| You can most easily define your management strategy by detailing your management goals. The following two examples describe business situations requiring changes in the way information is managed within an organization. In each, select information collected from the user survey is extracted, document management goals are described, and the corresponding server features and management techniques they require are listed. Additional considerations, focusing on folder and document management, are then explained, highlighting feature dependencies and notable configuration requirements. Compliance Reports The situation Users within the Quality and Compliance department of a large organization use a handful of document templates to create large numbers of weekly report documents for delivery to departmental managers and executives throughout the organization. These reports are compiled from documents from a variety of information sources, and are the combination of several individuals' contributions. Each report must be reviewed and approved by one of the department's three assistant managers prior to release. Reports are time-sensitive and do not change once released. All reports are permanently archived for future analysis and review. Additionally, there are numerous executive reports produced upon request, and periodic informational documents are created on an ongoing basis. Source materials are acceptable for general departmental access. Reports, current and archival, are considered confidential and should only be visible to a handful of department members , select managers, and executives throughout the organization. Users complain that it is difficult to locate files. Source documents, current report documents, and archival reports all reside in a single location. Naming of files is inconsistent and there is no current method to search document contents to easily locate specific information. Management would like to implement stricter controls on the release of reports and the disposition of source and archival information, to ensure that confidentiality and accuracy are maintained . It would be useful for the organization if managers and executives outside the department had the ability to retrieve reports at-will rather than requesting documents via email, sometimes resulting in several exchanges before the appropriate report document is located and delivered. The following table illustrates the management goals sought by the Compliance department and the features and management techniques that would best deliver them: Table 10.2. Compliance Department Goals and Management Techniques | Document Management Goals | SharePoint Portal Server Features and Management Techniques | | Organize documents by separating source materials, current reports, and archival documents. | Create separate folders for source materials, current reports, and archival reports. Add sub folders to organize information by source and audience as needed. Sort existing documents and populate them into their corresponding folders. | | Limit access to report documents. | Select a document publication process that ensures that reports are only visible to their authors, select managers, and executives through the use of roles and security access controls. Use enhanced folders. | | Streamline the process for creating reports. | Use discussions to facilitate collaboration on reports. Use check-in/out to reduce duplication of effort. Use subscriptions to notify authors when changes in draft documents occur. | | Approve all documents before their release. | Enable document approval in enhanced folders to route documents to assistant managers prior to publication. Once published, documents will be visible to users with the appropriate file security privileges. | | Locate information and search documents | Organize documents into folders. Use more rapidly . Categories, Best Bets, and keywords to more easily locate relevant documents through searches or browsing. | | Enable managers and executives to locate and retrieve current and archival reports. | Grant managers and executives reader access toreport folders. Use a customized digital dashboard to organize current reports and simplify their delivery. Use subscriptions to indicate when new reports are published, and notify the appropriate group of managers or executives both on the digital dashboard and through email. | Since the department will need to utilize approval routing and check-in/ check-out features for report documents, all of the reports should be placed in nested enhanced folders. Reports should be organized by type and then week of the year. Roles and file security properties should be configured at the parent folder to provide consistency through inheritance as new folders are created each week. Selected author roles should be assigned for each folder to enable controls on authorship and to enable private drafts. By topping it all off with the use of search and indexing capabilities, the department will fully realize the benefits SharePoint Portal Server has to offer. Sales Department A small manufacturing company has only recently begun integrating structured information technologies into its business. Given the traditional small business culture, the only controls on access to company documents have been used for accounting information, as secured by a password-protected file share. All other shared documents currently reside on a network share consisting of numerous well-organized folders. Any information that a user did not wish accessible to the company in general has traditionally been stored on that user's local hard drive or various types of removable media at the desktop. Each segment of the company creates and maintains detailed documents for every stage of product design, manufacturing, and shipping. The company has been growing rapidly in recent years , and the sales group has determined that they need a document management solution to meet their growing needs. They want a way to manage documents and materials used in the sales process. Since they not only bring in new business, but maintain and develop existing customer relationships, they often monitor the progress of orders for their various accounts and want to be able to quickly locate and retrieve information from any document in the company that might be relevant in their efforts. The sales group is very competitive. Individual sales people closely guard their pursuit of new accounts and do not want certain documents pertaining to potential sales wins to be visible by other sales people. All successful sales proposals are collected for general use, but, since they often contain confidential customer account information, access should be limited to sales and management. All general sales materials ( brochures , sample sheets, and so on) should be readily available to internal and external readers for promotional use. Company management wants access to all sales materials for general oversight, and to ensure business continuity in case of emergency or staffing change. The following table shows the stated needs of the sales group and company management. For each, the features and management techniques are listed that are best suited to make them a reality: Table 10.3. Sales Group Goals and Management Techniques | Document Management Goals | SharePoint Portal Server Features and Management Techniques | | Segregate sales information by sales person. | Create folders for each sales person, and configure that person as its Coordinator. Ensure that the Everyone group is removed. | | Collect and organize finalized documents, especially for reference and reuse purposes. | Create a high-level folder for sales documents, and configure it to allow departmental access. Use enhanced folders to enable version history. Create parent folders for managing individual salesperson documents, published customer documents, confidential customer documents, and general sales documents. | | Ensure that confidential customer information is not disclosed. | Create a confidential customer documents folder and remove the Everyone group from the access list. | | Search file share. | Configure SharePoint Portal Server to crawl the single company file share. | | Provide select documents to customers. | Configure a dashboard site for customer access. Create an account for each customer company and assign it as a Reader for its own published document folder. | | Ensure managerial access to documents. | Create a management group and assign it a Coordinator role for the parent sales folder. | | Provide company-wide access to general sales materials. | Create a standard folder for general sales documents leaving the Everyone group assigned as a Reader. | Using folders as access boundaries provides both the ability to secure the sensitive sales information requested by the sales people and the ability to organize the remaining sales documents according to who will be permitted to use them. Since most of the information is not intended for use by the company as a whole, the Everyone group should only be included at the general sales documents folder. In the confidential customer documents folder, subfolders for each customer can be used to collect together customer documents and to allow for easy assignment of security roles, to ensure that only the salespeople and the given customer have access to those materials. Also note that since access permissions are observed both in the Web folders view and the dashboard view, the sales people would have a powerful tool to retrieve or manage any of their documents from remote locations ”a potential boon if they need additional information while meeting with customers. The dashboard site can also be easily reconfigured to serve as a communication and information delivery tool for enhancing communication with the customers. Final Thoughts on Choosing Your Management Strategy As illustrated by the preceding examples, finding the correlation between user needs and the various features within SharePoint Portal Server is the key in providing the document management capabilities required by your users. Your specific management strategy will likely vary from these examples in many ways, but the underlying process is the same: assess, analyze, and deliver. Here are a few additional suggestions to ensure your success: -
Try to solicit information from a wide sampling of users. -
Take time to validate your observations by asking the group of users you are planning for if you have successfully identified their document management needs. -
Ensure that users are prepared for the changes required in the transition to SharePoint Portal Server. Provide training and special support assistance if needed to make the change a smooth and comfortable one. TIP It is best practice to plan and pilot your document management strategy ahead of time.
| 
