Microsoft Sharepoint Products and Technologies Resource Kit eBook

174 Part III: Planning and Deployment
be to create a generic Customers area and then organize your customers
according to some other criteria within the Customers area.
Topics enable users to locate information faster by organizing content into logical
groups. The following are some recommendations for planning Topics:
■ The tree of Topics should not be too deep—usually not more than three levels.
■ Select topics that users are likely to look for.
■ Find appropriate topics, especially for the top-level Topics, and retain those
Topics for a long period of time rather than changing them frequently.
■ If you have too many Topics, select those that are pertinent to the most users,
or organize the Topics into two levels.
■ Provide Topics that are unique to each portal site.
If you have duplicate Topics, qualify them with appropriate prefixes to avoid
confusion. For example, if you want to create a topic named Contacts for each division,
create IT–Contacts, HR–Contacts, and so forth. Alternatively, you can create a
topic named Contacts, with subtopics such as IT, HR, and so forth.
Another example is the Location Topic, which is provided by default when you
create a portal site. In this solution, all locations of organizations in the Corporate
Portal site are listed under the Location Topic. Remove the Location Topic from
other portal sites, or replace it with other topics that are unique and more relevant
to a division.
After defining your Topic structure, you can add content (such as documents, list
items, and persons) to each Topic and sub-Topic. Each Topic or sub-Topic can have
its own document library to which documents are uploaded. You can assign specific
groups to manage each of these Topics and sub-Topics by using the Manage Security
option, which is on the list of actions in the Topic area. By the same token, you can
restrict areas to certain users by using the same security option. By simply assigning
permissions at the area level, you can restrict access to areas in the portal and essentially
customize the look and feel of the portal through the use of permissions.
Planning Keywords and Keyword Best Bets
Keywords mark specific content as relevant to a particular word included in a search
so that the specific content appears more prominently in search results. Users with
the Create Area right can create keywords for common searches. The Create Area
right is included by default in the Web Designer, Administrator, and Content Manager
site groups. For organizational purposes, you can nest related keywords. For
example, the keyword operating system could contain the keywords Windows 2000
and Windows XP.