Looking forward to today as I want to get into seeing all this stuff work.

Since we are so far ahead in the schedule we are going to change gears and go off the beaten path. Bob is walking us through a presentation called “Information First” this is part of his standard consulting engagements that he does with different clients that need help in starting off an information architecture.

Define what you value.

What information is important?

This helps you use the old 80/20 rule. 80% of the value is derived from only 20% of the content. So focus on that 20% and you job overall will be easier.

Something to understand.

Understanding your data will facilitate meaningful use of information….

What does this mean? I think it means that you need to really understand your data, what it is, where it comes from, how it is used and why. If you do understand this you will get much more use out of it because you will better understand the relationships, and be able to better organize it. If you do organize it better and make it easier to use more people will find it and use it and then you will get more value from it. (You think?)

Bob walked through some information mapping using Mindjet Mindmapper. If you have not seen this I suggest you take a look.

Interesting concept was gone over as to the consumer side of data. How and why people view the data dramatically affects how you organize it and classify it. So who and why people need to and want to get to data affects how you plan to present it. You must think about this when planning out the taxonomy, not only that the data is there and that it needs to be there but who will need it and how do they want to view it and why…

So this means that when planning your taxonomy you need to talk to people that make up different classification. Data owners, data consumers and make sure you get a good representation from different areas. So don't just ask HR how they view HR policies, ask some generic Joe Schmoe how they view HR data.

Another thing to keep in mind when planning your information taxonomy is the evolution of data. Will the information change? If so how often? Do you need to view previous versions of the data that has changed? How long will you need to keep previous versions and how many of them? This could affect your architecture and settings pretty dramatically. This is especially true as you plan content types and associate policies with them. Ahh I love it when a plan comes together.

TIP:

Don't be too flat in your taxonomy; you really need a hierarchy in order to get a proper structure for data.

Tip.

No data should go into a formal system without an owner.

Why do you need to manage your content?

Content is beneficial to improving your productivity, the overall productivity of your organization or quality of life. Because of this it should be maintained and well managed. This is also why you need to build out the system that manages the right way.

Something you really need to look into is the whole concept of views on lists and libraries. Rather than creating a bunch of new folders or other lists and libraries. You can store it all in one and just use different views which you can direct link to for people to see. Changes the way people see the data and they won’t know it’s not different areas. All they see is the stuff that matches the criteria of the view. I must say that this is one thing I have done right several times before. Get rid of Folders….!!

Document libraries and versioning.

Good stuff..

TIP. Remember that the second you enable versioning, those who only have reader access will never see the documents that are minor versions. They will only see the published files. This is also true with all WCM content.

Did you know that if you checkout a document it will save a document to your local My Documents > SharePoint Drafts folder?

Some Misc Limits

· More than 2000 libraries and lists in a single site will degrade performance.

· Having more that 50 lists and libraries in the sites navigation makes it very difficult to navigate from a usability perspective

· The max recommended size of a library is 10,000,000 documents. I think I am safe.

Document Management

This controls the lifecycle of document. It controls how documents are created, how they may be reviewed and after review how they are published. Once published it dictates how they are consumed by those who need to and after not needed anymore how those documents are disposed of.

WCM

I did not realize how granular you could get with utilizing WCM. You can have your style team dictate very granularly what the “content” will look like where it will be etc. And the content people just add the content. I really like how this can work, and then people won’t be able to use all different fonts and styles etc. You can dictate that the only fonts to be used come from xyz CSS or the like. Take this a step further and add some cool K2 workflow to the mix. (Obligatory plug sorry)

Another cool item is for images where you by default can browse to where images are stored even on your desktop. You can now limit what they are allowed to browse. Such as the Site Collection images library. (Which I guess that is what it is there for)

Page Layouts

Nothing earth shattering here, we are going through lots of stuff on page layouts, and options. Bob seems to be high on Telerik I will have to check them out. Also going into different ways to edit these pages and how to use Web Part Zones, web parts etc. I have not done much with WCM so I actually am very interested in getting on my vpc and seeing what I can do.

I did not know about this Smart-Client Authoring. That’s pretty neat, and it works well. It’s a great reason to upgrade to Office 2007. That’s great. Have you played with this? Neato! Your content creators can create their content in Word 2007. Obviously there are some drawbacks and may need some additional steps beyond a few clicks. (But I bet K2 can automate it) J

Audiences

I have never really messed with this feature, but Bob really likes it and positions it in such a way that it does sound appealing. I am just not sure I am ready to implement it with what appears to be a good deal of work to set it up. This is really all about filtering the view of information. What information should you be seeing. This is not security, this is just another way to sort and filtering to raise relevant content to the right people.

TIP: Every Site should have a Help and How to on it. This can be combined based on Role and Audiences to make it even more better. J

Planning for Document Management

Use this as a checklist of stuff to do when going through the planning process.

1. Identify document management roles

2. Analyze Document Usage

3. Plan the organization of documents

4. Plan how content flows and moves

5. Plan Content types

6. Plan Content Control

7. Plan WORKFLOW –See K2

8. Plan Information management Roles

AHHH The fun part now some LAB WORK. Let's create a TON of content types, and start building out some Information Architecture.

That's all for now talk to you tomorrow