A Realistic Approach to Content Management with Microsoft SharePoint

Nicky Bleiel

Senior Information Developer

ComponentOne

Biography — Nicky Bleiel

• 17 + years of experience as a technical communicator.

• Director, Society for Technical Communication

• Written and designed documentation for software products in the documentation, media, industrial automation, simulation, and pharmaceutical industries.

• Speaker at STC, WritersUA, tcworld, LavaCon, and DocTrain on a variety of topics, including: embedded help, tools and technologies, user assistance design, single sourcing, wikis, Web 2.0, and convergence technical communication.

• Articles published in STC Intercom, tcworld magazine, TechComManager, WritersUA website, and the Content Wrangler.

What We Will Cover

• Why Use SharePoint?

• Myths and Legends

• SharePoint’s Document and Translation Management Features

• How Doc-To-Help and SharePoint Work together

Why the “Realistic?”

• Content management initiatives can be a huge investment of time, money, and resources.

Huge investment = Huge risk

• This is a practical way to implement a content management process without a big investment.

“SharePoint is hard to implement and our IT staff would never install it.”

• SharePoint is already installed on the majority of organizations’ networks. The network admin just didn’t tell you.

• If you don’t have it, SharePoint is easy to install. It starts by installing all the prerequisites and configuring the server for you and then installs the application itself. It will even automatically install and connect to SQL Server Express.

Handy blog post:

Curious About SharePoint? It is Easy to Install

http://helpcentral.componentone.com/CS/help_authoring_2/b/d2h_team_blog/archive/2011/03/17/curious-about-sharepoint-it-is-easy-to-install.aspx

“SharePoint is too expensive.”

• SharePoint is free! – SharePoint has paid versions, but SharePoint Foundation 2010 is free (as

is its predecessor, Windows SharePoint Server 3.0).

“It would take me too long to learn to use SharePoint.”

• SharePoint 2010 uses intuitive Silverlight® driven menus that makes features more discoverable.

• Since SharePoint is so popular, self-help support information is available. You can find training, tutorials, blogs, forums, and more.

Let’s examine the concepts related to content management

SharePoint 2010

Content Management

Search

BusinessIntelligence

StreamlineProcesses

Portals

Collaboration

A platform for:• Teamwork

• Access

• Workflow automation

• History

• Source control

Content Management in SharePoint

Regulatory compliance/ Records management

Enterprise accessibility and search

Web Content Management (WCM) Document Management

Enterprise Content Management (ECM)

“But you said Content Management”

• SharePoint stores everything in Document Libraries.

• Documents can be virtually any file.

• Content is stored in files.

• Document management = Content Management for our purposes.

• You get most content management principles.

Document Library: The Foundation

• Interface to open, view, and edit documents

• Metadata that describes each document

• Templates to create new documents

• Permissions to control access

Source/Version Control

• Convenient toolbar helps manage documents:– Require that documents be checked out before editing

– Version history

– Version comparisons

– Approval process

Workflows

• “In-the-Box” workflows automate processes:– Work tracking

– Review/Approval

– Sign-off

– Translation Management

• Create your own:– SharePoint Designer

– Visio

– Visual Studio

Active CompleteReady for

Review

Translation Management! Really?

• Automate/track translation processes with a special Translation Management Library:– Automatically create copies for each language

– Assign translation tasks to translators

– Compare versions

SharePoint’s base document management features

Pros and Cons

• Pros:– Basic content management with existing/standard tools.

– SMEs, Marketing, etc. can contribute using familiar tools rather than learning a new application.

• Cons: – Not component content management. Reuse is limited to

the document/file level

Is it For You?

SharePoint Scenario

Full CMS Scenario

To Summarize ...• SharePoint is everywhere and sometimes it’s free.

• Implementing SharePoint for content management is virtually risk-free.

• SharePoint’s document management features are useful even if you work alone.

• SharePoint’s Translation Management features are easy-to-use and powerful.

• Doc-To-Help’s integration with SharePoint creates an end-to-end authoring, management, and publishing solution.

Questions?

Contact information:

Nicky Bleiel

ComponentOne

Pittsburgh, PA

nickyb@doctohelp.com

www.doctohelp.com

Blog “Technical Communication Camp” blogs.componentone.com/CS/blogs/techcamp/default.aspx

Twitter: nickybleiel

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