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I M SHAREPOINT PRACTICAL IT STRATEGIES FOR ENTERPRISE COLLABORATION / / / AUGUST 2010 MANAGEMENT Mastering Workflow Reports in SharePoint 2010 Take advantage of SharePoint’s reporting and monitoring capabilities to keep tabs on workflow processes. BY SHAWN SHELL IMPLEMENTATION Make the Most of InfoPath Forms Learn some best practices that can turn easy-to-use InfoPath forms into comprehensive enterprise solutions. BY PAUL GALVIN GOVERNANCE How to Stop SharePoint Sprawl It’s great that SharePoint has taken off in your organization, but how do you get a handle on the mega-proliferation of sites? BY BRIEN M. POSEY G

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SHAREPOINTPRACTICAL IT STRATEGIES FOR ENTERPRISE COLLABORATION /// AUGUST 2010

MANAGEMENT

Mastering Workflow Reportsin SharePoint 2010Take advantage of SharePoint’s reporting and monitoringcapabilities to keep tabs on workflow processes. BY SHAWN SHELL

IMPLEMENTATION

Make the Most of InfoPath FormsLearn some best practices that can turn easy-to-use InfoPathforms into comprehensive enterprise solutions. BY PAUL GALVIN

GOVERNANCE

How to Stop SharePoint SprawlIt’s great that SharePoint has taken off in your organization,but how do you get a handle on the mega-proliferation of sites?BY BRIEN M. POSEY

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SO YOU’VE BEEN a SharePoint administrator for a while now, but can you navigateall its functions? Sure, you can perform basic tasks and even answer user ques-tions, but do you have what it takes to be a SharePoint master? It doesn’t takemuch to get to the next level—just some knowledge about SharePoint’s newestfeatures and some skills to apply them in ways that add value to your organiza-tion.

For example, Sharepoint 2010 offers some reporting and monitoring toolsthat keep tabs on workflow processes. Using these workflow functions, youcan get detailed information about what steps were taken during the workflow,who was involved and even what errors occurred during processing. This canbe a valuable resource for power users in your organization who want to followwhat’s happening with their documents. Learn how to flex your SharePointmuscles in “Mastering Workflow Reports in SharePoint 2010” by Shawn Shell.A little know-how goes a long way.

Once you get the hang of workflows, how about bulking up your expertise inInfoPath? Although it’s known as a versatile electronics form tool, InfoPath isnotoriously underused. Paul Galvin offers tips on how to do it right in “Make theMost of InfoPath Forms.”

The good news is that users in your organization are gung-ho for SharePoint.The bad news is that the number of SharePoint sites is becoming unmanage-able. Take charge with Brien M. Posey’s “How to Stop SharePoint Sprawl.”

What’s your favorite SharePoint feature? Share it with us at [email protected]. �

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» EDITOR’S NOTE++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Are You a SharePoint Master?BY CHRISTINE CASATELLI

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Cathleen Gagne, Editorial Director, [email protected] Casatelli, Editor, [email protected], Copy Editor, [email protected] Koury,Art Director of Digital Content, [email protected] Brown, Publisher, [email protected] Larkin, Senior Director of Sales, [email protected]

TechTarget, 275 Grove Street, Newton, MA 02466; www.techtarget.com©2010 TECHTARGET.ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

3 SharePoint August 2010

WORKFLOW IN BOTH SharePoint 2007and 2010 can be a powerful featureto help automate business processesand enforce best practices. But, with-out proper oversight, workflows canget bogged down by end users, haltedbecause of errors or simply ignoredby workflow participants. To avoidthese situations, administrators canrely on workflow reports and built-inmonitoring within SharePoint.

To get started, you should knowsomething about workflows in Share-Point. Out of the box, workflows canbe tightly coupled with content types.Any time content of a particular typeis contributed to a project, the work-flow could be activated, regardless ofwhere the content is contributed.

Alternatively, workflows can beactivated by contributing content to aspecific list or library. Finally, if config-ured to do so, end users—or contentcontributors—can activate a work-

flow manually. Because of the varietyof methods used to initiate workflowprocesses, reporting on the status ofthose workflows can help administra-tors figure out what’s going on.

The first indication that a workflowhas run or could run on content willbe in the standard document libraryview, shown in Figure 1 (see page 4).Along with the columns (metadata)in that library for any given view,

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Mastering Workflow Reportsin SharePoint 2010Take advantage of SharePoint’s reporting and monitoringcapabilities to keep tabs on workflow processes. BY SHAWN SHELL

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Any time contentof a particular type iscontributed to a project,the workflow could beactivated, regardlessof where the contentis contributed.

there is a column for every workflow.The column shows the status of the

workflow running against the specificdocument. In this example, the GearsSales History Excel workbook has hadan approval workflow started andcompleted.

The last step in that process isan approval step, and the status isshown in the column corresponding

to the workflow. If you click on thestatus, you get additional informationrelated to that specific workflowinstance, shown in Figure 2.

The additional information on theworkflow represents the outcome thelast time that workflow ran on thatdocument. The basic data tells whenthis specific instance of the workflowstarted and when it was last run.

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Figure 1

Workflow status in a document library

Figure 2

Workflow details on the Gears document

It also shows you the status of thedocument. In this example, the laststep was an approval, and the docu-ment was indeed approved. If addi-tional information is required, you canlook at the workflow history shown inFigure 3, which is a complete recordof this instance of the workflow. Itprovides detailed information show-ing what steps were taken during the

workflow, who was involved and—inthis case—what errors occurred dur-ing processing. Although it’s unlikelythat an administrator with farm-levelvisibility would access workflow his-tory in this way, it does show what’savailable and what’s tracked bySharePoint.

If all you’re interested in is onedocument, this method works fine.

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Figure 3

Approval workflow history for the Gears document

In fact, it could be an excellentresource for power users who wantto understand what’s happening withtheir documents. But for the site orfarm administrators of the world,this method isn’t really that usefulbecause the scope is too narrow.

Fortunately, there are facilitieswithin SharePoint that can shed lighton the broader view of workflowswithin a site collection. At a basiclevel, site administrators can viewwhich workflows are associated withthe site collection. In the Site Settingsmenu for a site collection, there’s aWorkflows link in the Site Adminis-tration category. In Figure 4, you cansee that this link takes you to the listof workflows currently associatedwith the site.

Although the interface has a some-what limited use, it does give you anoverview of every workflow and tellsyou whether it’s associated with con-

tent and whether or not it’s active.In this way, administrators can get abroad overview quickly. Unfortunate-ly, none of the information on thisinterface is clickable, so drilling inmore deeply is not possible.

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At a basic level, siteadministrators canview which workflowsare associated withthe site collection.

Figure 4

Workflows associated with the current site

When you need additional detail,you can drill down into workflowreports, shown at the list manage-ment level, through the WorkflowSettings option located on the farright of the ribbon. Workflow settingstell you which workflows are associat-ed with specific content within thelist. The last option on that interfaceis View Workflow Reports, whichgives you the ability to report on thespecific workflows associated withinthe list. The menu will display all ofthe currently associated workflows,

giving you an option to report onactivity and cancellations/errors.

If you select an individual report,you’ll be walked through a report cre-ation wizard (see Figure 5). The wiz-ard immediately prompts you tospecify the library where the reportwill be stored when completed.

In all cases, SharePoint dynamicallycreates an Excel workbook with botha pivot table report layout and theraw data. The pivot table is moderate-ly useful for providing summary-levelinformation but not much beyond

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Figure 5

Detail workflow reports

that. But with the supplied raw data,you have the opportunity to craft yourown reports and combine that datawith data from other reports to createa composite picture of your workflowactivity.

Like many other facets of Share-Point 2010, Microsoft tried hard towork in aspects of the Office prod-ucts. In the context of workflow, theprimary tool is Visio. If you’ve beenpaying attention to the new features,you know that Visio is now a first-class workflow creation tool, cooper-atively with SharePoint Designer.

What you may not know is thatthe Web version of Visio, part of theOffice Web applications, providesyou with visualization capabilities.

As Figure 6 (see page 9) demon-strates, you also have the opportunityto “see” the workflow steps, those

involved and basic iconographythat can help give you insight onthe process.

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Workflow Capabilities in SharePoint 2007MANY ORGANIZATIONS ARE still running SharePoint 2007. Although SharePoint2010 has many advantages, the reality is that chasing the latest version justbecause it’s available isn’t always the right decision.Luckily, many of the workflow capabilities also apply to SharePoint 2007—specifically, workflow associates, reports on specific workflows and visibilityinto workflow history. What you don’t get are some of the nice visualizationsand report generation capabilities because of missing components like theOfficeWeb applications.Furthermore, the reporting in SharePoint 2010 does tend to provide some-what better detail than its 2007 counterpart. But firms like Skelta and K2provide add-ons to SharePoint to enhance both management and construc-tion of workflows, and they all provide 2010 versions as well. �

If you’ve been payingattention to the newfeatures, you know thatVisio is now a first-classworkflow creation tool,cooperatively withSharePoint Designer.

In the end, workflow can provide agreat deal of value in most organiza-tions. The challenge, historically, wasgetting enough insight into what’sactually going on under the covers.Through SharePoint 2010, Microsofthas given administrators some of the

reporting and monitoring capabilitiesyou need to keep tabs on processes.All of this combines to give yougreater visibility and—more impor-tant—an ability to manage theincreasingly complex world of yourSharePoint environment. �

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Shawn Shell is the founder of Consejo Inc., a consultancy based in Chicago that specializes inWeb-based applications, employees and partner portals as well as enterprise content manage-ment. He has spent more than 19 years in IT, with the last 10 focused on content technologies.Shell is a co-author of Microsoft Content Management Server 2002: A Complete Guide, published

by Addison-Wesley, and he is the lead analyst/author on the CMSWatch SharePoint Report 2009.

Figure 6

“See” the workflow steps

MICROSOFT INFOPATH 2010 helps organ-izations streamline business process-es and design sophisticated electron-ic forms. Although InfoPath can bea pretty handy feature, it’s oftenunderused. Even when enterprisesdo take advantage of its functions,InfoPath isn’t always used as well asit could be.

It’s easy to slap a form togetherquickly, but a little extra knowledgecan go a long way to turn InfoPathinto a valuable business tool. Somegreat benefits of InfoPath include

reduced maintenance costs and frus-tration, satisfied end users, more flex-ible forms and more comprehensiveenterprise solutions.

Some of InfoPath best practicesinclude devising a naming conventionand sticking to it, building a standardtemplate and creating self-document-ing forms. Take them one by one untilyou’ve incorporated them into theblood stream of your daily develop-ment cycle and then build upon themover time.

NAMINGAND GROUPINGCONVENTIONSAs with so many Share-Point functions, it’s really

easy to create your first InfoPathform. Fire up InfoPath, drag a few con-trols on the page and publish, andyou’ve created your first form. This isan “anti-practice,” and you shouldavoid it. Instead, take care to explicit-

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Make the Most of InfoPath FormsLearn some best practices that can turn easy-to-use InfoPathforms into comprehensive enterprise solutions. BY PAUL GALVIN

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It’s easy to slapa form togetherquickly, but a littleextra knowledge cango a long way to turnInfoPath into a valuablebusiness tool. 1

ly name both your fields and yourgroups as shown in Figure 1:

It’s a simple concept, but it has sig-nificant implications, including:

� Clarity of business purpose. Themeaning of “PoNumber” is immedi-ately obvious, while the meaning of“field23” is not.

� Parsing Forms. CompletedInfoPath forms are XML documents.If you think you can live with “field23”

because it’s labeled in theform, you won’t get that sup-port when and if you need toparse the XML programmati-cally.

� Promoting fields toSharePoint.No one wantsto promote a field called“field23” to SharePoint. Youdo get the option of namingthe field from a SharePointperspective, but now youneed to remember that Share-Point field “PoNumber” isreally “field23” in InfoPath.That’s a recipe for long-termmaintenance frustration.Avoid it at all costs.

Define a naming conventionthat, at a minimum, ensuresthat fields are named accord-ing to business purpose. Some

developers like to prefix fields withtheir data type and follow camel orreverse-camel notation—the specificfield naming convention doesn’t mat-ter that much as long as it’s consis-tent across forms.

Next, follow a convention for nam-ing views on forms. InfoPath typicallylists views in its various functions inalphabetical order. On a multi-pageform, this can become confusingbecause InfoPath doesn’t list the indi-vidual pages—implemented asInfoPath views—in the correct logical

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Figure 1

Explicitly Naming Fields and Groups

sequence. Solve this problemby prefixing views with num-bers and letters to force yourown sort order.

Figure 2 shows the followingnaming convention:

� Numeric prefix to viewnames representing “pages”of a form.

� Early letter alphabet prefixfor confirmation views.

� “P” for a print view

� “Z” for technical views thatwould not normally be provid-ed to end users.

As with field names, the specificconvention is not especially impor-tant as long as it’s effective for youand your team and applied consis-tently.

BUILD A STANDARDTEMPLATEThere are some basic ele-ments to every InfoPathform. Recognizing this

fact, build a template that includesthe following:

� Default Sections in your form’sMain data source. The general idea isthat we know that our forms will havecertain standard groupings of data,

such as administrative content, page-one content and possibly others.

� A print view place holder.Howmany times have you released a formto production and then get an urgentrequest to provide a clean print viewof the form? It’s easy to forget addinga print view during development.Avoid this surprise by building a placeholder right into the template.

� Developer notes section.We’llcover this in more detail next.

� Administrative Control View.Forms generally contain state infor-mation. Provide a view that allowsmaintenance developers to quickly

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Figure 2

Naming Convention for Views

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view the state information of a givenform for debugging and troubleshoot-ing purposes. Secure access to thisview by leveraging out-of-the-boxSharePoint security.

SELF-DOCUMENTINGFORMSWe often think of formsas a data entry vehicleand nothing else. But, they

can be self-documenting in at leastthe following areas:

� Business process state. The nextsection, “The Form as a Database”describes how to use the form tomanage business process informa-tion. Forms can and should provide anorganized and intuitive view into thatstate information.

� Version numbers. Forms changeover time. Consider this scenario:

• On Monday, we can releaseversion 1.0 of a form.

• On Tuesday, 100 people fill outthose forms and kick off a bunchof associated and long-runningbusiness processes.

• Wednesday, we make a criticalupdate to the form and post toproduction.

• On Thursday, another 100 formsare filled out and businessprocesses start running.

• On Friday, someone calls thehelpdesk with a problem.

Now the question is which formtemplate are we talking about? Is itthe Monday form or the Wednesdayform? Solve this problem by adding aversion number to the template itself,as shown in Figure 3.

This way, when someone calls andasks for help with a form, you can askthem which version number they aretalking about.

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Figure 3

Add a version number to the form

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�Technical notes. Use the form tem-plate to store developer notes, speci-fications, change history—really, anyrelevant technical information. Hidethese notes behind a secured view,and you have a integrated and self-documented solution that will reducemaintenance costs and frustrationover time. See Figure 4 for an exam-ple.

THE FORMAS DATABASEAny form worth its saltis really the starting pointfor some kind of business

workflow process. Your typical work-flow will cause emails to be sent offfor approval, possibly send messagesto external systems—such as ERPor HR—handle multi-level approval

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Figure 4

Developers Notes

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trees with delegation and so on.For these processes to work properly,they need to keep track of the busi-ness process state. Who approvedit? Who is next in line for approval?Did the HR update process succeedor fail?

The form itself can maintain thisstate information. Add a section tothe form’s main data source for thispurpose. Your end users won’t nor-mally see these fields, but your back-end automated process can see themand update them as needed. Then,provide a nicely formatted view toshow this data, and you have a singleconsolidated view of everything goingon with this form.

The point here is that a form isn’tmerely a vehicle for data entry—it’s also a database for businessprocesses.

USE SHAREPOINTSECURITYTake advantage of Share-Point’s security modelwithin your forms. There

are a number of scenarios where youmight like to show or hide informationon the form based on a current user’sgroup membership—SharePointgroup, AD group or even customgroups via forms based authentica-tion. At first glance, this seems diffi-cult because there isn’t any conven-ient out-of-the-box feature that

allows you to do this. You can achievethis indirectly, however, by followingthese simple steps:

� Create a custom list. The standardOOB custom list is sufficient.

� Create rows in the list and givethem a title that maps to a businesspurpose. For instance, if you wantto secure the Admin view of a form,create an item whose title is “AdminView.”

� Break security inheritance onthe row. Ensure that only administra-tive users have read access to thatrow. SharePoint will allow you tospecify AD users and groups, Share-Point groups and even FBA users/groups.

� Add the list as a data sourceto the InfoPath form.

At runtime, your form attemptsto read the specific row from the listwhose title is “Admin View.” If theuser filling out the form has readaccess to the row, the query willreturn a non-blank result, and youknow the user is an administrator.Otherwise, they will return a blankresult (length = 0) and you know heor she is not an administrator. Withthis fact established, you can nowdynamically hide or disable the“Admin view” button. Use this tech-

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nique to secure or dynamically alterthe form any time you need to do sobased on security group membership.

Using SharePoint can be easy.That’s its weakness as well as its

strength. Make the most of the Share-Point platform by instituting somebest practices that will make usershappy and senior management evenhappier. �

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Paul Galvin is a SharePoint MVP and co-founder of Arcovis LLC, a SharePoint consultingorganization providing services to clients in the New York metro area. Galvin has worked inthe IT industry for more than 15 years in areas such as software development, consulting andSharePoint solutions design, where he works with clients to create business solutions using the

SharePoint platform. He contributes to the SharePoint community through MSDN forums and his blog athttp://paulgalvin.spaces.live.com.

What is My Template?CONSIDER THIS SCENARIO: A user calls up and says, “There’s a problem with myInfoPath form.” You know the form in question, and you also know that atleast three different versions of the associated InfoPath template are float-ing around in the SharePoint environment. If you didn’t follow the best prac-tice for self-documenting forms, what do you do? All is not lost. The tem-plate is embedded in the XML file itself. To find it, follow these steps:

1. Save the offending form to your hard drive.

2. Open it using your favorite XML editor. Visual studio or even notepad willwork. Note that you’ll select File -> Open. If you simply double-click on theXML file itself, it will attempt to open the form using your local InfoPathclient program and not be helpful.

3. Examine the XML and locate the section.

Your template name is right there in plain sight. Locate the template, andbegin researching the problem with the confidence that you have the correcttemplate in hand. �

WITH IDERA TOOLS FOR SHAREPOINT, YOU CAN…Migrate Data From SharePoint 2003 to 2007 to 2010 • Backup all SharePoint

Content • Recover Site Collections • Find Out Who Has Access to What • Recover

Sites • Schedule Backups • Monitor Disk Availability For Backup Sets • Manage

Multiple Farms • Recover Documents Even When SharePoint is Down • Delete Dead

Accounts • Backup All SharePoint Content • Clone User Account Security • Find Out

How Permissions Were Assigned • Reorganize SharePoint Content Database Indexes

• Monitor Content Database Logs and Data Sizes • Receive Alerts When Backups Can’t

Run • Easily Change Content Types • Receive Alerts When Pages Take Long to Load •

Automatically Groom Historical Performance Data • Replicate and Synchronize

Security Roles • Visualize SharePoint Architecture • Search for SharePoint Content

Across Multiple Backup Sets • Replicate List Permissions • Receive Alerts for Farm

Servers • Automatically Groom Old Backup Sets • Alert On Failed Backup Jobs •

Summarize SharePoint Backup Operations Across All Servers • Summarize

Performance Status Across All SharePoint Farm Servers • Reorganize Data • Provide

Trends of Historical Performance Data • Compare and Deploy Sites • Monitor

SharePoint Server CPU • Search Security Roles • Monitor SharePoint Server Memory •

Recover List and List Items • Monitor SharePoint Server Disk Activity • Monitor IIS

Performance • Receive Custom Email Alerts • Monitor Server Performance • Remove

Security Roles • Tag Content • Replicate Item Permissions • Intelligently Balance

Backup Jobs Across Servers • Prevent Backup Failures With Backup Fault Tolerance

Migration • Performance Monitoring Backup and Recovery • Security • Administration

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SHAREPOINT MAY BE the most flexibleand most powerful application thatMicrosoft has ever created. But it hasbeen said that with great powercomes great responsibility. Unless theproper governance is put into place,SharePoint can quickly spiral out ofcontrol. Learn which factors can leadto SharePoint sprawl and how you canregain control of your SharePointdeployment.

To understand why SharePointsprawl happens, you have to movebeyond the idea that SharePoint issimply an application for developingwebsites and think of it as a collabo-ration tool. Sure, a lot of organizationsuse SharePoint to create their corpo-rate intranet, but there are severalother types of sites that organizationscan also create.

Team sites are probably the mostwidely used type of SharePoint site.A team site is a dedicated SharePointsite that allows a team, departmentor workgroup to collaborate on a proj-

ect. Team members can use the siteto store documents, share contactinformation, display data or sharenews related to a project.

Although team sites can beextremely useful, they can also be amajor source of SharePoint sprawl.

Team sites can become quite un-wieldy because in an uncontrolledenvironment, team members maycreate any number of sub sites. Eachof these sub sites can contain multi-ple document libraries, meeting work-spaces and so on.

The reality is that SharePoint con-tains built-in templates for creating ahuge variety of site types, and any of

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How to Stop SharePoint SprawlIt’s great that SharePoint has taken off in your organization, but howdo you get a handle on the mega-proliferation of sites? BY BRIEN M. POSEY

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Although team sitescan be extremelyuseful, they can alsobe a major sourceof SharePoint sprawl.

these sites have the potential to spiralout of control if left unchecked.

WHY IS SHAREPOINTSPRAWL A PROBLEM?The consequences of SharePointsprawl can vary depending on thetype of organization in which thesprawl is occurring. For example,the most immediate effect in a smallorganization might be the excessiveuse of disk space on the server thatis hosting the SharePoint database.At first, this may not sound so bad

because disk space has become inex-pensive. But there are at least a cou-ple of other related side effects thatneed to be considered.

One side effect is that having arapidly growing SharePoint databasecan throw a kink into your backupefforts. Your users will expect youto back up their SharePoint data ona regular basis.

Because of that, you may find thatyou have to invest in a higher capacitytape drive. Or you might have todevise a backup strategy that allowsyou to back up an ever-expanding

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How to Solve Document Library SprawlANOTHER TYPE OF SharePoint sprawl that can cause problems for organizationsis document library sprawl.SharePoint document libraries are linked to a powerful search engine, and

they can also be configured to support the retention of multiple versions ofdocuments. Because of that, some organizations are beginning to copy fre-quently used data from file servers to SharePoint document libraries.Don’t get me wrong—there is nothing wrong with using SharePoint as a

file server. In fact, it might eventually become the norm. The problem is thatmany organizations also leave a copy of their data in the original location onthe file server. This results in having two separate versions of a file stored intwo different locations. This can lead to excessive disk usage as well as userconfusion.One easy solution is to establish a clear governance policy that dictates

how SharePoint document libraries should and should not be used. That way,you can prevent the problems that come from having multiple versions of thesame file scattered across your network. �

data set within your allotted backupwindow.

Another side effect to uncontrolledSharePoint sprawl may not manifestitself for quite some time. If you have

ever worked through a SharePoint up-grade, then you know how much workis involved in the planning processand in the post-upgrade testing.

Any time that you allow SharePointdata to expand uncontrollably, youcomplicate future upgrades or migra-tions to new versions of SharePointbecause each SharePoint site requiresplanning and testing. The worst partis that you may end up wasting timeplanning for the migration of Share-Point sites that haven’t even beenused for quite some time. Also keepin mind that it’s better to preventexcessive SharePoint sprawl fromoccurring in the first place than to tryto deal with the consequences downthe road.

Finally, SharePoint sprawl can beespecially problematic in regulated

organizations. Think about it for amoment: SharePoint sprawl is causedby the unplanned—and often undoc-umented—creation of SharePointsites. The problem is that any one ofthese sites could potentially containdata that is subject to regulatoryrequirements. If users are creatingsites in a chaotic manner, then youcan bet that there has been no regardfor retention policies, metadata ortaxonomies.

WAYS TO AVOIDSHAREPOINT SPRAWLTo protect your organization from thenegative effects of SharePoint sprawl,it’s a good idea to put controls in placelong before you ever make SharePointaccessible to your end users. I recent-ly heard about one organization, forexample, who involved its complianceteam during every step of its Share-Point deployment.

By doing that, the organizationwas able to ensure that its SharePointplatform would be designed in sucha way that would force data to bestored in a consistent manner. It wasalso able to put all of the necessaryretention policies in place beforeusers began storing any data withinSharePoint document libraries.

But what if you have inherited anexisting deployment, and SharePointsprawl has already occurred? In thistype of situation, the first thing that

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Editor’s Note

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Make theMost of

InfoPath Forms

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How to StopSharePoint

Sprawl

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MasteringWorkflowReports in

SharePoint 2010

If users are creatingsites in a chaoticmanner, then you canbet that there has beenno regard for retentionpolicies, metadataor taxonomies.

you must do is to take steps to pre-vent the sprawl from getting anyworse. After that, you can focus onreducing the sprawl that has alreadyoccurred.

There are two critical steps to con-trolling SharePoint sprawl. First, youneed to implement controls to pro-hibit users from randomly creatingSharePoint sites. That way, wheneverusers need to create SharePoint sites,they will have to go through a centralpoint of contact.

The idea setting up a centralapproval process isn’t to have a cor-porate bureaucrat deciding whichemployees are worthy of having theirrequests granted. If a user needs aSharePoint site, he or she should beallowed to have a site. The reason forhaving someone to oversee site cre-ation is that it makes it a lot easier totrack site creation and usage.

As part of the process, any userswho are requesting SharePoint sitesshould be required to provide certaininformation along with their requests.Some of the essential informationmight include the following:

� The name of the user whois making the request

� The requesting department� The name and contact informationof the user’s supervisor

� The user’s telephone number� The user’s e-mail address

The second step is to perform aperiodic check to see which sites arestill being used. I once had a client askme to help him with a SharePointsprawl problem. After taking an in-ventory of the SharePoint sites thatexisted within the organization, weset out to determine which sites werestill being used. To make a long storyshort, we couldn’t even figure outwho some of the sites belonged to.Many of the sites that were identifi-able belonged to employees who hadleft the company or changed depart-ments.

Collecting user information givesyou an easy way of identifying theowner of each site. That way, you cancheck every six months or so to see ifthe site is still being used.

If the user who requested the siteleaves the company, then you alsohave the contact information for thatperson’s supervisor, and you can askhim or her whether or not the site isstill in use. �

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Make theMost of

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MasteringWorkflowReports in

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Brien M. Posey has received Microsoft’s Most Valuable Professional award seven times for hiswork withWindows Server, IIS, file systems/storage and Exchange Server. He has served as CIOfor a nationwide chain of hospitals and healthcare facilities and was once a network administra-tor for Fort Knox.

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