Microsoft Sharepoint Products and Technologies Resource Kit eBook

■ Local hard drives
■ Databases
■ Web pages and websites
■ Filing cabinets
■ Applications
■ Document management systems
■ Credenzas
■ Users’ home directories
Chapter 8: Planning Your Information Structure 159
These data islands cannot be connected unless they are first identified and
inventoried for the data that they host. Only after an organization knows where its
information resides and what that information is can it really begin the process of
detailing how that information will be accessed using SharePoint Portal Server 2003,
how it will be structured, and how information growth will be accommodated.
This is not an easy process. Much of this work will need to be accomplished at
the team or departmental levels. And this process can become time consuming,
requiring thoughtful analysis and methodical discovery of where employees go to
get the information they need to perform their jobs and what that information is.
Many administrators who are asked to play the role of an information architect
jump ahead and begin the planning process by looking at the organizational chart.
They quickly conclude that they should have site collections for each department, a
child portal site for each division, and perhaps an overall portal site for the entire organization.
These hastily determined structures are nearly always modified from their
original configuration because the decisions used to construct them lack any real basis.
Even though SharePoint Products and Technologies is very flexible and can
support both the technical needs of an organization as well as its cultural needs, it’s
not wise to jump ahead of the planning process and start near the end. As you read
through this chapter, you’ll begin to understand what is meant by this, but for now,
the following example will suffice.
You might start the process by quickly looking at your organizational chart and
concluding that you’ll need one document library for each collaboration team in
your organization. However, upon closer inspection, you’ll need a different document
library for each unique combination of user permission assignment, document
profile matrix, approval group, and site placement. Unless you know which documents
you want to host in a portal site, which ones you want to host in a team site,
and who should access these documents, it will be difficult to know how many document
libraries to create and where to create them.
Perhaps your organization will allow the end users to create their own sites and
document libraries. And certainly, SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and Windows Share-
Point Services support this. But it is best—at least for capacity-planning purposes—to
have at least a rough idea of what your document library matrix will look like.