Instructor's Corner

Deploying SharePoint

by Eric Sanne, Knowlogy SharePoint Instructor

SharePoint. It's new, it's hot and it's taking Washington DC by storm. With the release of SharePoint 2007, it seems every .gov and .org I turn to are implementing SharePoint, and they are implementing it now. It works right out of the box and seems so easy to setup and start using. Well, we at Knowlogy have not found that to be the case. SharePoint is all about customizing to your environment and your business environment.

Indeed, this may be Microsoft's first product to leave behind the vision of a PC on every desktop. SharePoint addresses how people work together. "Collaboration" is not just setting up a "Team Site." Communication and collaboration require configuration and perhaps even customization. That team site should allow your workers to communicate with each other and have a business process undergird how they collaborate.

Although you can deliver an out of the box experience immediately, the truth is that SharePoint is a huge vanilla box that demands configuration and perhaps customization. Many, if not most, defaults need to be adjusted for your business processes. Planning takes time; implementing that plan takes a lot longer. I tell people that you can pilot SharePoint in 60 days but implementing it successfully takes 18 months.

So how can Knowlogy help you get there? Well, of course, we offer consulting services, but then who doesn't make the same claim? What sets us apart is what we've learned from training SharePoint IT folks, content managers and end users. Ask yourself this one question: who, in your SharePoint plan, owns the content of your team sites? I can tell you right now, after years of managing Exchange Public Folders, that your IT department has no interest in managing content. If not them, then who?

The answer to this $64,000 question is not just dumping team or departmental sites on unsuspecting end-users the way so many of our clients have. SharePoint offers a new application where there are not just users and administrators. To be successful, a SharePoint deployment needs Power Users and Content Managers. SharePoint needs to have users close to the content managing and configuring many and sometimes most of SharePoint's collaboration features. Power Users may have to manage permissions, approvals, workflows and content publishing.

At Knowlogy, we have found that deployment and training go hand in hand. We consult, we train, we deploy.