Data, data everywhere

Do you sometimes think of SharePoint as a great dumping ground? You upload a document and keep your fingers crossed that you can remember where you put it? Or maybe you go to a site to find something only to be bombarded by pages of folders hiding mountains of documents and no idea how to find the one thing you’re looking for.

It seems to me that when we moved from filing cabinets to computers we forgot how to organize, or, maybe more that we never updated our thinking about organizing information beyond files and folders.
The amount of information we consume is ever increasing and for many of us we cannot just stop reading and writing to reduce the electronic clutter in our lives. We need to find more efficient ways to manage the information we receive and produce. Can SharePoint solve these problems? Well… solve might be a little too strong of a word but it sure can help!

First things, first, we must PLAN for organization.

Plan, PLAN, PLAN

Yes, I know planning has become a dirty word in the work place. I do agree that many times we are stuck in planning ruts, but, a little planning now will help a whole bunch later. Before you create another folder in a file share or site or list in SharePoint ask yourself these questions:

• Who will need to modify or add to this information other than me?
• What will I do this information once I’m done using it? (Will it be deleted and never needed again, does it need to stick around in case someone else might need it, or will it go to another person who will make changes to it)
• Where can I locate other related information?
• When do I need to make decisions related to this information?
• Why would other need to know or care about this information?
• How can I use this information most effectively?

If the information you have or are working on will need to have multiple peoples input SharePoint is and should be your go-to option. After all, it is what SharePoint started out with and it is still what is does best. COLLABORATION. How many times have you created a document and sent it in email to a group of people asking for input just to get back 4 or 5 copies of your same document that you now have to manually merge with your original, yuck! SharePoint let’s you collaborate online and using the same document, keeping track of changes in one place.

If the information you are working with will need to be referenced in the future, again SharePoint is an excellent option. With full search capabilities and the ability to sort, filter and view information in several ways SharePoint can make referencing information easy. I recently worked with an operations team to get a list, an invoice list, into SharePoint. They were having a tough time keeping track of what invoices where sent out, when they were sent and which ones were still outstanding. We turned that one tiny idea, moving a list from paper to SharePoint into a really clean and efficient tracker for that group that ended up saving their company millions. In addition to the money they were now able to enable an approval process they had been trying to get off the ground. With easy to search lists that could be filtered and sorted depending on who was looking at the invoices sales people and managers could easily find information they were looking for or needed to approve of.

Okay, okay, I’m getting a bit off topic. I think the point I really want to get across here is, we all have TONS of information we’re trying to keep track of and we’re not going to be able to ignore it, but we can make it a little easier to manage by using organizational tools, like SharePoint to filter, sort, search and group information. I’ve used a couple examples to explain how organization can happen in the land of SharePoint. To learn more check out these resources:

Manage the information you share through your My Site

Introduction to Libraries

Configure a site library to require check-out of files

Manage lists and libraries with many items

Getting organized using lists

One of my very favorite things about SharePoint is lists. I don't know about you, but, I am a list person. I have them everywhere, little post-it's on my monitor to a quick to-do in the margin of my notebook. I love lists so much I was even an avid user of Excel for helping me track information that was too complicated to keep on paper.

See if this is a familiar scenario for you. I used to have an Excel workbook (that's a spreadsheet with multiple tabs) that I would keep track of team issues with. Each week I would print one of the spreadsheet pages with the open issues and meet with my team, where I handed out the paper and we went through all of the items on the list. Each team member would provide an update and I would take notes, usually on the paper or in my notebook. At the end of the meeting I would go back to my workbook and retype all that goodness from my notes and move rows from one spreadsheet to another as issues were resolved or the urgency of the issue changed. I would spend hours a week in some cases making sure my workbook was up to date. Frequently during the week a team member would drop by and in chatting they would provide an update of one of the issues discussed in the meeting. If I was really disciplined I would open my workbook and go update it, but most of the time… I didn't and things would start to fall behind. Before I knew it my beautiful workbook was out of date and we would stop using it. What a waste!

Sound familiar? 

Of course it does, why? Because we've all been there, we start the Excel workbook with the very best of intentions but over time the data becomes old or cumbersome to manage, we have to rely on one maybe two people to keep all the updates in order, and it turns into more of a hassle than a help. So now what?

Now let's talk about making your information work you instead of you working for your information.

SharePoint lists are very similar to Excel in the fact that they use columns and rows and they have the ability to sort and filter just like Excel. In addition they also have VIEWS, a feature that I think many people neglect. Another significant advantage of a list is… it's online! No more passing around a spreadsheet or having one/two people try and keep up with all the changes that need to happen. In a SharePoint list multiple people can update information at the same time without worrying about errors or corruption. SharePoint lists can also do things that excel just pain can't. Let's say you need some information updated and you have to wait that that update before you can do your piece of work, in Excel it would still need someone to tell you an update has happened SharePoint can do it automatically. The Alert Me function in all SharePoint list and libraries let's you control how you want to be updated.

In another situation similar to the first scenario I use SharePoint instead of a spreadsheet and things went something like this.

The afternoon before our weekly team meeting the team got an email from SharePoint reminding them to update progress on their issues and provided a link the team issues list on SharePoint. The next day I'm getting ready for my teams weekly meeting and I quickly run through the issues that been updated. When the team assembled in the meeting room we didn't talk about the issues list, we talked about how to resolve the issues. No going around the table for updates, instead it became a working session where the team talked about where they were having problems and shared their latest breakthroughs. As we left the room I, being the control freak I am, reminded the team to remember to update the issues list as things change. Later that day I report our issues status by going to a custom view of our issues list tailored to meet the needs of our management team.

That's it… no running around getting updates, no boring meetings, just work… and getting work done.

Don't get me wrong SharePoint can't solve every problem; I haven't found a "world peace" function in there yet. It certainly can, when used properly, streamline processes and reduce the drama of working in a team. It might even make workday a little easier.

Want to learn more about lists? Check out these great resources:

SharePoint Server 2010 Help and How-to 

SharePoint lists I: An introduction

SharePoint lists II: Create and work with different lists

SharePoint lists III: Create a list based on a spreadsheet

SharePoint lists IV: Create a custom list 

Why I started using SharePoint

Every story has a beginning; let me start by saying I am in no way a Microsoft SharePoint "expert". I do not work for Microsoft and I am not being compensated by any organization for this blog. I am however, passionate about making data work for you instead of you working for your data. I have also worked with SharePoint for ten years now and find it is a fantastic tool for leveraging data organization.

I, like many others out there, happened upon SharePoint quite by accident. I was a project manager you see, organizing time lines and tasks, managing risks and issues. I happened to be in the midst of a large scale project when one of my system admins asked if I would help evaluate a new product from Microsoft. It was late 2001 and I was eager to find ways to make my hectic job less stressful and more efficient. I fell in love with SharePoint right from the beginning. Imagine a website that I didn't need to have a developer write or maintain for me. I could post documents, make announcements, and even keep my list of issues posted. I immediately saw the big picture possibilities.

As my project progressed I started to incorporate my SharePoint site into my project. I started telling people, "Let me send you a link to my SharePoint site, I have all the documents posted there". Slowly, people started asking me how to make their own SharePoint site. One of the advantages of being an early adopter is you also get to be an early educator. Me and a few other early adopters of SharePoint, in my company, got together and started hosting brown bag sessions for our fellow co-workers. Talking about what we learned in this situation or how to do this or that. As time went by SharePoint shifted from being this cool little app someone told me about to a grass-roots movement in my company. Everyone wanted to use SharePoint; it was the new shiny toy in the room. I felt like I knew my friend SharePoint really well but I wanted to know more, do more. I developed the belief that if I could imagine it, SharePoint could do it. It was this belief that, in my opinion, changed me from a "user" of SharePoint to a solutions designer.

I started using SharePoint, just to give me a better way to organize, but I now look at SharePoint as a tool to help information I need work for me, rather than me working for information I need. I hope that I can spread that message to others and have them see the possibilities in using the platform we call SharePoint.