Week 2 - Improving Visibility [Access to Document Contacts and Key People]
{read week 1}
Improving visibility to document contacts and key people is very important to cutting down on time wasted running from person to person to get an answer to a simple question. Hours are wasted every week when people are not sure "who" to contact with their questions and problems. You may, or may not, know that user profiles are managed from the Manage User Profiles page (in Central Adminstration). Users with the Manage Profiles right can add, edit, or delete user profiles. They can also import user profiles from the Active Directory service. Other users may, or may not, be able to edit some of the properties of their user profiles from their personal pages. Today's blog assumes that the profiles are already imported from the Active Directory and that you are an End User trying to take advantage of contact information found already on your SharePoint server.
There are quite a few ways that you can use the available profile information to surface key players on your SharePoint sites. Here are some examples:
Site Users Web Part: The Site Users Web Part can be configured to detail all users in any particular group on your site - or from all groups with direct access to your site. I enjoy using this web part to expose the "Evangelists" of the site - those that own the content and may be working to keep the content up-to-date and valid for everyone visiting. I may also set up a "Communications Group", an "Editorial Group", a "Marketing Group", etc. based on what content is being managed on the site. Then I surface their contact details using the Site Users Web Part on any relevant pages. When other users click on the names in this web part they get all the contact details needed to get in touch with group members from the Profile Pages (usually matches information found on MySites). Profile Information can also be customized to match what your portal needs to share. Every time the group membership changes this web part will update itself - no need to manage the contacts in two or more places.
People Search Box Web Part: The People Search Box can help you locate people based on profile criteria (see dialog below). The results rely on information people publish in their public profile. The people search results are ranked according to Social Distance to the user submitting the query (those that have similar job titles or roles will be higher ranked). Tips on SharePoint searches as a whole: You may use the +/- Signs to include/exclude words, however do not use Asterisk/Wildcard (*) or Boolean Logic (i.e. AND OR) as they are not supported there.
Learn more about People Search here.
Adding Presence Icons/Columns: If your business is using Office Communicator 2007, then you can take advantage of "Presence Icons" on SharePoint. This will enable all visiting users to access key team members who are on-line while they are browsing SharePoint sites. This is an excellent tool for locating a document owner directly from the SharePoint Document Library, and for chatting and scheduling meetings around the document content.
Look at all the things you can do DIRECTLY from the SharePoint Library or List!
To take advantage of the presence icons (green, yellow and red balls) remember to do the following in your lists and libraries::
- Add any relevant Contact Columns such as "Document Owner" or "Document Contact" (which may be different than the person that uploads the file [Created by]). This is the person who has all the intimate details around the content of the file. You can also have contacts assigned to List Items (such as Marketing Lead, Project Manager, or Product Manager). Focus on key people who can be contacted to answer questions or to provide additional information. (Tip: Don't provide presence icons to the highest level of management since it might be difficult to contact that person. The goal here is to give them a presence icon only to someone that is accessible!)
- Don't forget to set the value of this field to "Name (with Presence)" so that the icons are visible on SharePoint. (As regards higher levels of management that may not appreciate being contacted using Communicator , be sure to select the name value without presence.)
Learn more about Office Communicator 2007 here.
Other Useful things to know about SharePoint and People/Group Information:
Site Groups: Every new SharePoint site comes with a default set of SharePoint groups, such as the 'Members Group'. The name of the SharePoint group matches the name of the site. If the name of the site is 'Xtreme Consulting Team Site', a group will be called 'Xtreme Consulting Team Site Members'. You can add people to these groups, so that you can later grant access to the group instead of having to grant access to each individual user. You can also create SharePoint groups to provide custom levels of access. Access is granted by assigning Permission Levels to the groups (examples of permission levels are Read, Contribute, Full Control, and you can create your own permission levels). The important thing to remember about groups is that the groups do not syncronize with your Active Directory in any way and they must be managed manually. On the other hand Security Groups are syncronized with the Active Directory.
User Audiences: Set up User Audiences so that you can target content though web parts based on Global Audiences, Distribution/Security Groups and SharePoint Groups. This is very useful in a portal where you can predict what people will need by their role or some other criteria like deparment. Once "User Audiences" are set up and "Target Audiencing" is enabled (per list or library) the interface that the User sees changes based on the criteria in the audience settings. Learn more about Targeting Audiences here.
Come back next week where we will discuss handing documents and list content OFF LINE. I will help you to set up an environment in MS Outlook that will automatically synchronize with SharePoint Sites when you connect to your network. The golden factor with this feature is that you can see AND edit content while mobile (or when the SharePoint server is down). Look out for that next Tuesday.
Related Resources:
Interested in free Microsoft training on synchronizing contacts in Outlook with SharePoint in order to share your contacts with others? Click here.