Customizing SharePoint Sites and Portals: Style Sheet Class Reference Tables, Part 3. Dino Dato-on Jinger Zhao Microsoft Corporation May 2004 Applies to: Microsoft® Windows® SharePoint™ Services Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Microsoft Office FrontPage® 2003 Summary: The third of three companion articles. In Customizing SharePoint Sites and Portals, Part 1, you learned ways to customize a SharePoint site and an area; manage users, sites, and templates; change the structure of pages in a site; manage user access; and optimize style sheets.
In Customizing SharePoint Sites and Portals: Using Templates and Site Definitions, Part 2, you created and edited a site using templates and site definitions. Part 3 provides valuable style sheet class reference tables to use as you customize your sites and portals. (39 printed pages) Contents Introduction Microsoft® SharePoint™ Products and Technologies consists of Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and Microsoft Windows® SharePoint Services.
Table 1. Table 2. Table 3. Conclusion Additional References. Content Value Analysis for Intranets Part 2 – A methodology « manIA. I’ve written before on an approach called Content Value Analysis (CVA) and I’ve now produced the detail of how this might be done in practice. Chiara Fox of Adaptive Path in her presentation on Content Analysis came closest to this approach when she talked about Content Audits at Euro IA 2008. However there is a crucial difference between our approaches – the use of statistical techniques and documented heuristics. No don’t reach for that mouse yet! What I’m suggesting is not difficult, will give great substance to your final analysis and will probably save you a lot of work. When trying to tell an intranet manager or a content owner the hard truth (e.g. their content sucks) it can sometimes result in a ‘ yes it does – no it doesn’t ‘ sort of debate that usually goes nowhere.
. - The results have a very high probability that they are representative of all the pages in the site or sub-site being assessed - All sample pages were arrived at randomly and the process was free of any bias. Content Value Analysis for Intranets Part 2 – A methodology « manIA. Intranet 2.0: the need for ‘lean intranets’ « manIA. I read a couple of blog posts recently that seemed to make a lot of sense to me when thought of together. The first post was in Toby Ward’s excellent IntranetBlog entitled ‘Intranet 2.0 sits on the back burner’. Here Toby comments on a recent survey which semed to indicate that Intranet 2.0 isn’t really getting off the ground with the take up rate for blogs, wikis and social tagging in organisations not getting above 15%. The other post was in Giraffe Forum and was entitled ‘Intranets are not information dumps’. In the article the author states ‘The vast majority of intranets would be far more productive and collaborative if they deleted at least 90 percent of the content they currently have’.
Not long ago I was responsible for redesigning the intranet for a large local government department. Having giving it a lot of thought I ended up cutting out around 40% of the content, much of which I had been responsible for inserting in the first place. So where is this leading? ‘Leanness’ Intranet Blog :: Main Page. Conducting intranet needs analysis. Written by James Robertson, published September 5th, 2005 Categorised under: articles, intranets The fundamental question to ask for all intranets is: what is the intranet actually for? While this is an easy question to ask, answering it meaningfully involves gaining an in-depth understanding of staff and organisational needs.
While much has been written about the design of intranets, less is said about how to ensure that the intranet contains useful information and tools. At the end of the day, staff will use an intranet if it is useful. To ensure this, there are a range of practical ‘needs analysis’ techniques that can be used to identify staff (and organisational) requirements. This article provides an overview of these techniques, as well as discussing how to analyse and use the results of the research. Ensuring usefulness Much effort is being put into ensuring that intranets are usable, that information is quick and easy to find. A common trap is to just ask staff what they need Surveys. Stakeholder interviews as simple knowledge mapping. CMb 2003-13 Written by James Robertson, published June 16th, 2003 Categorised under: articles, intranets, knowledge management Stakeholder interviews involve conducting one-on-one discussions with staff throughout the organisation.
These are designed to identify key knowledge needs, gain an understanding of the organisation, and uncover major issues and problems. As such, this technique is often used in the early stages of projects such as the redevelopment of an intranet, as part of the requirements-gathering activities. In knowledge management terms, stakeholder interviews are also a simple form of ‘knowledge mapping’. The information gathered can be used to inform the development of an appropriate strategy, whether it is for a knowledge management project, or for an intranet redesign. Sample questions What is your job role? These questions are refined case-by-case, based on background research into the nature of the organisation.
Critical success factors Summary ShareThis. Make SharePoint intranets beautiful. Written by James Robertson, published May 22nd, 2011 Categorised under: Design & usability guidelines, Intranets, Usability & user-centered design SharePoint is many things, but out of the box, beautiful isn’t one of them. The boxy design and shades of blue isn’t ugly per-se, but do little to inspire adoption and enthusiasm. It used to be said that it was too hard to make SharePoint beautiful, but the following selection of examples show otherwise (you can read more about making SharePoint beautiful in our latest report, Best practices for SharePoint intranets): Screenshot courtesy of Kiwibank. Screenshot courtesy of Bennett Jones. Screenshot courtesy of Bupa Australia. Screenshot courtesy of Commwealth Bank.
(Whether you think all — or any! SharePoint 2010 provides much better tools for tailoring the design of sites, including a range of point-and-click options. Lynne Warneke, an experienced SharePoint implementer, outlines the situation: Plan carefully and budget accordingly! Related posts: Starting to define the intranet brand. CMb 2008-08 Written by James Robertson, published June 17th, 2008 Categorised under: articles, intranets What is the intranet for? An easy question to ask, but surprisingly hard for many intranet teams to answer. To be successful, intranets must have a clear definition of their purpose and character. Answering this question goes a long way to defining the intranet ‘brand’. This briefing will outline a simple technique to start the process of determining the intranet brand. Product Reaction Cards The user experience team at Microsoft have published a very interesting tool called the ‘Product Reaction Cards’, which can be freely downloaded from the team’s website: www.microsoft.com/usability/UEPostings/ProductReactionCards.doc This contains a wide range of words that can be used to describe almost any product, whether physical or electronic.
It includes words such as ‘innovative’, ‘engaging’, ‘collaborative’, ‘reliable’, ‘effective’ and ‘useful’. Using the cards Start with the intranet team. Where to start with a SharePoint intranet. Written by James Robertson, published March 30th, 2011 Categorised under: Intranets, SharePoint A lot of organisations are currently deploying SharePoint for their corporate intranet. And rightly so, as it’s a viable and potentially powerful solution for intranet needs. Like any technology, however, it has strengths and weaknesses. The key thing is for intranet teams to understand the key strength and weakness of SharePoint: Strength: breadth and flexibility. To ensure success at the outset of a SharePoint intranet project, intranet teams need to do two things: understand the platform, and have a clear vision and direction. Understand the platform Like any technology offering, SharePoint has huge strengths and equally huge weaknesses.
Thankfully there is a lot of good product and technical information available for SharePoint, much more so than even two years ago. Have a crystal clear vision and direction The flexibility of SharePoint means that deployments can easily lose their way. Complete Beginner?s Guide to Content Strategy. You or someone you know wants to create content. Awesome! But to what end? Content strategy helps us plan for valuable, viable content. We begin with publishing. Now, what if you or someone you know is getting ready to unleash content on the world.
At this point, visual design—design of the actual website itself—is irrelevant. In this article, we’ll take a brief look at Content Strategy—that odd amalgamation of digital publishing, information architecture and editorial process that adds up to something infinitely greater than the sum of its parts. What is Content Strategy? “Content strategy plans for the creation, publication, and governance of useful, usable content,” says Kristina Halvorson, author of the book Content Strategy for the Web. “It plots an achievable roadmap for individuals and organizations to create and maintain content that audiences will actually care about. Taking a step back, Lou Rosenfeld adds: Digital Publishing Content Strategy is the way forward. Rahel Anne Bailie. Why you need a content strategist « Boagworld. Content Strategy: The estimated time to read this article is 8 minutes I have a confession to make. Sometimes people ask me, casually, what it is that I do.
And up until now I have always shuffled my feet, crinkled my brow for a second and settled for ‘I’m a writer. For websites, mostly.’ ‘Oh, like blogs and things?’ ‘Yeah. This is a 24 carat lie. Image Source So, humour me. ‘Yeah, I work on the web too.’ ‘Oh really? ‘I’m a content strategist.’ ‘Oh. ‘No. (You can see why this might not work out so well in reality) I am the ambassador for your poor, maligned content. A content strategist looks after everything on your website that communicates with your audience. Audit I look at all your existing content across all channels, brand guidelines and any styleguides you might have. I gather all that information into a couple of documents to guide our next steps. Shutterstock After this I write editorial and authorship guidelines to guide the creation of future content.
Plan Creation Let’s do this thing! Planning your SharePoint intranet project. Written by James Robertson, published April 28th, 2011 Categorised under: articles, content management, document & records management, enterprise 2.0, information management, intranets Starting a SharePoint intranet project, whether creating a new intranet or redeveloping an existing one, can be daunting.
Alongside strategy and design questions are now a myriad of technology decisions, often exploring uncharted territory within the organisation. (Read more about SharePoint intranet project planning, and other best practices, in our new report, Best practices for SharePoint intranets.) At a basic level, intranets based on SharePoint are just like every other intranet. As discussed in the earlier article Promoting the intranet as a service, the intranet should be considered a service, underpinned by a technology product. SharePoint does, however, introduce some new questions into the intranet planning process. It is this wide range of capabilities that can be so daunting for many teams. 1. Essential SharePoint 2007 Ch1 – Your Collaboration Strategy: Ensuring Success « Rock MOSS 2007. These are my notes from Chapter 1 of Essential SharePoint 2007. I have read a few more chapters that I haven’t summarized yet, but so far I highly recommend this book! Organizational acceptance factors MOSS users typically have other options for accomplishing the tasks that MOSS enables.
That is a threat to the organization adopting/embracing SP. Process and people strategies are more important to successful deployment than the technology. SharePoint learning curve – Introduce features slowly. Getting business user buy-in: show value Sell SP to users – tell them what’s in it for them. What are the critical business objectives for the key stakeholders? Tie the specific objectives of MOSS to one or more of the strategic objectives of the company. The book lists examples of specific objectives that could be tied into the company’s strategic objectives. Articulate the long-term vision of your solution. Content must be relevant to your user’s daily activities. Levels of Review and Approval Training.