Workspace Preparation

Examine how your organization creates and uses information before you decide how to store content in the document library. Configuring the Documents folder is a large part of preparing the workspace for document management and group collaboration. It is important to understand your current document management practices so that you can decide which SharePoint Portal Server features meet the needs of your organization.

Designing Your Folder Structure

Careful planning of your folder structure ensures the most benefit from your new workspace.

For example, you might answer the following questions:

• How does the group currently organize their documents?
• Who has permission to add documents and edit them?
• Which folders contain documents that may have multiple authors?
• What should occur before publishing a document?

Talk to the people in your organization. They can help you understand existing processes and identify areas that need improvement. You can then begin to design the folder structure of your document library.

Enabling Enhanced Folders

SharePoint Portal Server provides two types of folders for document storage. Enhanced folders support all content management features, including document profiles, public and private views for workspace items, check-in and check-out functions, document version history, and document publishing and approval processes. If you disable enhanced folder settings, you disable check-in, check-out, and versioning for that folder, which changes the enhanced folder to a standard folder. SharePoint Portal Server immediately publishes all documents added to standard folders.

Figure 6.1. Enabling enhanced folders

SharePoint Portal Server records a history for each file stored in enhanced folders. This helps you track editorial cycles and prevents a user from overwriting another user's modifications. To edit a document, you must check it out first. This prevents others from changing it until you check it in. Every time you check in or publish a document, SharePoint Portal Server assigns a new version number to the document and archives the previous version. When you check out a document, you retrieve the most recent version unless you select a previous version. SharePoint Portal Server displays the version history on the Properties page of the document.

Enhanced folders require users to check out documents for editing and to use the Publish command to make a document visible to readers. Use enhanced folders for documents that require editing, review, or approval before you make them available to users associated with the reader role on the folder. For example, you can store a marketing plan created by a team of people in an enhanced folder. You can see who is working on the file at any time and ensure that it receives management approval before it is published.

The following table compares the SharePoint Portal Server features supported by each folder type.

Standard and Enhanced Folders

Feature	Standard folder	Enhanced folder
Roles	Yes	Yes
Document version history	No	Yes
Check-in/check-out	No	Yes
Private draft versions	No	Yes
Approval routing	No	Yes
Profile metadata	Yes	Yes
Indexed documents	Yes	Yes
Categories	Yes	Yes

Both standard and enhanced folders support SharePoint Portal Server roles. Published documents from both types of folders are included in the index and made available for users to search and read on the dashboard site.

SharePoint Portal Server supports compound, or multi-part, documents only in standard folders. Examples of compound documents are HTML files with relative links, a Word document with a linked Excel spreadsheet, and a master document created in Word.

You can enable or disable enhanced folder settings only on an empty folder. If you want to change these settings on a folder that contains documents, you must empty the folder first.

Understanding Folder Inheritance

All folders inherit folder settings from their parent folder unless otherwise specified. The Documents folder in the workspace is an enhanced folder, by default. When you create a new folder in the Documents folder, it inherits this setting. Folder inheritance also occurs when you drag a folder from your computer to the workspace. The folder you drag into the workspace inherits the folder settings of the new parent folder. For example, if the new parent folder is a standard folder, the folder that you drag into the workspace automatically becomes a standard folder. To break the folder inheritance setting, create a new folder in the workspace and enable or disable the folder inheritance setting before moving documents into the new folder.

Figure 6.2. Security inheritance

Creating Your Folder Structure

After deciding what type of folder to use for each group of documents, you must create the folder hierarchy in the workspace. You can duplicate your existing folder structure in the workspace or design a new folder structure.

The quickest method is to duplicate your existing folder structure and make any modifications (combining or dividing folders) necessary to accommodate the desired document management processes. You can drag a folder and its contents into the workspace. The top-level Documents folder is an enhanced folder. Because a folder inherits its settings from the parent folder, any folder you drag into the Documents folder has enhanced folder settings. To break the folder setting inheritance, create a new folder in the workspace, enable or disable the folder setting inheritance as appropriate, and then move the documents into the new workspace folder.

Alternately, you can redesign your structure to take the greatest advantage of SharePoint Portal Server features. This method requires more planning but can yield greater benefits by eliminating redundancy, clarifying processes, and improving document discovery.

You can use folders to decide where a document is stored, and what policies apply to that document. Three key factors influence how you organize your documents in the workspace:

• Security and management requirements
• Document publishing processes
• Document profiles

These factors determine whether you combine folders or separate the documents in a folder into different folders.

Assigning Roles for Security

Each role identifies a specific set of permissions: coordinators handle management tasks, authors add and update files, and readers have read-only access to published documents. Roles offer a flexible and secure way to control user access to workspace documents. You can assign roles to users selected from your existing Microsoft Windows 2000 domain users and groups. SharePoint Portal Server role-based security combines traditional file-access permissions such as Read, Write, and Change, with an extended set of actions such as Check-out, Publish, and Approve. You control access to each folder by assigning roles to the appropriate users or groups.

Figure 6.3. Assigning users to roles

When deciding whether content should be stored in one folder or several, assess security requirements, and evaluate how you can delegate coordinator responsibilities. For example, you may create a folder for each project within a department and assign a project manager as the coordinator on each folder. For detailed information about roles and security, see Chapter 8, Planning Security.

Choosing a Publishing Process

Identifying the publication process best suited to your documents helps you decide what folder type to use. Publishing a document creates a public version that is available to readers of a folder. Review the types of documents used in your organization. Which document types can you publish immediately? Which document types should remain private until ready for a larger audience of readers?

If folders contain a mixture of potentially public content and content that is restricted to a specific group, consider separating the two types of content into different folders. Evaluate the needs of your document publishing processes when creating the folder structure for your document library.

When you save a document to a standard folder, SharePoint Portal Server publishes it immediately. Therefore, all documents stored in a standard folder are, by default, available for public view. For example, meeting agendas could be stored in standard folders.

In an enhanced folder, unpublished document versions, or drafts, are accessible only to other authors and coordinators for the folder. The Publish action allows you to control when a document changes from a private view to a public view. For example, you can store presentation slides in an enhanced folder to restrict the audience until they are reviewed for accuracy.

Add Approval Routes

Often one or more people must review and approve a document's content. In this situation, consider adding approval routing to the document publishing process. In approval routing, a document is sent to one or more people, and each person can approve or reject the document. Each step in the approval process is complete when the required people approve or reject the document. An approver receives an e-mail notification when a document requires his review.

You can store published documents in standard or enhanced folders, but only enhanced folders have the option for approval routing. In enhanced folders, you can choose to have a document undergo an approval process before publishing. After an author chooses to publish a document, SharePoint Portal Server can automatically route the document to a list of reviewers for approval before successfully publishing it. Each of these people, called approvers, may approve or reject the document. Approval routing provides an easy way to ensure that a document receives adequate review before publication.

When you create subfolders, they do not inherit approval process settings from their parent folders. You must configure an approval process for each folder.

Types of Approval Routes

SharePoint Portal Server offers two routing options for reviewing a document before publishing it:

• One after another, called serial approval routing
• All at once, called parallel approval routing

Both types of approval routing are a series of steps that lead to publication.

A serial approval route (one after another) identifies a list of successive approvers. Each person must approve the document before the next person in the route receives an approval request notification. When the last person on the list approves the document, SharePoint Portal Server publishes the document and makes it available to readers. If any person on the list rejects the document, the approval process ends and the document's status returns to checked in. A serial route works well in highly structured organizations that use sequential review processes.

Figure 6.4. Using a serial approval route

A parallel approval route (all at once) sends an e-mail message about the document to all approvers at the same time. Parallel routing notifies all approvers simultaneously, instead of the sequential approver notifications used in serial routing. Any approver can approve or reject the document at any time.

Before using a parallel route, you must define the number of approvals required to publish the document. When you establish a parallel approval route for a folder, you can require approval from only one approver or from all of the approvers to publish the document.

Figure 6.5. Using a parallel approval route

For example, you can route a document to three approvers. If only one approval is required, SharePoint Portal Server automatically publishes the document after the first approval. This is especially useful for time-sensitive documents that cannot tolerate delay because a single approver is unavailable. This option suits an informal approval style for a document that does not require everyone on the list to review and approve it.

Requiring unanimous approval is an option that is especially suitable for confidential or very important documents in which you must track each approver's vote. Because this information requires unanimous agreement, SharePoint Portal Server does not publish the document unless all members of the board approve it.

Creating Document Profiles

Planning for document profiles and properties depends on how you structure the folders in the workspace. You can create document profiles based on how you group documents in your current structure.

To prepare deployment of document profiles and properties in your workspace, consider these planning steps:

1. Decide whether the properties on the Base Document profile are sufficient or whether you want to create new document profiles with custom properties.

   SharePoint Portal Server supplies a template called the Base Document profile, which you can use to create new document profiles and properties. The Base Document profile consists of the Title, Author, Keywords, and Description properties. If you currently have a simple folder structure in which all documents contain similar content, you can apply the Base Document profile to all your documents. However, to aid in successful searching, you can create new document profiles with custom properties to better identify your documents.

   

   Figure 6.6. Adding custom properties to the document profile

2. Examine your content for descriptive patterns. For each pattern, choose a document profile name.

   Do you see any patterns that suggest how you can group certain documents together with a profile? Look for types of documents found in more than one folder. Plan a profile name for each group of documents. For example, you may have separated your folders by competitor name but you see a group of documents that you could describe as competitor product analyses. Although you stored the documents in folders for different competitors, you can create a document profile called Competitor Product Analysis and apply it to all of those documents.

3. For new properties, use a word or phrase that people would be likely to use to search for these documents.

   When you add new properties, try to anticipate the word or phrase that users may choose in a search query for each document. Talk to the people who create the content and ask which words or phrases they would use to describe it. Choose the properties you need from the words or phrases that people suggest. You can add the specific answers as values for the properties. For example, because you can apply the document profile Competitor Product Analysis to content in folders for two different competitors, you add a new property called Competitor to the document profile. The property values are the names of specific competitors.

4. Mark essential properties as required. Decide which properties can have multiple values.

   You can make a property required or leave it as an optional field on the document profile. When a property is required, the user must enter a value before checking in a document. Be aware that authors do not consistently enter values for optional properties.

   Requiring property values improves discovery of your documents but slows the process of checking documents in. Consider your authors when deciding how many required values to include on your document profiles.

   You can also permit a user to enter multiple values for the same property. For example, in the document profile Competitor Product Analysis, an author could enter the names of two competitors as values for the Competitor property.

5. For required properties, decide whether values are predetermined or added as needed by authors.

   You can restrict property entries to an established list or allow authors to enter free-text property values. When you add a property to a document profile, you must decide whether to restrict the property values to an approved list.

   Allowing authors to add a value as needed is appropriate if your group is small and if users maintain a common vocabulary throughout all content. However, inconsistencies can appear when users enter values in an unrestricted manner. Consider designating one person in your group to review all values entered on document profiles. For example, as part of the editorial process, an editor can evaluate the appropriateness of the property values selected by the author on the document profile.

   Preventing authors from adding new values ensures consistency throughout all document profiles and improves search success. Restricting entries to an established list requires some planning to create a controlled vocabulary for selected properties. However, this task is more manageable if you consult the people who create the content.

Using Document Profiles to Apply Metadata

In many organizations, it is difficult to find documents that contain similar subject matter, especially if the words used in a search query are not in the text of the document. To overcome this problem, you can apply metadata to documents using document profiles. Metadata supplies additional descriptive information for a document, including additional search keywords that may not appear in the text of a document. During a search, SharePoint Portal Server searches a document's metadata in addition to the text of the document.

Metadata matches a property with a value. For example, you can associate a number of values, such as London or Tokyo, with a property called City. A document profile is a collection of properties that provides a consistent way to describe and classify documents. For example, you can create a Marketing Analysis profile to define your market-trend analyses. Document profiles include system-generated metadata such as the file size and modification date.

You can modify a document profile to include custom properties, such as sales region, product, and competitor. A workspace can contain multiple document profiles. After you add a document profile to the workspace, you can assign it to any folder by using the Profiles tab on the Properties page of the specific folder. Every document in the workspace must have a document profile assigned to it.

Figure 6.7. Selecting document profiles

For example, Eva writes an analysis of a competitor's product. This product will compete in the market with her organization's product, the Kodiak coat. Although she does not mention the Kodiak in her document, she decides to include this product name as a keyword property value. After Eva publishes the document, Carol uses Kodiak in a search query on the dashboard site. Her search results include Eva's analysis because the search query found a match in the keyword property value in the document's metadata.

Emphasize Subjects with Keywords

A keyword is one of the properties available on document profiles. When a search query matches a value in the Keywords property of a document, the document appears toward the top of a search results list, because SharePoint Portal Server weights a match in the Keywords property more heavily than it weights a match in the document body text.

You have two options for allowing authors to add keyword values to a document profile:

• Authors can add values as needed for the property on the profile form. SharePoint Portal Server enables this method by default.
• Authors must select values from a predetermined list in the property on the profile form.

Figure 6.8. Identifying key words for searching

Like other document profile properties, SharePoint Portal Server displays the values for the Keywords property as a list of terms an author can select when completing the profile form. If this list is not restricted, an author may either choose a term from the list or enter a new one. Regardless of the method you choose for designating these values, try to keep this list short and manageable so authors can select the correct keyword quickly and accurately.

Identifying Content Sources

A content source represents a location outside the workspace where content is stored. A URL for this content is stored in the workspace. This content can be located in a different workspace on the same server, on another server on your network, or on the Internet. Examples of content sources include Web sites, file systems, databases, and other workspaces. SharePoint Portal Server creates a searchable index of all content in the workspace and the information available from the content sources that you add. On the dashboard site, users can search for and view information from these content sources.

Users cannot check out or edit items from content sources.

Content sources are stored in the Content Sources folder, found in the Management folder of the workspace. To create and manage content sources, you must be designated as a coordinator for the Management folder. You can add a content source at any time by using the Add Content Source Wizard.

Figure 6.9. Different content sources that SharePoint Portal Server can crawl

You can add the following types of information as content sources:

• Web site
• File share
• Microsoft Exchange 2000 public folders
• Microsoft Exchange 5.5 public folders
• Lotus Notes databases
• SharePoint Portal Server workspaces

Determine what content is most useful to your users when before adding content sources. A content review and user survey are helpful to learn where content is stored and what information users need to access.

Adding Content Sources

Each workspace contains an index of content stored in the workspace and content from the content sources that you add. The Content Sources folder contains the Additional Settings tool. Use this tool to configure settings for this index. By using the Additional Settings tool, you can create a schedule to update the index and choose a method for crawling content sources. You can also customize the index settings for a specific content source or apply the same settings to all content sources.

After you create a content source, you can complete the following management tasks related to the index by using the Additional Settings tool located in the Content Sources folder:

• Schedule updates. Indicate how often SharePoint Portal Server should update the index to include new material in existing content sources and any content sources that you added since the last update.
• Create search scopes. Provide a way for users to limit what is included in dashboard site searches, in order to improve the speed of searches and yield shorter search results lists.
• Add rules. Indicate what types of information you want SharePoint Portal Server to include in or exclude from the index.

Scheduling Updates to the Index

You can apply one schedule to update the index for all content sources or customize the schedules to update individual content sources at different times. There are four update methods. Each update method suggests a default schedule to update index content, although you can customize the schedule settings.

The four update methods are:

• Full update. During a full update, SharePoint Portal Server updates links to all content in the content source. A full update includes refreshing the index for unchanged content, adding new content, modifying changed content, and removing deleted content from the index. This is the most time-consuming and resource-intensive type of update.
• Incremental update. An incremental update of a content source includes only changed content. SharePoint Portal Server removes deleted content from the index, but does not modify the index for unchanged content. For this reason, performing an incremental update is faster than performing a full update.

  You can perform an incremental update if you know that content has changed but you do not want to create a full update. A periodic (for example, daily) incremental update creates the index without using the time or resources required for a daily full update. By using incremental updates, you can perform full updates less frequently.

• Adaptive update. An adaptive update is an incremental update that uses a statistical formula to improve performance. An adaptive update records how often content changes, and then crawls only the content that is statistically most likely to have changed. The more frequently you perform an adaptive update, the more efficiently SharePoint Portal Server processes the content. For this reason, an adaptive update is faster than a full or incremental update.

  Although an adaptive update is faster than an incremental or full update, SharePoint Portal Server could miss some updated content. For this reason, SharePoint Portal Server always crawls documents that it has not retrieved for two weeks, even if they have not been updated.

• Notification update. A notification update is the most efficient type of update. SharePoint Portal Server uses this method by default when possible. If a content source supports notification updates, it automatically sends a notification of any changes to the index. This notification triggers an update of the individual content source in the index.

  Notifications are available only for SharePoint Portal Server computers and for file shares located on an NTFS file system partition on a computer running Windows NT 4 or Windows 2000. Your system administrator can provide you with additional information.

You can customize how often SharePoint Portal Server updates the information for a specific content source or how often it updates the entire index. The default schedule for the Content Sources folder, which contains all content sources, is a daily adaptive update Monday through Thursday at 10:00 P.M. and an incremental update on Friday at 10:00 P.M. This schedule allows SharePoint Portal Server to update information in the index about the content sources daily based on the frequency with which users access the content and for SharePoint Portal Server to include all changes to content sources in the index on Fridays.

Creating Search Scopes

When you configure a search scope for a content source, dashboard site users can narrow their searches to information from a specific content source. For example, if press releases from a competitor's Web site are included in the index, you can apply a search scope called Competitor Press to this content source. SharePoint Portal Server displays the scope as an option next to the keyword search box on the dashboard site. A user can select this search scope and search for a keyword match in the press release content only.

Figure 6.10. Selecting a search scope

If your index includes many content sources, search scopes can enhance server performance by applying a search query to a specific subset of the content in the index. Search scopes work well when you give them a descriptive, functional name such as Customer Profiles, Finance Department, or Competitor Press.

Modifying Content Source Rules

When adding a content source, you need to determine how much content from each source to include in the index. The amount of content varies depending on the type of information with which you are working. For example, you can restrict Web site content included in the index to a single Web page or an entire site.

You can use rules to specify the content that SharePoint Portal Server includes in the index. You can configure content source rules to avoid specific sites or document types when creating the index for a content source.

Supporting Web Discussions

Discussions are an excellent way for groups to collaborate on a document. Web discussions allow users to add remarks about a document without modifying the document itself. Discussions are threaded—replies to a discussion remark appear directly underneath the original remark. In addition, multiple discussions about the same document can occur at the same time. SharePoint Portal Server consolidates comments in a single location, allowing you to review them easily.

Discussions are stored separately from the document they reference. Even if you delete the document, the discussions remain in the workspace until you specifically delete them. SharePoint Portal Server maintains only one set of discussions for each document, even though there may be several versions of that document.

Discussion items are not secure. They will appear in search results if you enable the search feature for discussions. Discussion items may be visible to users who do not have access to the document under discussion. For this reason, SharePoint Portal Server disables the search feature for discussions by default. Disabling the search feature for discussions does not prevent users from adding discussion remarks. Evaluate the security requirements of your documents before enabling the search feature for discussions.

For detailed deployment information about Web discussions, see Chapter 10, Planning Web Discussions.