The ASPE-IT Blog

With the summer season approaching, we know how difficult it can be to stay motivated. Although training may not be at the top of your list, its becoming increasingly important to stay ahead of the game and continually refresh your skills in order to maintain a competitive advantage.

To help keep the momentum going, we’re offering 30% our May 2015 training sessions.

Register online or mention code MAY30 to receive 30% off your registration. 

For more information and a list of available courses and sessions, please visit www.aspe-sdlc.com/may30.

As promised, “Round 2” in my series where we discuss the advantages of using metadata over folders in SharePoint.   I found a good example of why metadata is valuable in document classification I would like to share:

Although a great deal of information (and opinions) is available on the web, most of them favoring the use of metadata instead of folders, I’d like to add some samples that I use in my daily work.  Please notice the quotes, intentionally put there to stress that using SharePoint instead of file shares is much more than just a migration: it’s a whole new way of work! However, that’s a bit out of scope for this article so let’s stick to metadata versus folders.

We love to structure our data…

… And that’s actually not a bad habit. A common scenario for customers is a file share for project teams that structure their data based on some properties of their projects, like the following example:

• Division A
  • Department B
    • Project C
      • Stage D
        • Document 1
        • Document 2

People have worked like this for ages and seem generally satisfied with this solution.

Not so structured after all?

The sample above can work as long as:

• There is good governance on the structure
• There are not too many levels
• You do not have to share documents across projects

There might be more properties available than can be used without creating a ridiculously complex folder structure:

• Author of the document
• Create date of the document
• Customer
• Version of the document
• Project year
• Etc.

Often, extra data is stored in the title of the document, like “pid draft version 0.5 – modified by John – to review.doc”. From the title, you can get extra information: it’s a Project Initiation Document (pid), it’s not final, it’s been modified by John and should be reviewed. What if it had not been called pid but “prj. in. doc.doc”? It’s still a pid, but would you immediately recognize it as such?

Creating duplicates

Using folders for structuring files might work when these files stay within that one folder. However, some files belong to more than one folder. In the folder structure above, ‘Document 1′ might also belong to ‘Project F’. The general solution is creating a copy of the document, causing the following major problems:

• Not clear which version is the latest and greatest
• Not clear who is the document owner
• Need for extra storage

The route to finding information: vertical/horizontal navigation

A folder view is a vertical way of finding information: you’ll find the document via a vertical path that someone else has defined. That path might not be the one you want to follow. A great example is a second hand car site. On that site, there are thousands of cars available and you are looking for that one car. Suppose the site had been structured with a folder view, like:

• Brand (e.g. Mercedes)
  • Model (e.g. 320)
    • Fuel type (e.g. Petrol)
      • Color (e.g. Silver Metallic)
        • Mileage (e.g. 70k-80k)

That would work if you’d been looking for a Mercedes. But what if you’re looking for a car with the following criteria:

• Not more than 5 years old
• Petrol
• Mileage between 50k-80k
• Hatchback
• Price between $20k-$35k

The folder view above won’t work for you as you’ll have to browse each (sub) folder to find cars that match some (but not all) of your criteria. You don’t want a vertical view, you want a horizontal one!

To map this to information within your organization: you might be able to find the information you’re working with because you know the folder structure, but what about all the other employees that might be looking for that information? What about the manager looking for the latest project status reports for all projects?

Did I mention metadata?

We use metadata more often than we think. As Wikipedia describes it: Metadata (meta data, or sometimes metainformation) is “data about other data”. In the car example above, the properties of the car are its metadata: information about the car. So if you’re looking for a car (age, mileage, etc.), a partner (gender, hobbies, etc.) or house (type, price, etc.), you use metadata to filter. As you can see, each type of object I’m looking for (car, house, etc.) will have its own metadata; it wouldn’t make much sense to filter on fuel type for a house.

The folder view allows you to add metainformation implicitly, i.e. the location where the item is stored defines its metadata. Once the item is moved to another location, it loses that meta information. Using metadata on the item itself, means that metadata becomes explicit. No matter where you store the item, it keeps its metadata. There are some technical requirements to achieve this, but that will be explained next.

Metadata with SharePoint

Although it’s possible to create folders in SharePoint document libraries, I generally do not recommend it: see the sections above. SharePoint implements metadata as columns. End users sometimes find it hard to grasp this concept, but then I use the example of Excel. Almost everyone in an organization has used Excel so a spreadsheet like the following should look familiar:

Most people also know you can apply filtering in Excel:

And that’s also how SharePoint works! (Plus more)

SharePoint stores items in lists/libraries and uses columns to provide extra information about the items. SharePoint even allows you to store different types of items (remember the car, partner and house) in one list using so-called content types.

Using metadata, users can now apply filtering, sorting and grouping on the data, either directly or with views.

Flat view:

Grouped view:

Retaining metadata when moving items around

I’ve already mentioned that SharePoint has ways to keep the metadata with the item. Using Content Types is a great way of applying the same metadata structure to lists and libraries. When the item moves to another list that has the same columns, it will keep its metadata. Office files have an even better mechanism built in as metadata is contained within the document itself! Try it out yourself by adding metadata to, for example, a Word document in a library. Now copy the file to another library that does not have the same metadata columns yet. Once you have added the same metadata columns (use the same internal name for the columns!), they will automatically show the metadata. Beyond cool!

Conclusion

Metadata in SharePoint allows for a much more flexible way of structuring your data than using folders on a file share. When you want to implement SharePoint, leave the folder way of thinking behind and start thinking in more dimensions!

In my much anticipated blog post regarding the use of Folders in SharePoint 2013, I am finally ready to demystify the confusion and lead the SharePoint faithful away from an antiquated thinking around how to classify and categorize information.   With almost all students and customers I work with, I always see the use of Folders in SharePoint and there is always some seemingly perfect explanation for why Folders must be used.  It is a common struggle for teams within organizations to break the decades old habit of creating large and complex nesting structures of Folders to classify and categorize information.  We are all experts at putting things into containers so that we can find things more quickly.   While this seems like the correct way of thinking, we more often than not, quickly find that this complex structure has only added complexity to our ability to find things.

In our kitchens, everything is in its proper container.  Silverware is in drawers, pots and pans have their cabinet, and dishes and bowls all have their nooks.  But we are people, not computers.  Computers don’t need containers to locate things.  Computers use data.  Think of it this way.  What if you wanted to quickly see everything in your kitchen that was a gift from your wedding anniversary?  Because the gifts can range from dishes to gravy boats, you have no way of quickly finding these items without opening every cabinet, drawer, and closet in the kitchen and doing a manual inspection.  Or, what if you wanted to find anything of value that cost over $100.  Again, start opening the cabinets and drawers and start making your assessment.   One option, and this option is a preview of great things to come, might be to put a green post-it note on everything that was a gift from your in-laws.  At least then, you could easily open all of your cabinets and quickly get a glance at the items that need “Thank You” notes.

This same complexity in finding items stored in containers is also found when items are stored in complex Folder structure.  You must open every Folder to look for what you are trying to find.  And what if you have buried similar documents, like expense reports, across years of Folder structure?   Take this example.  Let’s say you have a great Folder structure, because after all there is no other way to classify and categorize information.   You have a Folder for each division within a company.  In each of those Folders you have a Folder for each year.  In those Folders you have a Folder for each quarter.  In those Folders you have a Folder for each project you worked on within each quarter.  And then finally within each project you have expense reports related to those projects.  Hundreds of Folders and hundreds of expense reports later, you have created what you think is the perfect system of classification…  UNTIL!   What if you need to see all expense reports over $500 for the 4^th quarter of every year for each division for a particular employee?  Your first problem is that you have no way of knowing from your Folder structure what the amount of the expense report was, or who submitted it.  You would have to begin digging into Folders for hours to open each expense report to find what you are looking for.   So certainly from an archiving perspective, you may have a good system.  However many issues arise from this system of classification, both from a usability and an administrative standpoint.  With computers, we can quickly find what we are looking for, but we need a different mechanism for the classification.  That mechanism is certainly NOT Folders.

There are many benefits to leaving Folders behind.  Now, I’m talking computers and systems here, not your home filing system.  Filing paper documents in Folders in a filing cabinet still works in your home office, just not in a complex system like SharePoint.  One of the many benefits of moving to SharePoint for the storage and use of documents and other files, is the ability to produce metadata, or data about data, for those files.  Think of it like putting similarly colored post-it notes across your files so you can easily find the documents that match a specific color.  Metadata in SharePoint allow you to quickly find what you are looking for using the many mechanisms in SharePoint.  The metadata can be used to sort, group, filter, and arrange information to match a team’s needs regardless of where the data happens to be stored.  With well-planned and implemented metadata, List Views will replace your need for Folder structures to arrange information.  For example:  Instead of creating a Folder for each state and then a Folder for each county in a state to arrange your documents, you would simply create two pieces of metadata.  One titled “State” and one titled “County”.  Then simply apply the state or county on each document as a piece of metadata.  Now if you want to see documents for a particular state, you simply apply a filter in a List View, or you can sort based on state to see all similar states grouped together.  List Views offer endless possibilities for arranging items according to metadata, rather than Folder structure where even documents themselves might need to appear in more than one Folder for means of classification and categorization.  Views allow for more functional and less rigid perspectives of your data.

With Views, it’s simple to change the way your data is classified, categorized, and displayed.  Once a view is created, you simply select the view by clicking on it in the List or Library page or you can choose the view from a populated list of views.  This makes it very simple to change the way you are seeing your data.  A user with the appropriate permissions can create Public Views of data and if allowed users can create their own private Personal Views of data as well.   The result of views is a more manageable, more intuitive, and more accessible configuration of your data.  Users are no longer left wondering which Folder they’re supposed to be looking for, and administrators are no longer stuck with the task of ensuring that items are in the right Folder or moving items around when they are not.  Or even worse, having the data appear in multiple Folders because the data should be classified in more than one way.

While the metadata approach might seem obvious to information managers, administrators and even “database people”, the value is not always clear to end users.  End users struggle with the shift from Folder structure to metadata application.  Users are typically focused on Folders for information management and often shy away at having to learn a new technique.  While the value can be shown to users, it’s important to consider this in user adoption planning and training.

Let the option of simply applying metadata on your documents sink in.  There are about a ½ dozen other reasons why Folders reduce SharePoint functionality.  I will talk more about this in “How to Implement a “Folder-less” SharePoint Environment – Part 2”.

Do you recall how fast the mobile phone technology growth swept the world? It seems just yesterday when only a few carried mobile communications technology beginning with the personal digital assistant!

Our mobile technology has completely reshaped how most of us live, communicate, and attain information. The next similar super-wave phenomenon is happening now with the “Internet of Things”. With virtually everything connected in our sites, a new paradigm of infrastructure evolves and the savvy Project Manager and DevOps engineers and leaders must understand how to manage the change and leverage the change for benefit.

Introducing NFV, SDN, and VNF terms and they will mean to the PM and DevOps world!
• NFV – Network Functions Virtualization. How do we enable and deploy advanced connectivity effectively?
• SDN – Software Defined Networks. What infrastructure base is necessary to enable NFV?
• VNF – Virtual Network Functions. A few Use Case examples connecting the “Internet of Things”

This 1-hour web seminar was presented by Richard Jenny on April 28th. Facilitated by ASPE’s Chris Knotts (Director of New Training Development), this web seminar primed the Project Management and DevOps leaders to recognize and capitalize on what is about to sweep the backbone of the internet word. Richard Jenny shared his thoughts to help the audience recognize this major trend and begin stepwise Technical “how to” Project planning.

Missed this web seminar? Find the slides & recording here.

One of the many challenges faced when implementing SharePoint 2013 is what to do with the data your organization already has. Is it necessary to migrate all your existing data into SharePoint? How does SharePoint 2013 integrate data from external systems? What are the security considerations administrations need to be aware of?

Microsoft Business Connectivity Services (BCS) is a set of services and features that provide a way to connect SharePoint Server 2013 solutions to sources of external data and to define external content types that are based on that external data. Planning for Microsoft Business Connectivity Services should include thinking about the kinds of solutions your organization requires, and planning for security and administration of those solutions.

This 1-hour webinar was presented by Andy Huneycutt on April 17. In this webinar, we examined SharePoint Business Connectivity Services (BCS) and how BCS brings external data into SharePoint and Office through the cloud and on-premises configurations.

Other topics covered:

• Supported Data Connections
• Configuring Data Connections
• Creating an External Content Type
• Creating a SharePoint list using external data
• Office client support for BCS
• Administration considerations

Missed this web seminar? Find the slides & recording here.

Occasionally my students ask me what an effective testing procedure I would use to see how sites and library permissions work when using different credentials than the ones used to build and define sites.    While a site designer (Site owner) can certainly check effective permissions using the “Check Permissions” option under Site Permissions, sometimes it’s just easier to log in as a different user and actually see what the user experience is first-hand.

In previous versions of SharePoint, you could easily change the user principle by selecting “Sign in as Different User” from the User menu in the top right corner.  That option was removed in SharePoint 2013.

This was a great feature because it allowed you to easily switch back and forth between user accounts and this was great for testing.  The reality of this feature, however, was that the browser didn’t always like the credential switching and sometimes you would get unexpected results like: caching problems, documents opened in external applications were saved with an unexpected user account, and problems with cookies which affected what was rendered in the browser.  So, anyway.  What to do?  You certainly could add the menu item back, but Microsoft removed it for a reason.  It’s best not to tinker with the menu.  You could however by modifying info in the hive on each server.  I’ll leave that for you to figure out on your own because I don’t want to promote that kind of customization.

I will show you two options.  I prefer the first option to the second.

Option 1 – (My favorite) – Launching an application as a different user using “Run as a different user”

As a server administrator and a client desktop support tech, I regularly have to test changes made to servers or settings applied in SharePoint sites.   Often I’m logged in as a user with elevated privileges when I simply want to test things as a regular user.  Same goes with SharePoint.  As a Site Owner, you will likely have permissions that team members do not have.  For example: Site Owners often have full control.  In the windows environment you can simply choose to launch an application using different credentials.   It’s fairly simple and allows you to have multiple IE windows open at a time, but each window would have a different user account.  To do this, locate the IE icon in the Start menu.  If you’re using windows 7 or 8, you cannot use the icon in the taskbar.  It won’t work.  Once you find the IE icon, hold down the shift key and right click the icon.  In the menu you will now see the hidden “Run as a different user option”.  Now, just use the credentials you want and a new IE window will open.  When you navigate to SharePoint, IE will pass over the credentials you specified.

Option 2 – (Not my favorite) – Navigate to the “close connection” page in SharePoint

While this method may be faster because you can bookmark the link, it is more confusing to me when I’m testing multiple sites with multiple user accounts.

Navigate to “<site URL>/_layouts/closeconnection.aspx?loginasanotheruser=true”.

When the new page attempts to open, you will be prompted for the username and password and will then be redirected to the site you specified.

So, there you have it.  Now you can log in easily as another user to test and verify your site design.

When people search for content on your SharePoint sites, what’s in your search index determines what they’ll find. The search index contains information from all documents and pages on your site.

The search index is built up by crawling the content on your SharePoint site. The crawler picks up content and metadata from the documents in the form of crawled properties. To get the content and metadata from the documents into the search index, the crawled properties must be mapped to managed properties. Only managed properties are kept in the index. This means that users can only search on managed properties.

When you have changed a managed property, or when you have changed the mapping of crawled and managed properties, the site must be re-crawled before your changes will be reflected in the search index. Because your changes are made in the search schema, and not to the actual site, the crawler will not automatically re-index the site. To make sure that your changes are crawled and fully re-indexed, you must request a re-indexing of the site. The site content will be re-crawled and re-indexed so that you can start using the managed properties in queries, query rules and display templates.

You can also choose to only re-index a document library or a list. When you have changed a managed property that’s used in a library or list, or changed the mapping of crawled and managed properties, you can specifically request a re-indexing of that library or list only. All of the content in that library or list is marked as changed, and the content is picked up during the next scheduled crawl and re-indexed.

Manually request crawling and re-indexing of a site, a library or a list

In SharePoint Online, content is automatically crawled based on a defined crawl schedule. The crawler picks up content that has changed since the last crawl and updates the index. In some cases, you may want to manually request crawling and full re-indexing of a site, a document library, or a list.

Re-index a Site

 WARNING    Re-indexing a site can cause a massive load on the search system. Don’t re-index your site unless you’ve made changes that require all items to be re-indexed.

1. On the site, click Settings > Site Settings.
2. Under Search, click Search and offline availability.
3. In the Reindex site section, click Reindex site.
4. A warning appears, click Reindex site again to confirm. The content will be re-indexed during the next scheduled crawl.

Re-index a document library or a list

1. On the site, go to the list or library that you want to re-index.
2. In the ribbon, click the Library tab or the List tab.
3. In the Library ribbon, choose Library Settings, or, in the List ribbon choose List Settings.
4. On the Settings page, under General Settings, choose Advanced settings.
5. Scroll down to Reindex Document Library or Reindex List, and click the button. The content will be re-indexed during the next scheduled crawl.