Rahul Desai’s Blog

Continuing from the last few posts (SharePoint implementation – Some key issues to consider#3 – Who accesses what and with what privileges? , SharePoint implementation – Some key issues to consider#2 – What to Store and what to avoid? and SharePoint implementation – Some key issues to consider#1 – Estimating and keeping track of storage), I would want to share my experience with migrating existing contents to SharePoint.

We had quiet a few hick-ups here, including identifying and implementing:

• The contents to be moved
• The editing, version control etc.. strategies
• Setting up the application with which each document is opened with
• Sending information to concerned owners when a document changes……..
• and many more…

but the important one that I would describe here is migrating the Public shared folders from Outlook to SharePoint. Some of the key requirements were:

• Classifying the shared content to the classified folders on SharePoint (i.e quotes going to quotes folder in SharePoint etc…)
• Ensuring appropriate privileges assigned on SharePoint for accessing the shared contents
• Automating the process, in a way that, whenever a new document is created in Shared Folder, it automatically gets created in SharePoint

Well, there is a feature in SharePoint where in you can link a document space with outlook and then drag and drop your document from Shared folder, but due to security and rights issues, the feature was not working for Microsoft Exchange ( or may be Outlook) shared folder contents, we did quiet a bit of research on this, including evaluating different tools, and conclusively, we were able to achieve it by using a third party tool called Colligo Contributor Pro from Colligo Networks. It is a pretty good tool to have on your shelf for the price of it (…you would be amazed when you actually look at the price!!!!), I would not go through the whole list of features offered by the product (it is already available on their web site), but I would sincerely recommend to use this tool rather than wasting your time in trying to find out a solution for migrating document to SharePoint.

We were still not able to achieve the classification of the contents as per the folders in SharePoint (automatically), but once the contents were on SharePoint, it was not difficult to classify it to the required folders using the “Explorer view”.

Next I will be sharing my experience with backup and restore within SharePoint….

Continuing from my last few posts SharePoint implementation – Some key issues to consider#1 – Estimating and keeping track of storage and SharePoint implementation – Some key issues to consider#2 – What to Store and what to avoid? , the next issue I would want to share is who accesses what and with what privileges?

In this age of governance and compliance, security awareness, and risk management, few things are more critical than controlling access to applications and information. This is especially critical in the free-wheeling world of SharePoint, where those setting up their own sites are apt to be unfamiliar with good security practices, and when, frankly, security is not really part of their job. Here are some of the things you have to worry about as a SharePoint administrator:

• How new employees / contractors are made part of the SharePoint group – and what are their permissions within their group
• How to keep employees from accessing another group’s information - information they have no right to see
• How to ensure proper version control and editing rights are allocated

How to handle employees who are:

• leaving their group
• transferring to a new position / department, or
• leaving the company entirely

Most organizations have established governance policies that cover these and other scenarios, and as SharePoint administrator, it is your task to enforce these policies. You need to be able to:

• Centrally set permissions
• Grant users’ permissions to one or more SharePoint site collections or sites, either directly or as a member of an existing group
• You need to be able to centrally delete permissions
• and so on…

It really took us a while to decide and implement decisions related to privileges….and last but not least..one good feature which helps in the process…..anyone can ask / request for a permission to site or site collections through the “Request Access” feature, so you can gradually build up the access and privilege list (after initial setup).

This was a critical planning task for us as we had to plan right from the top (site level) till bottom (document level).

In one of the previous post SharePoint implementation – Some key issues to consider#1 – Estimating and keeping track of storage , I was discussing my  SharePoint  storage experience,  continuing from there, how best to decide what to store and what to avoid?

Firstly, looking at some of the main goals of SharePoint implementation (for the first phase which was collaboration related to documentation) across various division:

• Have information related to various products, company activities and knowledge base articles (internal forums, product manuals, procedure manual etc…) stored some where for easy access
• Have all the documents from various team members, file severs and other location stored on a centralised place, so that it is easily available and not lost because of what ever reason
• Develop and implement some sort of common documentation standards as far as creating, maintaining and sharing documents across Talman divisions is concerned

So keeping the above basic goals in mind, we developed the following strategy:

• Have a individual storage space for individual division
• Have a common storage space for the whole of Talman team
• Dump all the existing documentation into the respective storage spaces without analysing into depths
• Appoint and assign a librarian for each storage space (which in our case  was divisional managers)
• The librarian analyses (in conjunction with other divisional manages and of course division members) the storage categories and defines procedures for their respective storage space, which in term complies with the overall organisation goals
• The librarian re-organises the existing documents gradually
• The librarian trains and propagates the same as part of the overall organisation procedures

All of the above was done over a period of time and involved numerous meetings and discussion, but the key was, instead of deciding what type of documents to store we worked on the divisional needs (considering each division has their own document storing and sharing needs).

The next question to answer was who accesses what and with what privileges?…in my next post.

We at Talman just recently (almost) finished implementing our first phase of SharePoint implementation, which was largely related to collaboration (specially documentation and other knowledge base related information) across various divisions at Talman. Being the Project manager and implementer for the whole project (which lasted more than 8 months…and still going on), I would want to share some of the key issues which would need good thinking and planning while doing similar project.

With documents and information forming the key elements in divisional collaboration, estimating and planning for the storage needs was very critical. We initially failed to estimate the storage needs as we lacked awareness / information on how much documents / information existed on various servers, desktops and other filing systems. We ran out of storage space twice within first 6 months. Even with storage costs no longer at the premiums of the past, storage is still not free. It can, in fact, get quite expensive. And in this age of videos, pod-casts and meeting / training recordings, it’s exceedingly easy to fill every gigabyte of free space. As sites proliferate – and SharePoint sites have a strong tendency to do just that – demands for more storage can become a concern (key issues being administration and cost).

Some of the key issues to manage as a SharePoint administrator:

• Be able to monitor storage use
• Set quotas for individual users, sites, and sites collections
• Have the ability to automatically warn users when they are reaching their limits
• Ability to quickly allocate additional storage space when it is truly required

Being able to track storage is essential to being able to adequately and sensibly plan for current and future needs.

During the two instance (where in we ran out of storage capacity without any warning from SharePoint), our inability to estimate and plan as above resulted in:

• A immediate scare when SharePoint sites failed to respond (What happened to our doco? Will we have to do everything all over again? Can’t access this and that? and……)
• Team members getting frustrated for not being able to store documents and create newer versions of their existing documents
• Team members loosing faith in the SharePoint collaboration system
• Disruption in the system and processes we had agreed to follow to keep the collaboration going

All the above would immediately raise question why not to plan what goes on SharePoint and what gets left out???? That is the second issue to consider… in my next post..

Interesting story….

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Interesting and something uncommon…

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We all have had to deal with irate or confrontational people at one time or another, whether in our jobs, family life or personal relationships. The worst is when you are on the bearing side and you’re faced with having to take the brunt of someone’s anger when it was no fault of yours, you experience stress before, during and after the encounter. I experience this very regularly at work with colleagues, while dealing with government agencies, banks etc..

At work and while working on a project, normally this sort of behaviour would come from senior team members who are basically trying to get some personal, egoistic message across. The message would not have anything to do with whatever you are doing currently, it would normally be a shield being used to cover up failure on their efforts or them loosing importance within the team.

The best way to handle and manage such team members is, communicating in person and having clarity of thoughts. Remember the game of “Passing on the message” where you sit in a circle and whispered into the ear of the person sitting next to you? By the time you finished the circle, the original message is always garbled. Talking directly (and not through someone) is the key. Instead of encouraging such behaviour within the team (or individuals), it is always good, talking directly and clearly, clearing doubts in person (instead of exchanging a bunch of emails), and of course…moving on….unless you want to continue experiencing the stress…

Working with multi cultural team members and cosmopolitan work environments for all this years, I have experienced blockers many times over the years (I am sure everyone has). Grant Holliday has written a nice post on “BLOCKERS” and how to deal with them, here is the link.

The post is not only good in identifying a blocker and dealing with the blocker, it also identifies what you should try and avoid if you do not want to be called one.

Adding one more point to his list of definitions of a “can’t do-er” (aka blocker)…(Please do read the other 3 here before reading further):

Most blockers put themselves ahead of the whole team, the enterprise goals / targets. For most of the blockers “Me, myself comes first instead of us, ourselves”.

Do you ever wonder why some people have a better work ethic than others?  A good work ethic means being responsible, dependable, accountable and taking initiative.  High-quality work ethics vibrate through the organization.  And we all notice when it’s missing from a environment! As a project manager, it is good to lead by example, have some strong ethic in place and pass on the same to your team members.

Some good thoughts / suggestions (which I normally try to follow) to build a strong work ethic:

• Take ownership of your position.
• Do what you say you are going to do. 
• Be accountable for your performance. 
• Learn your job.
• Then consider taking on more responsibility within your department.
• Others count on you. 
• Be dependable.
• Show up and be on time. 
• Be conscious of your attendance.
• Keep personal business at work to a minimum.
• Do what it takes to make your manager successful.

Some suggestions for personal growth:

• Think strategic and long term.
• Avoid distractions that take your golden work time. 
• Stay focused.
• Stay current in your industry.
• Avoid burnout by pacing yourself over a period of time.

Reputations are formed over time.  You can start moving towards top from where you are today.