The difference with SharePoint 2010 content
April 20, 2011 at 11:42 am | Posted in collaboration, engagement, intranet, publishing, SharePoint 2010, standards, value | 3 CommentsTags: collaboration, content, engagement, governance, publishing, sharepoint 2010, standards, users
In my last post ‘It’s how you use SharePoint 2010 that decides the value it brings 2’ I covered how vital it is to set the right level of permissions for people using the information published.
In this post I will show how people can distinguish different types of content in SP2010. The value to be gained by your organisation can vary tremendously depending on how you achieve this.
You can break SP2010 published content in to two types:
Accredited
Accredited content is official, authoritative, reliable & up to date. People will able to trust it, use it with confidence, knowing it is current and relevant. It is usually information that has a large audience. A limited number of people can edit the information, with access controlled by permissions. Usually one person will have clear ownership.
Collaborative
Collaborative content can be owned by everyone, an individual or community. It can be open to anyone to contribute or comment upon the information. It can be an opinion expressed on a blog posting or a wiki article for others to contribute to and improve further.
Branding
The best way is to brand the content types differently.
SP2010 ‘out of the box’ functionality is good enough for most people publishing and viewing content. So, you can use this for your collaborative content.
Customising the SP2010 masterpages with your corporate branding for accredited content will show clearly the difference from what is ‘out of the box’.
To keep costs down design the branding so that it is minimal – enough to make a difference so people spot it when they use the content – but easy to maintain the masterpages.
With SP2010 you can have a page published with both types of content shown on it. This is because you have different webparts – sections of the page – that can be inserted by the publisher.
You need to consider very carefully if you need to extend the customising to each webpart. The costs and maintainability will increase greatly. It is best to test out with a sample of people what is needed, if anything, so they can distinguish accredited from collaborative content in each webpart.
As with any planned changes, test as early as you can with a sample of people, act on their feedback, be flexible in what the final versions could look like.
That will give you the greatest chance of success of maximising the value your organisation can gain from using SharePoint 2010.
The ‘font’ of all (intranet) knowledge?
May 6, 2010 at 11:12 am | Posted in best practice, content management, intranet, publishing, standards, usability, web accessibility | Leave a commentTags: accessibility, best practice, bt intranet, content, publishing, standards
This is another example of BT’s intranet standards used to give users a great experience.
Most browsers, and especially those for people with visual impairment, allow users to adjust font sizes to suit their needs. Therefore, it is important that you do not fix font in an exact, or ‘absolute’, size because users may not be able to see it!
Style sheets in content management systems will take care of font sizes, but if you create your own HTML & style sheets, you must use relative sizing, e.g. -1, or +1.
HTML <font> tag
You should use style sheets instead of the <font> tag to define font attributes. If you still have existing <font> tags within your site you should make sure they are relative and not fixed. You must then switch to style sheets at your next re-design.
Using styles for fonts
When using styles also always use the relative tags, such as percentage or plus and minus. For example if you want a headline to be bigger then use something like +2, or 150%, or ‘bigger’. Similarly, to make something appear smaller in scale to the rest of the page use -1, 75% or ‘smaller’.
The use of percentage, ‘em’ units or other ‘relative’ mechanisms to define the font size makes it easy for users to change the text size using their browser settings.
Testing
Testing should be done in the initial stages of creating a set of styles so that subsequent pages linked to the same style sheet will work:
- you need to check pages using the “Largest” and “Smallest” text size settings in the browser
- also test using a range of browser resolutions and settings to ensure the content does not become truncated or cause overlapping sections of content and text
- switch off the style sheet in the browser to ensure the content is still meaningful.
The benefit you gain from intranet standards
March 16, 2010 at 3:45 pm | Posted in benefit, best practice, governance, intranet, publishing, social media, standards, usability, user testing, value, web accessibility | 4 CommentsTags: accessibility, bt intranet, content, governance, publishing, social media, standards, usability standards, value
I was asked at the recent IntraTeam event (most excellent! 
) to explain in more detail about BT’s intranet standards for publishers. I have posted before about 5 ‘must have’ standards and about accessibility and usability.
I thought it would help to say first why I think standards are important and the benefits for everyone in BT.
Intranet publishing standards need to have compelling reasons for being used. For BT’s intranet these can include:
- Legal: web accessibility, copyright and image rights
- Regulatory: BT’s undertakings with OFCOM
- Business: content up to date and reviewed and branding
- Users: print, PDA features and global navigation bar
The main thing is, whatever the reason, is that it:
- Improves the overall user experience
- Making users more satisfied
- Increases productivity
- Saves costs and
- Benefits the business
You must also make it as easy as possible for publishers to comply with these standards. The higher you make this barrier the more difficult it will be to achieve and the more time and effort needed to do this.
So template features for content management that build in standards like owner, review date, copyright, PDA versions of the information mean publishers have no choice and find it much easier to comply.
I’ll cover our standards in more detail in the next few weeks. Please let me know which ones you want me to cover first.
A great IntraTeam event!
March 5, 2010 at 10:25 am | Posted in benchmark, benefit, best practice, governance, intranet, social media, standards, usability, user testing, value | 4 CommentsTags: benchmark, benefit, best practice, blog, bt intranet, content, governance, research, usability, users, value
I’ve just got my breath back from speaking and attending one of the best intranet conferences I have been to for some time. I was spoilt by the hospitality of the organisers; the quality of the speakers; the quantity of new ideas and themes and the enthusiasm of everyone interested in intranets.
So what did I take away from IntraTeam 2010? Well there was an interview I gave after my presentation!
There was so much good stuff especially from Jane McConnell, Martin White, Eric Reiss, James Robertson and Michael Sampson that I have linked to their blogs if you want to find out more. But there are 2 main areas I will be working on straight away.
1. Stakeholder governance
Develop our governance model more towards even closer, more formal (steering group?), involvement in 2010. These points (thanks to Jane McConnell) will help me:
- Intranets need to implement cross-organisational ownership
- Identify the big intranet decisions and who should make them
- Work with business and functional intranet stakeholders and involve users balancing needs
- Governance is a form of negotiation: you need control, politics, flexibility and common sense (and a sense of humour I say!)
- Involve the “next to the top” and “operational” level of people
- Don’t treat “social media” like something different from the real intranet
2. People come first with intranets
BT’s intranet has always been based on this principle. It must meet business and user needs. These points (thanks to James Robertson) will help me with some key intranet decisions about to be taken:
-
Put people at the centre of intranets
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Provide universal access to your intranet
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Intranets need to act proactively, not just reactively to users needs
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Intranets should drive the engine for change
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Create a seamless enterprise experience
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Deliver end-to-end solutions
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Cross boundaries so intranets, internets, integrate with different content and applications
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Intranets must make the organisation work better
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Intranets must help people do their jobs (better)
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Intranet managers need to create their own designs and future scenarios
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Design great (but small) solutions
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Simplify – join the dots and blur the lines
I hope the tweets helped although Twitter can’t properly capture Kurt’s 5 minute warning signal!
Try a self-managed intranet
March 1, 2010 at 5:58 pm | Posted in benefit, best practice, governance, intranet, publishing, standards, training | 7 CommentsTags: bt intranet, content, governance, homepage, plan, standards, value
In BT I lead a small central team. I’m responsible for the strategy, governance and standards and how they are applied to content published on BT’s intranet using a menu of templates that I manage.
So who is responsible for publishing, reviewing, updating and removing content?
“You!” is the answer to any publisher in BT. There is NO central publishing team to do this on behalf of anyone.
Publishers are responsible for any content they own meeting our standards based on business, legal, regulatory and users’ needs.
They are trained on awareness of publishing standards and how they apply before they publish choosing from a menu of templates that already meet standards.
Automated tools will check content weekly and remind the publishers who own it if it doesn’t meet our standards what needs to be done. If no action is taken it is escalated to the publisher’s line manager and if action is still not taken, it will be removed from use and deleted. This avoids users making decisions on out of date content or because it is too difficult to use.
So, the content is owned and managed by every publisher with templates, training and automated tools to make it as easy as possible to meet the standards all users expect so they have a great overall experience.
My team can concentrate on what we can add most value to for BT and our intranet.
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