We know that most intranet authors do this as a hobby, not as part of their job, so we need to make intranet authoring an easy thing to do. This starts with training. Often organisations outsource training to the company providing the technical solution, which tends to result in technical focused training, losing most of [...]
It is a true, yet frequently repeated, clich? to say that we are living in an age of total data overload. Individuals and businesses seem to be on a never-ending search to dig through this data to find meaningful information. Struggling with multiple silos of data, dealing with structured and unstructured sources, understanding their contents and finding and correlating data all remain key priorities. Today, most businesses constrain themselves to search along a single dimension or rely on keyword or pattern-based full text search.A new chapter is emerging in search?turning the data overload into a mother lode of opportunities in boundless search for real information. . . .
New LucidWorks platform in beta
The classic texts of project management outline the importance of initial planning and design activities. While they only consist of 10-30% of the project, they lay the groundwork for everything to come. This is no different in the world of SharePoint intranets. Quite the contrary: with the breadth of SharePoint, and the effort and cost [...]
We are well aware of the productive gains with faster search. The new frontier is to improve the quality and insights from search, achieved from integration of search with analytics. Enterprise solutions are well practiced at extracting information from structured data. Search is designed to aggregate unstructured information from keywords and a wide variety of sources like emails, social blogs, etc. Merging structured stores with unstructured text derives meaningful, relevant summarizations as well as new insights. Analytics dissolves the barrier, providing integration founded on the data content itself?driving more complete and accurate intelligence for business users. . . .
Visibility, measurement and accountability
When you want to create a new site in your SharePoint intranet, this is the page you’re presented with. It’s pretty daunting for an inexperienced site administrator or content owner: Should I create a team site or a document workplace?Would a social meeting workplace be more relevant than a decision meeting workspace?Maybe I need a [...]
Search is a conversation. If you ask me a question and I don't understand, I can ask you for more information. With time you learn more about my interests, and can give better answers. Well-designed, intelligent search systems can do the same. We can facilitate this dialog by addressing three critical requirements for effective search. These are: 1. Search needs to feel like navigation; 2. Search needs to be personal; and 3. Search needs to be adaptive, improving over time. . . .
p>One of the keys to a successful intranet is high quality, well written content, making it both useful and usable. Writing for the online medium is different from writing for paper. Staff typically scan a web page to determine if the information is relevant to them, and content has to grab them immediately. Reviewing and [...]
The credibility of any intranet is dependent on content. Content that is created, published and maintained by many different people across the organisation. This frees up the intranet team to focus on the big picture, but they still have a key role in teaching staff on how to deliver effective content. Depending on the skills [...]
"Seek and ye shall find..." Yeah, right. Maybe about half the time, if you're lucky. It's true that most searches end in failure. And what's even more troubling is that the person making the search may never know that it was a failure. Let's say: A hypothetical knowledge worker enters a search query. May be a good one; may be a vague one. Doesn't (and shouldn't) matter. Then that person gets a results page. There is a long list of possible answers to his query, and there might even be some interesting stuff on it.But the nagging doubt comes from "not knowing what you don't know"...
Selecting a new web content management system (CMS) is no small matter. As discussed in one of our earliest articles, How to evaluate a CMS, this decision must be driven by an evaluation against business requirements. One question that often arises early in the process is whether the same CMS should be used for the [...]
Managing and improving an intranet is no small task, but it is still only half the story. Even before new features go live, there needs to be extensive change management, communications and support. This support must encompass content owners and authors, who are confronted by a new site structure and the requirement to deliver better [...]
Done right, KM can deliver tremendous value to customer service and support. Yet for all the benefits, the software category is marked by confusion?many very different solutions purport to be "KM." Knowledge is in people's heads, and it's hard to capture, even assuming they wanted to share. Knowledge is scattered in many places; it can be stale, and hard to find. To address these challenges, KM tools need to provide one-stop shopping for answers, wherever they are. Capturing knowledge must be easy. And managers need analytics to continually improve the knowledgebase and team performance. Different solution categories take very different approaches to these requirements. . . .
When it comes to intranets (and information management in general), there is always a temptation to put in place simplistic rules, or to pursue simplistic strategies. Facing a complex situation? “Just do this.” The problem is, not only do these simplistic approaches not work, they often make the situation worse. A few examples: 1. Let’s [...]
Mobile devices are currently transforming how we live our lives, again. Having taken for granted the ability to make calls when away from the home or office, mobile data access and always-on devices (such as iPhone, Android, etc) are ushering in a new age. Lagging somewhat behind, enterprises delivering services to staff will also be [...]
Microsoft SharePoint is considered one of the fastest growing enterprise applications in the market. Many organizations view SharePoint 2010 as a platform for enterprise content management and collaboration since it makes it easier. . . .
Theresa Regli has written about the problems with scoring spreadsheets when conducting product evaluations. To quote: I am more cynical about quantitative methods of evaluating vendors. It makes me think of people who buy wine simply based on what The Wine Spectator rating is (without considering the food they might drink it with, or what [...]
David Hobbs has just released a wonderful new resource, the Web Site Migration Handbook. To quote: Consider the many factors of a successful CMS migration, including: Migration Steps: Vision, Plan, Pilot, Implement, and Maintain Implementation Plan: Staffing, Detailed Content Migration Plan, Tracking Metrics, and Project Schedule
The popularity of previous SharePoint versions led many organizations to deploy SharePoint across various business units and departments?frequently on a large scale. Many of these organizations are now attracted to the key functionality. . . .
Alan Pelz-Sharpe writes about CMIS. To quote: CMIS (Content Management Interoperability Specification) has been ratified as a standard by OASIS. What is it and what does it mean to buyers and users of ECM and Document Management technology? Well put simply, CMIS is the most important new standard in the ECM world in decades; it [...]
Alan Pelz-Sharpe has written about evaluating vendor proposals, and recommends killing the all-too-typical evaluation spreadsheets. To quote: We strongly advocate a test-based approach to procurement, based on the value of scenarios; nevertheless, many enterprises want to apply a quantitative, spreadsheet-based assessment approach. In some cases these can become really quite complex. We have advised on [...]
Microsoft SharePoint is a "jack of all trades" technology?providing everything from an intranet portal, to a document management, records management, collaboration, knowledge management solution, to a replacement of file shares. . . .
Mark Morrell writes about how to get quality content on intranets. To quote: We have a tool which checks content every day and informs publishers 4 weeks before the review date expires to review and update or remove the content. Failure to do this results in the content being removed and if no action still [...]
Jeff Cram tells us all to stop letting people use your CMS. To quote: I can’t tell you how many times we’ve seen organizations buy a CMS, take their same content structure, and simply distribute authoring ownership to every far flung corner of the organization. And let’s not entirely blame the organizations. It’s how CMS [...]
That conquering sound you hear is SharePoint, and it is nothing short of apocalyptic. You'll see it mentioned elsewhere a couple times in this White Paper: The fastest growing business application in Microsoft history. . .
Are you thinking about deploying Microsoft SharePoint 2010 in your organization? You won't have to do much research before you come across the big "G" word?governance. Just the word itself is somewhat imposing. . . .
