SharePoint Tips for somebody implementing SharePoint for the first time

Many companies implement SharePoint for sake of implementing it and expect it to change the way the business operates. Those companies are setting themselves up for a disappointment, but SharePoint is not to blame.  SharePoint is a brilliant platform that can serve as a basis for very powerful solutions that do have the potential to greatly simplify many business functions.

SharePoint out of the box is a tool, like any other. You must learn to think in the way that it does. This is a strong content management platform with security, workflow, document management, and is fully customizable for all internal web capabilities, from team workspaces to enterprise portals.

This is highly misleading for the following reasons:-

• Sharepoint technology is both a very wide and deep area of technology and can require many skills that are highly unlikely to be contained within a single resource.
• SharePoint projects need to be properly resourced and properly managed – many SharePoint projects fail because they are not run as ‘proper’ projects.
• Don’t implement it thinking it will magically become an amazing platform your employees will jump into.

Sucess with SharePoint – Here i am added some points below

First Step – Understanding, Planning and Governance are key to a successful implementation

• Plan who’s going to use what, how and where. Taxonomy, topology, governance. Make sure it’s clear and stakeholders understand it.
• Get trained resources with full features.
• Someone needs to know how to administer and manage it
• Look at your business first. What do you do, how do you do it, what can be improved, changed, eliminated.
• Then once you have a grasp on those items, look to SharePoint technologies and see how they can fit to improve your business.
• Implement SharePoint to help you do what you do well, don’t change what you do to fit SharePoint.
• Spend the time planning on what the pain points are, start with addressing how SharePoint addresses that.
• First isolate the content from public internet site to private intranet site to private project sites and finally My Sites.
• The entire SharePoint team (including stakeholders) should understand what WSS and Portal Server will/will not bring to the table.
• Which version of WSS or SharePoint should be implemented and why? Would an earlier version of this application be sufficient? Is there value in implementing the latest release?

 Second Step – SharePoint administrator

• Plan your SharePoint architecture before you begin
• Provision right hardware with sufficient resources
• I would recommend using virtualization technology to implement the SharePoint.
• As all the data resides in MS SQL database, depending on your business requirement, plan if you want to to put your content database in single database or span across multiple databases.
• Not just about planning for SharePoint, you have to consider your infrastructure, Active Directory, mail server, data storage, network capacity, remote users and so on.
• And that is before you start to even think about the architecture of the SharePoint platform and this is before you start to think about the architecture of your solution.
• Separate your enterprise portal farm from your team/project workspace farm. The services for portal need to be carefully tuned and you do not want your OOTB environment that is really for self-service to impact your production portal

 Third Step – Development

• Trained Resources and Project Leads/managers (Since understand what will not bring to the table)
• Build a simple out of the box (OOTB) site, add every kind of list and library, and play with each feature until you understand it
• SharePoint out of the box is a tool, like any other. You must learn to think in the way that it does.
• I would absolutely use SharePoint 2010, as the features and usability are light years ahead of MOSS
• After you have a complete understanding of all the OOTB features, then move to custom development.
• Both functional and development. Follow MS best practices.
• Out-Of-The-Box as much as possible. Don’t use SP Designer
• If you are going to use SP 2010 as an enterprise portal – good. It is a great platform for this. But, you have to understand .NET web development a bit. Master pages, page layouts, CSS, plus XSLT.
• SharePoint is designed around the concept of Web Part pages (widgets, controls, etc.). You need to understand this before moving forward.
• SharePoint 2010 has some pretty terrific Social Media capabilities. Keep an open mind, and you may be able to bring some very compelling user experience that moves the concepts of information management to another level. I have implemented some very exciting things.

Fourth Step – End user

• Keep it simple – grow into it and Focus on end user experience
• One of the most important elements of SharePoint, the End-user
• Training is very important and should be part of the planning for End user
• These are our ‘Super/Power’ users. Each department/sections has a Super/Power’ user and handles departments/sections issues.
• I provide training in our computer classroom so the end-user can get hands on training.
• There is a end user comment  “I hear and I forget. I see and I remember, I do and I understand” and this has worked for me.

For Learning SharePoint

• Best Practices for SP2010 https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/hh189420
• Sucess with sharepoint https://lynnwarneke.wordpress.com/success-with-sharepoint/
• SharePoint tutorials
• https://www.lynda.com/SharePoint-2010-tutorials/getting-started/65715-2.html
• https://www.dotnetcurry.com/ShowArticle.aspx?ID=740
• https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/aa905692
• https://channel9.msdn.com/search?term=SharePoint+2010
• https://channel9.msdn.com/learn/courses/SharePoint2010Developer/
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd776256(v=office.12).aspx