Organization Needs and Goals Analysis

Your deployment of SharePoint Portal Server is a good opportunity to evaluate document management practices and content organization. Before you begin configuring your workspace, take some time to assess your existing content, identify the needs and habits of your users, and outline your deployment goals. This information can help you decide how to streamline your document management processes and create an effective dashboard site to deliver valuable information to your organization.

If you are deploying SharePoint Portal Server for a group or organization that you know well, you may already be familiar with the current practices and needs of the organization. Consultations with group members about key goals can help you identify which SharePoint Portal Server features you want to deploy. Coordination with others is especially important if your deployment fits into a larger information management system in your organization. If this is the case, you may want to form a team of key people who understand the goals and requirements of your organization to help you plan an effective deployment.

Reviewing Your Content

An organization often stores data in many different places, such as file servers, Web sites, and mail servers. If you are uncertain about the location and purpose of the content used by your organization, a content review can help you identify them. Knowing the types of documents that exist in your organization helps you determine the best way to organize your content.

A content review addresses the following questions:

• Who produces content? Who manages it? Content managers can provide information about the people who create the content. They are also the best people to suggest ways to improve the organization of content.
• Where is content stored? Identify the location of each server used to store content. For example, your group may store discussions about new advertising campaigns in public folders on an Exchange server. Your system administrator can identify the servers used in your organization.
• What is the purpose of the content? How is it structured? Learn who uses the content and what format is used. For example, you might discover that the product development department stores product specifications as Microsoft Word documents but the marketing department uses Lotus Notes to maintain customer profiles.

Knowing where information is stored and how your organization uses it helps you to clarify your deployment goals.

Assessing User Needs and Habits

If you are uncertain about the needs of your organization, a survey can capture information about the habits and concerns of your users. It can also identify other useful information for planning your deployment.

You can ask users to identify the types of content they find valuable. A user survey could include the following questions:

• What are the five most useful information sources, content types, or groups of documents for your job? Users might list a call-tracking database, spreadsheets listing sales figures, or a folder of design specifications.
• Are there additional information sources, content types, or groups of documents that would benefit from increased exposure? Users might list documents produced in another department or industry publications on the Internet.
• What information is missing from the current portal? Why is this information important to include? Users might list a Web site that offers free tutorials for a software application or a request that the employee handbook be available on the portal.

Responses to these questions help to identify the content that users want to access, even if it is not currently available to them. Users might provide a variety of answers to the same question. For example, some users might identify certain tasks as easy that other users identify as difficult. In this case, consider differences in knowledge between the two groups. Assess whether your dashboard site needs to address each group separately or if you need to redefine your target audience.

You can also ask users how they prefer to find information. Responses to this question help to prioritize your goals for deploying search features. With SharePoint Portal Server, users can locate content by:

• Performing a keyword search. By using a specific word or phrase, a keyword search query can produce numerous results. This method appeals to users who want to see all possible content related to a specific query.
• Browsing or searching through categories. Categories group documents by topic and provide an organized view of the information. This method is especially valuable for users who do not know the location of content.
• Navigating through the folder structure. Users find information based on file location. This method may be especially suitable for authors who are familiar with the folder structure in the workspace.
• Viewing information posted on the home page. When information is visible on the home page, users immediately see it without needing to perform a search. This method works well for content that is relevant to many users.

You can conduct a survey by distributing a questionnaire with detailed questions, and analyzing the answers with your planning team. You can also survey your organization by meeting with users to discuss existing practices, work styles and habits, and potential deployment goals. Whether your process is formal or informal, the scope of your deployment and the structure of your organization determine the approach that you take.

Identifying Your Goals

Your initial research helps you identify your organization's information management processes and may uncover some common problems. Analyzing these problems can help you clarify your goals. The following table describes a few typical problems and suggests some of the SharePoint Portal Server features to include in your configuration plan to solve those problems and achieve your information management goals.

SharePoint Portal Server Solutions

Common Problem	Solution
It is difficult to track revisions to documents with multiple authors.	Use version control to save changes made to a document and to eliminate the possibility of people overwriting each other's documents.
Information for the organization is not widely circulated.	Display news, announcements, quick links, and other information on the home page of the dashboard site.
The group lacks control over who accesses content.	Use roles for flexible control over access to content.
There is no process to maintain a private view of a document.	Select a document publication process to ensure that drafts are not visible to readers until the appropriate time.
It is time-consuming to enforce review cycles for documents.	Use an approval process to route documents automatically to designated reviewers.
Information is hard to find on the current portal.	Use categories and Best Bets to organize and highlight relevant content.
Searches are slow because servers are queried one at a time.	Add content sources to create an index of multiple information sources, such as Web servers, file servers, Exchange servers, Lotus Notes databases, and other SharePoint Portal Server workspaces.