SharePoint Config

On the 13th of April I presented at the European SharePoint Best Practices conference 2011. The session was titled Search Driven Knowledge Management and in the session we covered some of the SharePoint features available for structuring information so content is easy to find. As this was a community track session we looked at some real world projects that had information architecture requirements that didn’t line up with the out-of-the box SharePoint features. We looked at the requirements for these projects and I showed how solutions were built using a combination of the SharePoint features and customisations built on top of the SharePoint platform. This included using a search driven architecture and automating the tagging of content using the new content management features of SharePoint 2010.

Last week I presented at the SharePoint Evolution Conference in London. I’ve put my slides on slideshare for my session on ‘creating a tag driven information architecture using SharePoint 2007’. In the session I focused on making things findable, both in SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint 2010.

Findability is one of the most important factors in the success of a SharePoint site. If users cannot find what they are looking they will quickly use alternate methods to get results. Employees that cannot find information are less productive and less likely to use the system in general. Likewise users that cannot find information on an internet site will look elsewhere for products and services losing the company revenue.

SharePoint 2007 introduced some powerful tools for improving findability but fell short when it compared to larger Enterprise Content Management systems. SharePoint 2010 takes this a huge step forward with cutting edge enterprise ready findability features. Here are 10 new features SharePoint 2010 brings to the table in addition to the features available in SharePoint 2007.