understand the complexities and benefits of each and be able to articulate best practices for EDRM projects. Also, I’ve worked on several EDRM projects over the years and this article summarizes the most interesting of the them.

Microfiche and Diazo Overview

Microfiche is a widely adopted standard for records management due to its ability to image record[1] and store them in an economical manner. Simply, Microfiche as it implies is a micro version of the original record in paper version (e.g, 8.5×11 letter). As a result of using Microfiche, several benefits are realized:

• The records life is increased since paper becomes yellow and fades
• The size of the record is reduced and therefore the real-estate required for storage is greatly reduced
• The Microfiche is catalogued in such a way that it’s easy to find.
• The Microfiche viewers allow for quick location of the records

Once Microfiche is created, it’s placed in a jacket that contains the microfiche’d record. The following diagram depicts a sample Jacket:

To further classify Microfiche, they are placed in jackets and then in a filing system such as a carousel. In cases where records must be referenced, copies of the microfiche are required since actual records must remain in the records management office for safe keeping. When copies are required, a Diazo is created as a copy of the record for temporary use.

Creating and Retrieving Records using Microfiche and Diazo

Today, the Corporation conducts filming of records using filming equipment and facilities in-house. Filming requires the use of photographic equipment and chemicals (e.g., ammonia for Diazo) that require special handling and storage to meet health safety requirements.

The following is a brief description of the process followed by the Records Management Department (RM) when filming and filing a record (Microfiche) as depicted in the Filming and Filing Process diagram:

• A record is identified and must be filmed.
• The record is sent to RM for filming and filing.
• RM obtains access to filming equipment.
• The record is filmed with the photographic equipment using procedures to ensure quality.
• The film is processed using procedures for checking quality.
• The filmed record (Microfilm) is cut.
• The pocket is retrieved from the file cabinet based on the corporation’s classification scheme.
• The jacket is opened and the new film record is added.
• The jacket and pocket are placed back in the carousel.

The following is a brief description of the process followed by the various Business Units when requesting a Record (Microfiche):

• A Corporation staff member has a need to view a record.
• A request is placed with the RM with appropriate identification information (example, Last name, account #).
• The request form is physically delivered to the records office and placed in a bin.
• RM obtains access to the file cabinet.
• An RM staff member retrieves the record by walking to the appropriate Microfiche library.
• The appropriate pocket is removed from the library.
• The pocket is browsed by identification information.
• The Microfiche is copied using Diazo and returned to the file cabinet.
• The Diazo is given to staff member at the counter or delivered at the next microfiche run to the designated drop off areas.
• If an amendment or add (example, legal correspondence letter) is required, the form is sent to RM, filmed and added to the jacket.
• Once finished with the Diazo it is destroyed.

Electronic Records Management Overview

EDRM provides a technological solution to the problems associated with legacy Microfiche systems. Specifically, it provides a more cost effective means of creating, classifying, storing, retrieval and disposition of records. The specific benefits are as follows:

• Creating – records are created using scanners and saved in popular formats such as PDF, JPG or TIFF; which is much simpler and doesn’t require nasty chemicals and permits.
• Classifying – classification schemes are used based on lingo specific to business units and business rules that enforce the scheme to greatly reduce errors.
• Storing – images are stored on Storage Area Networks (SANs) which consume less real-estate.
• Retrieval – the EDRM client provides the user with an interface that enables them to query the EDRM based on a combination of classification criteria (example, Last name, account #).
• Disposition of records – the EDRM contains a business rule system that disposes of records based on predetermined business/legal rules (example, emails are 1 year, health records are death of recipient plus 10 years)

An EDRM solution consists of several core systems such as scanners, image processing software, EDRM software for classification, storage, retrieval and disposition and, storage.

Sample ERM Solution

The following are the specific components:

• Scanners – image capture devices available in standard flatbed variations or specialized for Microfiche.
• Kofax Image Scanning and QA Software – control image format and quality.
• Meridio Records and Document Management software – the ERM system that provides storage and retrieval.
• Storage Area Network – storage for images and index.
• SharePoint Portal – optional Portal for collaboration on documents.
• Temperature and Humidity controlled room for handling the old records to be migrated.

The following diagram depicts the image production lifecycle stages:

The following diagram depicts a typical EDRM system:

Sample ERM Interface

The EDRM interface provides the functionality for standard users and administrative functions. Most EDRM provide a Web and Windows interfaces for user and administrative functions. The following diagram is the EDRM interface for a web client:

Sample FilePlan

The FilePlan consists of a hierarchical means of classifying records based on containers, folders and parts. Classification schemes consist most of primary, secondary and tertiary levels of classification. Primaries typically consist of department names (example, procurement), secondaries are breakdowns of the departments information (example, purchasing agreements, guidelines) and tertiaries which are further breakdowns of information (example, year – 2005).

The following are some best practices for designing a FilePlan:

• Adopt a standard classification scheme that meets the requirements of the Corporation – investigate state/provincial records authorities since they have typically developed standard schemes.
• Adopt retention and disposal schedule that complies with regulatory body requirements – investigate state/provincial records authorities since they have typically developed standard schemes.
• Don’t place more than 100 items in same location (e.g. Class or Folder) within the FilePlan since this slows browsing and paging.
• Assign Access Control Lists and disposal schedules as close to the root of the FilePlan as possible, these will be inherited by child nodes – it is better that exceptions are treated by overriding the inherited disposal schedule. The use of default access on categories to assist in defining security model.

The following is a sample of a simple FilePlan:

Function
1. Human Resources Managing the employees of the department, through all activities and tasks associated with completing their job duties
Activities	Classifications	Additional Details
1.1 Recruitment:Ensure adequate pools and select the best candidates for open positions	1.1.1   Advertisement[Scope note if necessary]	Samples: Job Description, Selection Criteria, AdvertisementSeries: Job Description FilesRetention: 1 year then destroy
	1.1.2 Receive Applications[Scope note if necessary]	Samples: Application Forms, Cover LettersSeries:Retention:
	1.1.3 Conduct Interviews[Scope note if necessary]	Samples: Correspondence, Interview NotesSeries:Retention:
1.2 TrainingProvide opportunities for growth and staff development	1.2.1 Attendance[Scope note if necessary]	Samples:Series:Retention:
1.3 Review and PromotionConduct annual reviews and use those reviews to retain and promote the best employees	1.3.1 Annual Review Process[Scope note if necessary]	Samples:Series:Retention:

 

Sample Retention Schedules

Retention schedules are required to lock record retention for a duration specified by regulatory (example, SEC) and legal bodies for compliance purposes. This is typically a function of the ERM which has configurable retention schedules that can be applied to the FilePlan by Records Officers.

The following table depicts a small sampling of a retention (disposition) schedule:

Record	Retention Schedule	Final Disposition	Off Site Storage Facility
Electronic Member Information	Dead, Dead + 10 Years	Archive	Archive
Original Microfiche	I Year after scanning	Archive	Offsite records office
Original Microfiche in ARC Store	Dead, Dead + 10 Years	Archive	Archive
Email	1 year	Destroy	None
Project Documents	5 years	Destroy	None

Sample ERM Project Team

An ERM project team consists of a diverse set of skill sets that represent the business units and IT. The following table depicts the team member and their implied skill sets:

Company	Member	Notes
Client	Project Manager
	CIO	Steering committee
	CEO	Steering committee
	IT Manager
	Knowledge Management Officer
	Lawyer
	IT Developer
	Business Unit Representative	One for each business unit, region etc.
	Senior Records Management Officer
	Records Manager
	IT infrastructure
Services Firm	Project Manager
	Regional Manager	Steering committee
	Local Manager	Steering committee
	Solution Architect
	Developer
	Imaging Tech
	Storage Tech
	Server Tech
Third Party	ERM Tech	Advice and support
	Imaging	Advice and support

Lessons Learned

The following are some key lessons learned from working in the space the past 10 years:

• Organization must be ready for change
• Executive management must establish communications and measurement process
• Legal counsel must be available to advise on FOIP and regulatory compliance
• Assess the current state of the records whether they be paper, film or digital and conduct a risk assessment.
• The client must have a dedicated team to
  • Deal with additional business process work load
  • Allow staff to participate in project effectively
  • Facilitate adoption of new role(s)
• The team roles must include records mgmt, legal, knowledge mgmt, communications, project mgmt and technology staff
• Migration of existing unstructured data requires an approach that distributes responsibilities to business units, provides a structured process and staff training and measures progress regularly.
• Don’t under estimate organization push back and resistance to change
• Deploy a pilot for the purposes of testing systems, staff support services and business process changes
• Microfiche image quality requires business decisions regarding the amount of cleanup vs. liability for damaged and/or aging records
• Conduct image scanning tests from various years (i.e. 1970s, 80s, 90s) to determine required quality – test compression versus usability
• Don’t undersize the technology platform since future retrofitting introduces risk
• Leverage provincial record and information mgmt guidelines to save time (ARDA)
• Plan to run parallel business processes and staff accordingly to handle increased work load
• Couple training close to deployment

Best Practices for an ERM project

The following are best practices for EDRM and document management projects:

• Organization must be ready for change.
• Executive management must establish communications and measurement process.
• Legal counsel must be available to advise on FOIP and regulatory compliance.
• The client must have a dedicated team to:
  • Deal with additional business process work load
  • Allow staff to participate in project effectively
  • Facilitate adoption of new role(s)
• The team roles must include records management, legal, knowledge management, communications, project management and technology staff.
• Migration of existing unstructured data requires an approach that distributes responsibilities to business units, provides a structured process and staff training and measures progress regularly.
• Don’t under estimate organization push back and resistance to change.
• Deploy a pilot for the purposes of testing systems, staff support services and business process changes.
• Microfiche image quality requires business decisions regarding the amount of cleanup vs. liability for damaged and/or aging records.
• Conduct image scanning tests from various years (i.e. 1970s, 80s, 90s) to determine required quality – test compression versus usability.
• Don’t undersize the technology platform since future retrofitting introduces risk.
• Leverage provincial record and information management guidelines to save time (ARDA)
• Plan to run parallel business processes and staff accordingly to handle increased work load.
• Couple training close to deployment

Summary

ERM projects require a dedicated team of individuals and C level representation within the organization in order to have a chance at being successful. The impact to the organization and the change imposed on its staff is substantial. C level representation will be key in the communications and steering aspect of the project. Expect routine escalations due to pushback within the organization related to making decisions and delegating work. Leverage third parties for support where possible specific to imaging and product expertise.

Have feedback or ideas to share? Contact me roncharity@gmail.com

Effective Collaboration requires more than just SharePoint, LiveMeeting and Lync

The modern workplace is much different than it was 10 years ago but many companies still reside within the 70s. This is largely due to management styles and resulting cultural impacts, many companies are not able to take advantage of open and effective collaboration. Having worked in this space for over 14 years, 20 if you include my Domino / Notes experience, the tools are the lesser part of the equation. Specifically, corporate culture, management style and work environment play a major role in facilitating an effective collaborative work environment.

The company I worked for prior to my current employer (Accounting company) drove this home. The executive management and HR team lied to employees, didn’t allow them to leave their desks, used gossip and hearsay to manipulate them. Spying on employees was common, taking attendance to make sure you sat at your desk occured almost daily and a list was kept, the office manager encouraged this and kept a list of such things and would distribute it openly to his management and HR. Their tactic was to manipulate employees into submission so they would become obedient automatons that would carry out their job goals and political games of their direct manager (spying, lying, manipulating the truth etc.) to further their managers career. Unfortunately this lead to a non-supportive environment where employees didn’t trust each other and did not work together openly. For me this was a great experience because I saw first hand that my consulting work and key messages and recommendations would deliver value if supported by the executive management team. Sometimes you must experience the polar opposite of what you believe in to truly realize its benefits.

So what do you need to incorporate into your design and change mgmt. plan?

• Supportive culture – employees are encouraged, trusted and supported to work openly and collaboratively by executive and direct management. This sort of behavior is instinctive and never questioned. Encourage collaboration such as these both within the office and while mobile.
• Flexibility – allow employees to have options in where they work. Just because you’ve removed the walls from cubes, or moved people out of offices, doesn’t mean they should have to stare at the same people all day, every day. Create break out areas for small groups to meet, and also have quiet areas for when folks really need to get in the zone.
• No silos allowed – silos decrease communication and productivity. An open workspace is implemented to break down silos, but if gone about the wrong way, silos will build again. Get input from others on what they need to work without walls, but still be happy and contributing.
• Leverage technology – allowing data to be accessed and shared from any alternative work environment is important, as the more mobile we become, the more we need fixed places to come together to connect in-person.
• Allow room for growth and alterations – if something isn’t working, change things up. Eliminating walls allows for more freedom to customize areas, and to make space for others who join the company, or make room for a celebration or group project area.
• Creative design – simply taking down the walls won’t change the feel of your environment. Show people you’re committed to reinventing the workspace by introducing new paint colors, new furniture and even new features, like whiteboard walls. There are many great things you can do to the workspace to inspire increased collaboration.

If you have experiences in this area I would like to hear from you.

SharePoint and User Adoption – Getting the most out of your investment

It is typical to experience resistance or ambivalence to change with projects that directly affect a users work processes. The “push back” can be minimized by informing, preparing and involving key stakeholders. A clear and open communication with staff is critical in developing their commitment to the change. Remember that change is a two step process; 1) realizing the change must happen and is good for them and 2) implementing the change into their daily routine. It is important to build clear understanding of where the change is leading and what it means through a strong business case and a clear vision. Staff must understand what the benefits of the project are to the company as well as to the individual, how things will change for them and how the project supports the company vision. Strong change leadership and open communication with stakeholders will build their commitment to and understanding of the changes and will involve them in the project.

Generically, ROI is a combination of cost savings and increased revenue. The difficulty lies in accurately accounting for and precisely measuring all of the line items that need to be plugged into the equation. At its most basic, it can be expressed as follows:

ROI = the sum of (+/- Savings) and (+/- Revenue) over a period of time

The challenge is twofold: accurately forecasting ROI and maximizing the actual results of the solution.

Roadblocks to User Adoption
ROI is intimately connected to changes in organizational and individual behavior. At best, the new technology will introduce new efficiencies, improve quality and act as a catalyst for entirely new ways of working. However, technical innovation and solution engineering prowess are not sufficient; end user adoption is “the last mile” of Solution ROI. Successful enterprise solutions are not installed with an installation wizard; they are assimilated into existing habits and practices.

The following depicts time and the degree of buy-in that can be expected by utilising a User Adopting Framework for projects that have high organisational impacts.

It is also critical to equip staff with the skills and capabilities required to use the new system. Organizations must build the capability of staff through education and training initiatives and support them with post go-live support initiatives. These activities are carried out at all stages of the project with such initiatives as process briefings and initial communications at the beginning of the project through to end user documentation at the conclusion. The diagram below shows communication, education and training initiatives as a continuum, beginning with providing foundation information at the beginning of the project, ramping up for the full deployment and continuing into support stages and post deployment phase.

User Adoption – Maximizing results
Adoption is best defined as the deployment of technology plus the assimilation of all behaviors the new technology is intended to facilitate plus, the abandonment of old behaviors that are to be eliminated.

The adoption rate is the rate at which the user population adopts best practices and abandons outdated behaviors. For example, if a portal is intended to eliminate duplicate work effort but the users are still reinventing the wheel and not working together even though the portal is operational, there is not complete adoption and the forecasted savings won’t be realized. The tabel below depicts general adoption rates based on the adopter (user) profile.

User Adoption framework
We now understand that successful enterprise solutions are not installed with an installation wizard; they are assimilated into existing habits and practices which requires business (and users) to change. As my marketing professor once said “Ron, people hate change…” and therefore an all encompassing strategy and framework for addressing this change is required.

The following are the areas you must focus on and examples are provided:

• Business Vision – Think enabling and simplified experience. For example and IT company whose desire is to differentiate its service offerings by providing clients with best practice solutions that leverage the combined experience of its consulting staff population globally. They believe that by achieving this they will be able to justify the higher consulting fees associated with its cost structure. Adopt a knowledge management infrastructure that provides consultants with a means of capturing and publishing knowledge. Also, link staff performance metrics to the effort and establish measurement for contributions linked directly to projects.
• User requirements – Enable users to view, search and submit documentation related to projects and other knowledge capture related activities. Allow for global access no matter their location as long as the internet is available and proper security is in place. Enable users to seek out thought leaders and areas of practice. Establish labor reporting codes to record time and support reporting.
• Management and User Representative Governance and Steering – Establish knowledge forums and communications globally and assign local knowledge officers. Provide them with usage and contribution metrics. Offer staff incentives and other positive reinforcement.
• Design – Deploy a Portal to provide communities, document storage and search mechanisms. Organize by communities or practice and technology focus areas.
• Architecture – Deploy three Portals; 1) Americas, 2) Europe and 3) Pacific rim. Provide adequate capacity for 10,000 users in each region, 5 million documents and 25,000 sites.
• Awareness Communications – Establish communications channels to the regions and office. Establish sites in each region to act as focal points of communications for that region. Leverage regional leads to drive this effort.
• Training – Establish quarterly virtual training sessions – be persistent. Utilize virtual classroom software. Place training packages in each of the regional sites and monitor usage.
• Deployment – Pilot or proof of concept deployment using PMI methods and framework. Full project deployment using PMI methods and framework
• User Feedback Mechanisms – Establish forms on each of the regional sites. Provide Email links on each of the regional sites. Survey staff quarterly to gather feedback.
• Usage (Adoption) measurement – Implement usage reporting for SharePoint Portal. Implement document publishing reports. For each completed project, 10 documents should be published.
• Staffing plan – Part time (25% utilized) equivalent for day to technical operations per region. Part time (5% utilized) equivalent for day to knowledge management activities per region. Full time global knowledge mgmt person to coordinate efforts of regions and set policy. Customization and changes to be managed using change control and project teams as required.
• Retirement of superseded systems – Relevant data is migrated to new systems. Communication of shutdown. These environments are shutdown, data wiped and removed for datacenters.

For a company to achieve its ROI, user adoption must be front and center to a company’s project from early inception through to ongoing management. The adoption rate at which the user population adopts best practices and abandons outdated behaviors will be a challenge to manage since organizational change is always difficult due to human factors. Resistance to change and awareness are common for any new business process and technology but can be managed using aggressive communications, training and performance measurement.

Mobilizing Your Workforce: Getting Your Culture Office and Technology Right

A summary of my article for SharePoint Reviews.

Corporations have mobilized their workforce to better serve clients and optimize their use of office space. This move have meant that employees require new ways of working and tools such as mobile phones to access corporate applications such as CRM, travel, knowledge management and billing systems.

As a result the corporate office space is optimized for touchdown type work activities such as quick meetings, planning the day and doing paperwork such as expenses. While on the road, airports, hotels and the local Starbucks have become work locations.

To enable the mobile workforce a new office design is required that supports shared space, on the fly collaborative meetings and access to basic office services such as phone, network and printing. The mobile professional must also have access to key applications, information and contacts while mobile. Applications must be available to mobile devices such as laptops and more so smart phones. Most importantly, the culture must be prepared to deal with and support this relatively new way of working.

In this article I will cover the aforementioned topics in more details, highlight key decisions, provide options and a roadmap for mobilizing your workforce. Topics covered include:

• Cultural impacts
• Office design changes
• Employee performanmce management
• Technology infrastructure, applications and devices
• Security and compliance
• Governance
• Further reading

Link to article http://www.sharepointreviews.com/sharepoint-reviews-articles/sharepoint-social/1805-7-mobile-sharepoint-considerations

SharePoint 2013 Governance Seminar Series

Over the next few months I will be recording two SharePoint Governance Seminars for SharePoint Pro Magazine. Having delivered these sessions in the past they are fun to create and deliver. Utilizing approaches summarized in past blogs and articles, I will help you step by step and provide examples of expected outcomes and possible roadblocks.

The two main topics will be as follows:

• Real-world governance scenarios – I will focus on real scenarios common to SharePoint such as UI consistency, content authoring, infrastructure issues, and customization issues to name a few. Here we’ll talk about typical scenarios administrators will encounter and ways to deal with them. Upon completion of the seminar you will have tools for helping you deal with common governance related problems.
• How to build your governance framework – for this session I will provide practical guidance for developing a governance program for both small and large companies. Each requires the same approach but the level of rigor is much different given organizational complexity, number of farms and stakeholders. Upon completion of the seminar you will have a step by step approach for developing you governance program along with some best practices.

The recordings will be delivered in March 2013.

Information Architecture – Why cant companies get it right?

Information Architecture is a unique skill set very different from typical IT skills of technical infrastructure and applications. Information Architecture requires library science, facilitation and domain (e.g. Pharmaceuticals, health) knowledge because your dealing with information, its value in relation to job activities and its classification so its surfaced. The value of such a role depends on how your organization views the value of its information and your ability to leverage it.

For example, when I think about corporate information, the following questions come to mind:

• What information does the business collect? How is it used? How much of it is stored and where? Why is it kept?
• What are all the different types of data and how are they classified? Do data owners exist for each data type or aggregate data collections?
• How is data collected? Why?
• How is data shared? Why?
• What are the business information availability requirements? Why?
• What confidentiality, integrity, and availability requirements apply?
• What is the legal environment surrounding the organization’s industry and the data it uses?

The discipline of Information Architecture has gained wider attention over the past decade due to the WWW and related technologies such as Web 2.0. The abundance of information and resulting usability issues has reinforced the need for the discipline.  How does Information Architecture help? It helps by introducing a level of meaning to what is generally an overwhelming amount of information and thereby helping people find information specific to their job role and activities.

So what is Information Architecture? Rosenfeld and Morville (1998) formally define IA in the following way:

• The combination of organization, labeling, and navigation schemes within and information system.
• The structural design of an information space to facilitate task completion and intuitive access to content.
• The art and science of structuring and classifying information systems to help people find and manage information.
• An emerging discipline and community of practice focused on bringing principles of design and architecture to the digital landscape.

WikiPedia’s definition is a follows:

• Information architecture (IA) is the art of expressing a model or concept of information used in activities that require explicit details of complex systems. Among these activities are library systems, Content Management Systems, web development, user interactions, database development, programming, technical writing, enterprise architecture, and critical system software design. Information architecture has somewhat different meanings in these different branches of IS or IT architecture. Most definitions have common qualities: a structural design of shared environments, methods of organizing and labeling websites, intranets, and online communities, and ways of bringing the principles of design and architecture to the digital landscape. (Read more http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_architecture)

Microsoft version is as follows:

• A Web site’s information architecture determines how the information in that site — its Web pages, documents, lists, and data — is organized and presented to the site’s users. Information architecture is often recorded as a hierarchical list of site content, search keywords, data types, and other concepts.
• Analyzing the information to be presented in an Internet or intranet Web site is an important early step in the site planning process, and this step provides the basis for planning:
• How the site will be structured and divided into a set of sub sites.
• How data will be presented in the site.
• How site users will navigate through the site.
• How information will be targeted at specific audiences.
• How the business vocabulary will be applied.
• How search will be configured and optimized.

The fundamental reason for the increased interest in taxonomies is simple-despite years of effort and new technologies, professionals are still spending more time looking for information than actually using the information they find. Rosenfeld and WikiPedia have a view that’s not bound to products while Microsoft’s definition is tightly linked to SharePoint functionality.

Want to read up on the topic?

• SharePoint Content Strategy – Delivering the Promise of Value
• Information Architecture for the World Wide Web: Designing Large-scale Web Sites
• The Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web and Beyond
• Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
• The Design of Everyday Things
• User and Task Analysis for Design

Enjoy!