Guidelines for SharePoint Governance

26.april 2009

Kjell-Sverre Jerijærvi

Microsoft

SharePoint Governance Checklist

Always use the checklist guide whitepaper

Customers find the guidance very useful, strongly recommended

Aspects covered includes

- Design-time and run-time governance

- Roles and ownership

- Information architecture, navigation and findability

- Branding

- Infrastructure and operations

- Testing and development

Each checklist has a related tips & information section

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc261826.aspx

Start With Simple Governance

Architecture Governance

Logical architecture model based on Information Architecture and

capacity, sharing and isolation, configurable items, administration, and

planning recommendations

- Farm design

- Site-collection structure

- Information asset structure

- …to create a workable design considering hard and soft limits

Adapt governance according to targeted solution

- SharePoint as an Enterprise 2.0 platform

- Business applications hosted in SharePoint

- Push vs Pull: http://www.johnhagel.com/view20051015.shtml

Start With Simple Governance

Required Operational Governance

Availability

- Farm with redundancy

- Monitoring

Backup and Recovery

- Policies must be defined and enforced

- Restore specific information assets

- Tested disaster recovery plan

- Make sure that complete solution can be restored within allowed time limit

Start With Simple Governance

Minimum Governance

Site Lifecycle Management (SLM)

- Policies (owners, free/paid, lifespan, inactivity, deletion, etc)

- Automation of SLM through site creation wizard and timer jobs

- Site delete capture

Content Type (metadata) definitions

- Classification of all information assets, from sites to documents

- At least the “closed” content types (the immutable base metadata)

- http://kjellsj.blogspot.com/2008/11/sharepoint-content-type-guidelines.html

Start With Simple Governance

Optional Governance

People Lifecycle Management (PLM)

- Manage the lifecycle of accounts as people starts, transfers, quits

- Policies for permissions and ownership of information assets

- Automation of PLM though partner/open solutions

Visibility into usage

Visibility into permissions

Site Lifecycle Management

Governing Sites from Creation to Deletion

SLM policies must be defined and enforced

Standard SLM only for site-collections

- Site use confirmation and deletion

Custom Site Creation Wizard

- Use only if ootb SLM functionality is not sufficient

- Develop custom wizard to collection data related to SLM

- Store SLM data in site properties

- Develop timer job to enforce SLM policies

Site Delete Capture

- Do not rely on database backup to restore deleted sites (backup media

retention timespan might be shorter than SLM restore policy timespan)

- MSIT tool: http://www.codeplex.com/governance

People Lifecycle Management

Governing Users from Creation to Deletion

PLM policies must be defined and enforced

Related to information security

Information asset permissions must be managed when

- Account is removed/deleted

- User transfers to another department

Information asset ownership must be managed when

- Account is removed/deleted

- User transfers to another department

DeliverPoint:Permissions is a recommended partner solution

Content Type Governance

Using Content Types for Content Classification

Always create company specific base content types

Use few required metadata fields

Use sensible default values where possible

Follow “Open/Closed” principle for content type hierarchy

- http://kjellsj.blogspot.com/2008/11/sharepoint-content-type-guidelines.html

Support the Office 2007 Document Information Panel (DIP)

Decide and enforce behavior

- Policies

- Workflows

Information management policies

- Retention, Auditing, Labeling / barcodes

Document Template Governance

Using Templates in Content Types

Shared templates

- Manage and store templates in a central location

- Do not store templates directly in content types, always reference the central

shared templates

http://weblogs.asp.net/mnissen/archive/2008/10/18/sensible-document-

template-file-management-with-sharepoint.aspx

List Definition Governance

Use Lists Based on Content Types

List content

- Use only a few content types

- Content types must be cohesive

- Prefer list views over folders

List permissions

- Prefer using inherited permissions

- Avoid user item level permissions

Content Management

- Versioning, Check-in/out, Workflows

Information Rights Management

- Policies for usage and access restrictions

Information management policies

- Retention, Auditing, Labeling / barcodes

Search Governance

Findability and Information Security

Ease of adding information assets to correct location

- Users should not have to enter a lot of required metadata

- Users should not have to browse/navigate a lot to store content

- Task context should deduce location, ref CRM document store

Metadata tagging through content types for all findable assets

Search scopes

Faceted search

- http://www.codeplex.com/FacetedSearch

Information isolation

- Separate SSP or even separate farms

Permissions Guidance

Simple Permissions Policies is More Secure

Use AD „security groups‟ to manage user group memberships

- Note need for management rights on AD groups

Do not assign permissions to single users, always assign to groups

Prefer inherited user groups (role definitions)

Prefer inherited permissions (role assignments)

Avoid assigning item level permissions

Site-collections are preferred permission management boundaries

The more diverse and fine-grained permissions assignments you have,

the harder it is to know who has access to what – and the more likely it

is that there will be information security breaches

Shared Metadata Governance

Metadata across Multiple Site-Collections

Metadata

- Content types with site columns including lookups

- List definitions

- Management and distribution from master to applications

Reference data

- Typically values for lookup type site columns

- Management and distribution from master to applications

Always plan and test how to replicate shared metadata across your

designed site-collection topology

Metadata replication software

- Custom development

- Echo or DocAve

- Look for new functionality in Office 14

Metadata Usage

Open Solutions @ CodePlex

Community Kit

- Social bookmarking

- Tag cloud

• Enhanced wiki edition

• Enhanced blog edition

• Enhanced discussion board edition

- http://www.codeplex.com/CKS

Faceted search

- http://www.codeplex.com/FacetedSearch

…and a lot more not related to metadata

- http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blogs/mikeg/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=1066

Quota Governance

SharePoint Administration, SQL Server Monitoring

Plan for software boundaries

- http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262787.aspx

MySite (site-collection)

- Storage size (default 100MB)

Site-Collection

- Storage size

- Notification e-mail on size threshold

- Usage reports

Document

- Upload size (default 50MB, max 2GB)

Content Database

- Recommended max 100GB

- Recommended max 50.000 site-collections pr DB

Development Governance

Design-Time Governance for Upgradability

Site Design

- Use standard site-definitions with feature stapling

- Avoid custom site-definitions and site-templates

- Do not use SharePoint Designer, except for prototyping

- http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc507633.aspx

Workflows

- Do not use SharePoint Designer, except for prototyping

Branding

- Do not use SharePoint Designer, except for prototyping

Document Information Panel (DIP)

- Prefer standard DIPs, avoid customization

- If customized using InfoPath, all clients must have InfoPath installed to use

the customized DIPs

Patterns & Practices SharePoint Guidance

Guidance & Reference Implementation

Helps architects and developers design, build, test, deploy, and upgrade

SharePoint intranet applications

Demonstrates solutions to common architectural, development, and

application lifecycle management challenges

- http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=C3722DBA-

6EE7-4E0E-82B5-FDAF3C5EC927&displaylang=en

- http://spg.codeplex.com/