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Site Design and Architecture

Every deployment is unique, but the best Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 deployments share some common traits. A little planning and careful consideration early in the deployment can pay huge dividends at launch.

Here are some best practices and resources to make your deployment as effective as possible.

Must-haves for successful deployment

Consistency of platform, browsers, collaboration and enterprise search strategy.
Manage as centrally as possible with a tight team. Frequently talk to the top executives who have a vested interest.
Have a killer backup strategy that meets the needs of your business. Make sure it works before day one.
End-user training and education in addition to good content and search is the key to end user adoption.
Have a Governance and Information Management Plan. Branding consistency with a corporate style guide and consistent taxonomy. Make approved master pages available in site galleries for consistency, which will inform users they are on the corporate Intranet.
Enforce workflows and approval on document centers and pages where official documentation comes together. Use version history and control to maintain a history and master document that all can refer to.
Site collections and document libraries should have a clear lifecycle. Use information management policies such as content types with auditing and expiration.
Sites with personally identifiable information should be appropriately flagged and audited.
A corporate browse and search strategy for the enterprise will help ensure you are making the most out of your Intranet assets. It will also encourage culture change and adoption.
Platform usage policies and development and test environments help ensure only the code you want to introduce follows corporate guidelines and will ensure the environment is supportable and able to maintain service level agreements.

Get organized

For too many organizations, planning and testing are afterthoughts, leading to sites with broken links or, worse yet, a site that doesn’t meet the stakeholders’ goals. So what can you do to eliminate chaos and build a better solution from the start?

Use Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 to create a managed single environment, and build in plans for governance up front. A Web site’s information architecture determines how the information in that site — its Web pages, documents, lists, and data — is organized and presented to the users. Information architecture is often recorded as a hierarchical list of site content, search keywords, data types, and other concepts.

Analyzing the information to be presented in an Internet or intranet Web site is an important early step in the site planning process, and this step provides the basis for planning:

How will you structure and divide your site into a set of site collections and sites?
How will you present data?
How will users navigate through the site?
How will information be targeted to specific audiences?
How will you configure and optimize search?

While these questions will help you get started, you may want to consider using an information architect to analyze your needs and develop a content plan.

Resource Links

Case Study: How Microsoft IT Uses Microsoft System Center Data Protection Management

Read about the deployment of Data Protection Management 2007 by Microsoft for internal use.

Microsoft System Center Data Protection Management

Watch a twenty minute streaming video that demonstrates how Data Protection Management 2007 can help protect and aid in recovery. This video also talks about how Data Protection Management 2007 can help protect SharePoint Server 2007s and its distributed architecture.

Configuration Settings

This blog post will help you decide whether you should leave certain Office SharePoint Server 2007 settings in their default configuration or if you should change them.

Architecture Model for Corporate Deployment

This is a sample architecture model for a basic SharePoint Server 2007 corporate deployment. It covers design goals and illustrates how the components are incorporated into the final design.

Design and build sites for Office SharePoint Server 2007

Custom sites based on Office SharePoint Server 2007 combine coded elements, such as workflows, document converters, and Web Parts, along with content, such as master pages, layout pages, graphics files, and Web pages. Best practices for developing these sites include setting up multiple environments for developing, integrating, piloting, and deploying coded elements and content from one environment to another. This Web page provides a guide that describes the ways you can set up the multiple environments used in the development process and the methods for deploying content and code from one environment to another.

Advanced lectures and white papers

Watch lectures delivered by experts in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, and download and read supporting white papers. Has information about architecting Search.

Taxonomy tool from Codeplex

Basic taxonomy management, content tagging functionality, and filtered views using the Content Query web part. Read Taxonomy/Tagging Starter Kit for SharePoint Server and the README.txt file for more information.

Virtual Labs for IT Professionals

Get first-hand deployment experience through the Virtual Lab series. The Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, and Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 will teach you about installation, organizing content, managing user permissions, creating Web Parts for custom tasks, and much more.

Don't Make Me Think

A classic book that is intended for designing external Web sites, but contains valuable information for designing any online environment to make it easy for people to find things. There are additional chapters in the second edition.

Identify document management participants and stakeholders

The first step in your document management planning is to determine the stakeholders and participants in your document management solution. Identifying content stakeholders can help you ensure that your document management solution is comprehensive, and that you design sites and document libraries that suit your enterprise's content needs and processes. This Web site has a sample survey and a worksheet.

Capacity Planning Tool

This is a capacity planning tool with modules for Windows SharePoint Services and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

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