Governance and Taxonomy in SharePoint 2010 Q & A

This webinar included several live demonstrations and discussed:

• Governance Principles, Practices and Baselines
• Techniques for Creating & Maintaining a SharePoint Governance Plan
• Reviewed a Sample Governance Plan!
• Taxonomy pre-assessment - Interviews, Content Inventory, etc.
• Designing and Implementing a Taxonomy in SharePoint 2010
• Best Practices & Avoiding Pitfalls

This webinar provided guidance, tips, samples and techniques for developing and implementing a robust and comprehensive Governance strategy and enterprise-wide Taxonomy for SharePoint 2010.

Webinar presented by ShareSquared's Sr. ECM Architect, Chris Riley and Sr. SharePoint Architect, Greg Hayes

• Question: Will a recorded version of the webinar be made available?
  
  Answer: Yes, it is available here, and the slides here.
  Note, if you experience issues with the low-res recording, please try the hi-res version for best viewing.
  
  
• Question: What level of training do the Content Managers need?
  
  Answer: Depending upon the responsibilities assigned to them, content managers should receive targeted, advanced training in the topics of both SharePoint configuration and information architecture.
  
  
• Question: If branding a governance decision and who should be able to update the branding?
  
  Answer: Specifics of who controls and updates branding should be a governance decision. Typically it is assigned to a marketing or communications group.
  
  
• Question: Who are the intended readers of the governance plan document?
  
  Answer: Primarily the plan is for content managers and senior stakeholders, though some policies and guidelines within the plan should be communicated to all users.
  
  
• Question: Couldn’t you just use the "Enterprise Keyword" option available in the Site Columns? What is the difference?
  
  Answer: Keywords fall into the category of "Folksonomy" which is distinctly different than "Taxonomy". It is not uncommon for sites to have both Folksonomy and Taxonomy. Taxonomy should be comprised of a limited number of unambiguous terms. This allows for better search, and better organization of content. Keywords which less structured with the users driving the terms. Folksonomy is more flexible then Taxonomy, and more relevant to an individual versus the organization at large. Taxonomies are for general use, not just for search, but also filtering, views, and reporting where the structure is necessary.
  
  
• Question: The speaker mentioned 3 taxonomies - Functional, Regional and File and showed a file Taxonomy. What would be examples of the other two? Would these be other "taxonomy" columns in the library?
  
  Answer: The regional and functional taxonomies would be additional managed meta-data columns in a library. The regional taxonomy would be used to specify the geographical location of where content was created or contributed from. This is used a lot for organizations that have several satellite offices, and need to know where documents came from. Similarly the functional taxonomy tells you what department and division content came from or is tied too. These two additional taxonomies are unique from a file taxonomy and very common ways to sort and organize content.
  
  
• Question: We have a fairly small company of about 250 users and are looking to have a common taxonomy over all sites, with another more detailed set of taxonomy per department. Is this possible? The intent is to break down unnecessary department silos as much as possible.
  
  Answer: This is absolutely possible. It’s sometimes tricky to prepare an organization-wide taxonomy and the exercise of interviewing all possible constituents should be taken very seriously. That said, it is absolutely feasible to create a general taxonomy organization wide, and a specific file taxonomy for the individual departments. We would encourage that the organization-wide taxonomy be as general as possible.
  
  
• Question: What is the best strategy to migrate WSS3.0 content into SP2010 and apply Taxonomy?
  
  Answer: Migrations from older version of SharePoint to SharePoint 2010 have to be considered on many levels. Are you happy with what you have today? Are there new features in 2010 you would like to leverage? How many customizations do you have? Migration is not just a question of moving content, but also about moving information architecture. Most organizations start new with information architecture in SharePoint 2010 so they can leverage all the new features, but migrate the content.
  
  
• Question: Is it a best practice to make the taxonomy field REQUIRED when documents etc. are uploaded?
  
  Answer: We very often recommend that at least the File Taxonomy field be set to required in a content management scenario. Application of a term is necessary not just for filtering and search improvement, but may also be very key in legal matters. If you allow users to skip this, they will tend to most of the time.
  
  
• Question: We use MS BPOS SharePoint online. No admin access at this level. How should we implement manually?
  
  Answer: BPOS was not SharePoint 2010, but now Office 365 is. There you should have site admin access, however, we do not yet have details of how the farm level Managed Metadata service application will work in the multi-tenancy Office 365 Environment.
  
  
• Question: Should we use taxonomy classifications for list items also?
  
  Answer: This really depends on the use of the list. Very often lists have metadata relevant to the specific function of the list. It usually relates to a business process and is unrelated to other documents in the farm. For this reason the file taxonomy is most often not used in a list, whereas but custom taxonomies sometimes are.
  
  
• Question: Why did you say taxonomy supports compliance?
  
  Answer: For SOAX, DoD, HIPPA, etc. compliance, taxonomy helps facilitates the content organization and disposition requirements. It also helps in legal matters to prove that an organization has taken the proper steps to secure, organize, and control their content. When faced with compliance issues proving a system of control and organization are very important.
  
  
• Question: At what point in the implementation of SharePoint do you need to determine the use of Taxonomies?
  
  Answer: Assuming your project is related to Content Management, the decision of whether or not to use taxonomy should happen long before any implementation is done. This should be a part of the discovery phase. It certainly needs to occur before any documents are uploaded.
  
  
• Question: Can you have one "global taxonomy" for an organization's intranet?
  
  Answer: For an Intranet this is feasible. The key is making sure the entire organization understands and buys into the terms used.
  
  
• Question: Can you recommend training?
  
  Answer: First identify what you are trying to accomplish with the training. Are you targeting implementation (developers) or adoption (content owners & users). For implementation it's recommended to start with the Microsoft certification programs. For user training you need to decide if you need custom training on your platform or if general training will do. If you need custom training then please contact us and we can wourk with you to develop a custom curriculum. If you are looking for general training there are several online and classroom training companies out there.