Following the problems with travel caused by a certain volcano, I’ll now be presenting at the SharePoint Evolutions conference in London. My session abstract hasn’t made it onto the web site yet so here it is below:

Session: What’s new in SharePoint 2010 for Information Workers

Abstract: We will take a look at the new features in SharePoint Server 2010 from the end-user’s perspective. Starting with a tour of the new user interface we will explore the new search results, social networking features and new ways to organise and classify content within sites. We’ll finish with a peak behind the scenes at the new administration settings and tips to consider when planning to deploy SharePoint Server 2010.

The session will be all demos and should help set the scene for some of the deeper dive sessions later in the day and throughout the conference.

Looking forward to meeting everyone who makes it to London and commiserations to those unable to attend due to the travel chaos across Europe.

On February 8th, I delivered a free short online web cast based on my presentation ‘Managing SharePoint 2007 Site Permissions’. Organised by Mark Miller at EndUserSharePoint.com, the event was recorded and is available for download.

To go into more detail about managing SharePoint site permissions and how to apply security in SharePoint, Mark has organised a follow-up 2 hour live web event. It is being held on 1st March at 13:00 EST (6pm GMT). I’ll be presenting again but the plan is for this event to be as interactive and hands-on as possible. Each attendee will be given a SharePoint site to practice with. We’ll be walking through how to apply permissions, best practices for deciding how to manage permissions and there will be plenty of time for questions about specific security scenarios and concerns. For this event there is a registration fee of $129 (approx £80) which includes access to a recording of the event on-demand for future reference.

References:

• Presentation: Managing SharePoint 2007 Site Permissions
• Download the recorded web cast (6.2Mb .zip)

Earlier this year, Joining Dots ran a series of Enterprise Search workshops for Microsoft UK. Its purpose was to help organisations explore what enterprise search means and what Microsoft technologies can do to help implement an effective search solution.

The workshop consisted of four sessions, containing a mix of presentations, hands-on demonstrations and plenty of discussion. Here is part 1:

Part 1 was all about setting the scene. First, exploring ‘what is enterprise search?’ Second, an introduction to the current products in Microsoft’s search portfolio. Note: at the time, the FAST acquisition had not completed.

Key messages from the presentation:

• The most common question asked is ‘Why can’t our search be just like searching on Google?’ To begin answering that question, we need to define enterprise search – fundamentally different to Internet search. One of the challenges within many organisations has been that there is no dedicated focus on improving search. Instead it is often a feature of a larger project, such as an intranet replacement or new document management system. Before Google came along, that’s how the major Internet portals treated search…
• Enterprise search technologies usually fit in one of three layers:
• The simplest solutions help find what you know exists. Products are either free or low-cost and focus on ‘unstructured’ content, i.e. documents, email and web pages. Desktop search is available from the likes of Microsoft, Google and Yahoo. Network search tools include Microsoft Search Server, Google Mini Appliance and IBM/Yahoo Ominfind
• The mid-tier typically provides a base platform for enterprise search, relatively inexpensive and focused on common requirements. Solutions should include security trimming (filtering results based on who you are and what you have permission to see) and indexing multiple sources of content. Some solutions start to move beyond unstructured content to also include people search (directories and social networks) and structured data (integrating business applications). This is the hunting ground for SharePoint Server 2007 and the Google Search Appliance.
• The top-tier provides advanced indexing and search capabilities, such as automatic classification of content, concept-driven search interfaces and integration with business intelligence tools. Leaders in this space include Autonomy, Endeca and FAST.
• Whilst advanced search is often the goal, many organisations would benefit from first identifying what content needs to be found. Is it just about documents? How accessible are those documents? And should enterprise search also include business applications and the ability to find people? We often prefer to seek answers from each other in the workplace… These are all questions that need to be answered if you want to implement an effective enterprise search solution.
• Microsoft products and services span three areas of search: the web (Live.com), the desktop (Windows Desktop Search) and the intranet/company web sites (SharePoint Server 2007 and Search Server 2008)
• Intranet search includes the ability to find documents, business data and people. Federated connectors enable results to be returned not only from multiple different content sources but also from multiple different indexes. The table in the presentation shows what features are available per product.
• Desktop search enables individuals to query their own content, such as private email and locally-stored documents – content that is often difficult to access by intranet search tools.
• Web search trends are worth following to see what’s likely to be coming down the line for enterprise search. On Live.com, concept-driven results enable you to refine your search query. If you do a search for videos, hovering over the video will start it playing inside your web browser…

To download a copy of the presentation (3.3Mb): MS-Search-Pt1.pdf

Filed in Library: Microsoft SharePoint | Microsoft Search

Technorati tags: SharePoint | MOSS 2007 | Search Server | Enterprise Search

On 21st May 2008 I presented to an audience of taxonomy professionals within the UK public sector. The last session of the day, I had 30 minutes to present on “Taxonomy within Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS): Lessons learned from real-world deployments”.

My aim was to briefly explain what MOSS can and cannot do with taxonomy and provide a few tips on how to leverage MOSS taxonomy features to improve information findability. The session generated quite a bit of note-taking and debate. Here are the slides:

Key messages from the presentation:

• MOSS uses elements of taxonomy to improve search and navigation. The core feature is ‘columns’, used for metadata. Case study: a tag-driven user interface created for the New Zealand Ministry of Transport. A great end result but a lot of effort required to implement and maintain
• MOSS does not (yet) provide taxonomy management tools. Taxonomy management is about defining and managing schema(s), and classifying content agains those schemas
• Taxonomy is not the holy grail. Schemas need to continually evolve to be effective. Often there is a disconnect between the language used by those creating the schema and those looking for information that the schema is for. This perhaps explains why folksonomies have achieved more success than official taxonomies, but…
• User tagging is less accurate or consistent than automatic classification. Comment from Google founder Sergey Brin: Semantics and tagging are great as long as computers are doing it [not people].” Automatic classification is by no means perfect either. Accuracy rarely exceeds 70% – lots of development going on to improve this
• 4 tips to improve the use and value of taxonomy within MOSS today:
1. Where possible, define columns at the site collection level, not per library. Do it per library and each instance will be treated as separate crawled property in the index. By managing per site collection, you can also control what values can be entered, improving consistency across sites and libraries
2. Avoid using sites and sub-sites to mimic file structures (popular when creating file plans). One of the relevance algorithms is URL depth. The deeper the URL, the less relevant and you don’t want empty sites returned in search results. Alternative approach: create a link-driven UI to mimic the file plan but apply it using columns and store content in as few sites as possible
3. Check out your sources. When indexing content, if one source has a lot more metadata than others, it can dominate search results. A common issue for mergers and acquistions, or re-orgs within government. Solution: split the index and/or use federated search
4. Maximise the effectiveness of automatic metadata, such as titles and descriptions. Avoid bland document titles (e.g. ‘meeting notes’ x 50) and irrelevant link titles (‘Click here’ versus a title that describes where the link takes you)
• Most likely scenarios to want to go beyond MOSS are concept-driven search and automatic classification. You can use bespoke code and lightweight tools like the Faceted Search tool on Codeplex. But it is usually better to engage a partner.
• Final case study: legal firm – lots of taxonomy but just getting search up and running was a big win. People found it easier to find information using basic search than the formal navigation structures created by file plans…

To download a copy of the presentation: MOSSTIPS-May08.pdf (2.7Mb) <--Note I haven't used 'Click here' :-)

Technorati tags: MOSS 2007 SharePoint Taxonomy Tagging Information Architecture

… is being held on Monday 28th April in Chertsey. Click here to register online (no fee)

During the workshop, we explore what is enterprise search, take a deep dive into how SharePoint Server 2007 can be configured to deliver an enterprise search solution, examine how to improve relevance and findability, and discover what’s new (think federation) with Search Server 2008.

The workshop is 20% slides: 80% demonstration and discussion. And 50% technology: 50% information design and usability. Places are limited to keep the session small and interactive.

Thanks to demand, Microsoft UK has added four new dates and two new locations for the Enterprise Search workshops. January and February events have been delivered. March events are fully booked. Here are the additional dates: (Click on the date to register online)

• 1st April in Manchester
• 9th April in Chertsey
• 22nd April in Edinburgh
• 28th April in Chertsey

These workshops are free to attend. Each workshop is limited to a maximum of 20 attendees to help make the sessions as interactive as possible. We do a deep dive into what is enterprise search, how can Microsoft products and services help, and what are the best practices and gotchas when implementing enterprise search solutions. The content is designed and delivered by yours truly.

Related Posts:

• Microsoft Enterprise Search workshops (Jan 2008)

Technorati tags: Enterprise Search; SharePoint 2007; Search Server