A few powerpoint rules

With a huge presentation, the Share Point on tour, coming up, I found myself sliding into PowerPoint hell. So I stopped, tossed my work so far, and laid down a few rules to be effective while using PowerPoint.

1. No, or very few, bullet points. People cannot read and listen and think at the same time. Use images that convey the story you are using to make your point.
2. Hand out the notes after the presentation and make sure your audience knows it. It's helpful to get the audience to relax and form a frame of mind to learn. Whatever you do, do NOT use copies of your slides as notes. That is a clue you did it wrong in the first place. The slides shouldn't work without you, and vice-versa.
3. Use stories. We are hard wired to understand stories, use it to get your major point across and then delve into the ugly details.
4. Avoid Hierarchy. Nothing will kill a presentation faster than drill down slides.
5. Tell the story with pictures (see #1 above) not cheesy images (except when cheesy is part of the story)
6. Use jokes. Jokes are stories that play; great at holding onto an audience's interest. But they can't hang out there by themselves, they have to be part of the point you are trying to make.

This explains a lot

Naughty versus Nice...

Organize your EMail

From Microsoft's at work site comes a few good tips on keeping your EMail nice and tidy:

7 ways to organize your email

Picking up manure from the clean end

My first couple of efforts at getting the document mgmt part of SharePoint across to my users were miserable failures.

It isn't that surprising since I didn't really have a model in mind for them to use in place of the old Hierarchical folder structure. The adaptation requires the X is like Y explaination which in turn must be made into a narritive to become understandable.

Meanwhile, my first efforts made it seem like I'm promising them a pony if only they would start picking up the manure from the clean end.

I've been using the term library and librarian, and that might just be the narritive explaination I need to start with... More thought...

Back to basics

heh.

At yesterday's Ops Team I heard that a user attempted to use another workstation but was not successful. Suddenly I realized just how dependant most of my users are on their home workstations profile. Sure, she could log in, but getting to her Email or files was beyond her without additional training.

A one page FAQ seems to be all it will take, but the larger lesson here is despite all the years I've been doing this I still make assumptions about my users that are just plain wrong. I tell all my guys all the time, "The people we support were hired because they are experts in delivering social services, not I.T., that's what you are for..."

Sound like I should be taking my own advice.

Versioning Issues

Well.... what else is new.

We have SharePoint 2003 working inside the firewall as our main SharePoint server. We have another server running the extranet that uses SP 2007. We have InfoPath, combined with MS-Office professional, licenced for 2007 but often installed (since the users prefer) as 2003. We can write InfoPath forms, including web-browser enabled forms, using Visual Studio, but they must be deployed on SP 2007. Since our forms go on SP 03 we can't use those deployed forms. Meanwhile office 2007 Word documents need to be downgraded to office 97-03 to save on the '03 SP server.

All can be solved by upgrading SP '03 to '07 and upgrading office to '07 as well, but I just finally got my users onto '03 and besides, many of them hate the office '07 interface.

So I am doomed...

SharePoint on tour

At today's operations team meeting I am proposing to go on tour.

To wit:
* Each team will adapt to or adopt SharePoint in a unique fashion
* SharePoint rewards a different way of thinking, which requires an "ah-Ha" moment
* At it's best, SharePoint will allow team members to come and go without losing institutional knowledge, like where to find a particular file

So the goals of the tour will be:
• To demonstrate what others have been doing with the sites. (Share wins)
• To create an “ah-Ha” moment.
• To gain feedback for forms, designs, workflows and gadgets.
• To show them how to access training resources.
• To make plans specific to their site.

Embracing something new

A new quote for me to chew on... again from Cleverworkarounds.com

To implement SharePoint without any appreciation for organisational culture is simply not smart. If you are dumbfounded by the fact that nobody in the organisation is embracing wiki's, blogs and discussion forums, stop and think about it. Is this organisation conducive to such technologies?

It is true that ESSC is mixed in this regard, one set of users is very good at embracing the new, another opposes change almost as a reflex, while a third group often embraces change as a panacea, with the bonus of being able to deflect their issues on the disappointing results their own attitude delivered.

The key then, to success, is to implement small wins. Rather than looking for a game changer, modify something small to be SharePointish. I will admit however, that I often feel like I'm trying to use a paddle to move a supertanker...

Folder Hell

To move forward on the post below I wrote an introductory guide titled "Free yourself from folder hell" which I posted on our training on demand SharePoint page. Of course the link will not work outside the ESSC firewall, so if you aren't an Easter Seals Southern California staff member, its not available.

But it is a nice introduction to going folderless....

Nothing but folders

Another especially poigiant bit from http://www.cleverworkarounds.com/ and his series on SharePoint failure:

Prior to SharePoint, many users will have known nothing else but messy shared file systems where the only means of classification was folders and file naming conventions (that no-one ever followed anyway). Now we have many other tools at our disposal which in theory is a good thing.
But as I said, many people know nothing but folders. This has been the predominant file classification mechanism for more than 30 years. Trying to “un-learn” more than 30 years of operating fundamentally the same way is not something that will come naturally. Thinking in terms of columns, views and content types requires a deeper understanding of the divisions, disciplines, compliance and vertical market of an organisation.

Really I need to expand on this, and try to get it out to my users...

Horst Rittel and “wicked problems”

For today, a fantastic definition of wicked, that is to say, planning problems, from http://www.cleverworkarounds.com/2008/04/11/why-do-sharepoint-projects-fail-part-1/; I find the fourth one especially poignant:

There is no definitive formation of a wicked problem.
•The information needed to understand the problem depends on one’s idea for solving it … Every textbook of systems engineering starts with an enumeration of these phases: "understand the problem or the mission", "gather the information", "analyse the information", "synthesise information and wait for the creative leap", "work out solution", or the like. For wicked problems, however, this type of scheme does not work"

Wicked problems have no stopping rule
• … because (according to Proposition 1) the process of solving the problem is identical with the process of understanding its nature. You can always try to do better as your understanding grows. This leads to the presumption that additional investment of effort might increase the chances of finding a better solution.

Solutions to wicked problems are not true-or-false, but good or bad
• Judgements on the effectiveness of solutions are likely to differ widely based on the personal interests, value sets, and ideology of the participants.

There is no immediate and no ultimate test of a solution to a wicked problem
• Any solution, after being implemented, will generate waves of consequences that may yield utterly undesirable repercussions which outweigh the intended advantages.

Every solution to a wicked problem is a "one shot operation"; because there is no opportunity to learn by trial-and-error, every attempt counts significantly.
• "One cannot build a freeway to see how it works"

Wicked problems do not have an enumerable (or exhaustively describable) set of potential solutions
• There are no criteria which enable one to prove that all solutions to a wicked problem have been identified and considered

Every wicked problem is essentially unique
• By "essentially unique" we mean that … there always might be an additional distinguishing property that is of overriding importance … one can never be certain that the particulars of a problem are consistent with previous problems already dealt with.

Every wicked problem can be considered to be a symptom of another problem
• As you investigate problem causes, there is a tendency to discover that the current problem is the symptom of a larger problem. The level at which a problem ’settles’ cannot be decided on logical grounds. Rittel implies here that this characteristic makes phase-based problem solving as described in the first characteristic. "Marginal improvement doesn’t guarantee overall improvement. For examine, computerisation of an administrative process may result in reduced cost, But at the same time it becomes more difficult to incur structural changes in the organisation, because technical perfection reinforces organisational patterns and normally increases the cost of change."

The existence of a discrepancy representing a wicked problem can be explained in numerous ways. The choice of explanation determines the nature of the problems resolution.
• "You might say that everybody picks an explanation of a discrepancy which fits their intentions best"

The planner has no right to be wrong
• This final distinguishing property is not as relevant as the previous ones. Rittel asserts here that when scientists propose a theory in the "search for truth", they do not have to be right. Rather, the theory is validated by its ability to withstand peer review and repudiation over an extended period of time. Wicked problems on the other hand, do not have this luxury. "Planners are liable for the consequences of the actions they generate".

Of course, from my experience anyway there is one missing:

Human beings are by their nature, reactive

• "They won't decide to use your freeway before it's built."

Wiki v Blog

Fiddling with SP 7 I find that it comes with wiki page types as well as blog page types. So if:

Encyclopedia is to wiki as diary is to blog

Then I should be able to organize some of the same information I'm listing as discovering here in a format better designed for reference. And of course a majority of what we do has nothing to do with technology, so a generalized ESSC wiki would be quite useful.... hmmmm....

SP 7

Our first SharePoint version 7 has been deployed and it’s our new extranet server; which begs the question, just what is an extranet? If an Internet site is for anyone, and an Intranet site is only for people within our organization, then the extranet is the place that fits in between. It is a site where people can securely share information with our suppliers, vendors, partners or others. So, for example, this is a place for a partner at National Easter Seals to share documents, presentations, and other files with people in our own development department. This is a place where a Regional Vice-President can share a document with a partner at Regional Center in preparation for a joint presentation. This is the place where a program director can park a non-sensitive file that she wants access to from home. It is a place where one of our vendors can view a purchase order, or potentially track payment information.

What it is not is a place where information covered under the privacy act, or HIPPA is to be stored. No medical information about our participants, no medications, no diagnostic’s or addresses or phone numbers… and no non-public information on our contributors. Summary information is fine, but the type of details that are of interest to identity thieves must be avoided. This site is only secured by username and password, which is a much weaker form of protection from outside scams and hacking than the information we hold on the SharePoint server that is tucked safely inside our firewall.

On the other hand, it is available publically, so you can log into it from anything connected to the internet, which can be very useful. It is not, however a part of our domain, so while we have single sign on, using Passfaces, to everything inside the firewall, from Email to SharePoint, that log-in will not work for the extranet. You will be prompted for a username and password no matter what machine you are accessing it from.

Getting access to the extranet is going to take a tad more than just calling I.T. and asking for a new user. We have a form to fill out, which includes terms of use. These terms are an important acknowledgement, whether the user is an ESSC associate or a partner in another organization; that the user understands that information shared on the extranet should be restricted in order to avoid abuse.

Team Calendars

Here's a link to a site which has a link to a demo on how to properly use SP 7 to build team calendars. Always trouble currently since they wind up becoming separate calendars when what is desired is a merge. Definite must read.

http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blogs/GetThePoint/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=138

Getting the most from your Metadata

I’ll bet you didn’t know you had metadata… but you do. The shortcut meme would be: Meta is to data as Super is to natural. That is, Metadata is beyond data in that it is data that describes data. Now that I have you confused, let me try to unconfuse you a tad by providing a simple example.

Your Christmas CD may have “White Christmas” as a song turned into a data file that you can play. The label on the CD that tells you that this is Bing Crosby’s Christmas album is Metadata. Simple.

SharePoint 7 and Office 2007 work together to allow you to easily organize your documents using metadata in the form of ‘Document Information Panels.’ Metadata is hardly new to documents, but has been rarely used in the past. This has been because users were presented with the request to provide Metadata at the time they were saving the document. Nobody wants to answer a bunch of questions about what this is when they are saving it… at that point we are supposed to be done. One of the new twists, in an attempt to make the process easier, is using InfoPath to create custom panels that gather required information, in fields, about a particular document that runs off a template.

So, what to use it for?

One example might be, if we have access to participant case notes in an electronic format, to add Metadata fields, in a custom document information panel, that force the selection of a client about whom the notes are written, a date range that lists the dates of service and a reconciliation check box that allows a manager to note that the notes are complete and has been reviewed prior to the workflow moving on to billing.

This could be done in a word template managed by a document librarian, which in turn could be queried by a gadget on a VP’s home page to show the summary of a day’s work. Cool.

CAML's nose, intent

One element of concentration, coming up as we do more and more with SharePoint, is the ability to present information to my various teams in the form of webparts. I thought, prior to studying a bit more, that the approach would be similar to that I use for distributed projects, specifically a call to a web-service that returns XML for the host application to process. I was wrong.

The proper approach appears to be CAML (Collaborative Application Markup Language) an XMLish query language specific to SharePoint. It appears at least that I can build the gathering query(s) into the gadget, greatly increasing speed and reliability. CAML also seems to have a set of tags designed to render the data.

So today the blog gets its first tag… CAML

Burning Chrome

Took a look at chrome, Google's new browser, as well as a beta of explorer eight. While Chrome has some interesting features I'm still panning it, especially since it simply will not run on a Vista Business (32 bit) machine, although it's perfectly happy on my 64 bit home ultimate...

The MS explorer eight meanwhile, is an incremental improvement over seven. Slightly better look, and a few extra tools including suggestions for similar sites to what you are currently browsing.

Using iGoogle

Despite their slogan, "Don't be evil" Google is... well a bit creepy. Case in point, when googling for directions to a friends house, up popped a picture of their house, yard, and car in driveway... And that demonstrates both the usefulness of Google, and the creepiness factor. In order to find anything it must know everything, even if it takes its own Hydro-electric power plant to keep all those hard drives spinning...

But creepy or not I still use all their really neat and free stuff (like this blog site). And I'm including a heavy dose of iGoogle.

At it's most basic iGoogle is a way of customizing your search page by dropping gadgets all over it. Not at all dissimilar to Microsoft's Share Point, which I'll be going about in length (in future posts) for pure team oriented business goodness, iGoogle is instead tailored to the individual user. They also blended it with optional artwork which makes it really quite pretty as well.

For myself, since I use a number of different computers, having a home web page with all my links is a real time saver. I don't even bother with Explorer's favorites anymore. Beyond that I use it's RSS feeds to get headlines from news and blogs of interest to me, the sticky note pad is handy so I have a couple of those, I use the google mail gadget for my personal email address, and finally I organize it all by the tabs.... Home, Assorted, Projects, Information Systems, and Learning.

Granted, it means Google winds up knowing even more about me, but I figure if resistance really is futile you might as well aim for Jerri Ryan's collective.

Unified Messaging

From the always helpful Wikipedia....

Unified Messaging is an indistinct term that can refer to the typical definition[1] of simple inclusion of incoming faxes and voice-mail in one's email inbox, all the way to dictating a message into a cell phone and the intelligent delivery of that message to the intended recipient in a variety of possible formats like text email, fax, or voice recording. Because of the nebulous definition of UM, it was number one on the 1998 Wired Magazine "Hype List".[2]

It is, nevertheless on it's way to us as a test at least.

My primary goal is the less inclusive defination of the term. Put in peasant terms, I want to be able to have my voicemails in my email so I don't have to go through the process of dealing with two different systems, phone and email, for my work related messages. I like the idea, and I'm hoping enough of my internal customer base will as well to make it a hit.

That said, a few things about Unified Messaging using our existing systems (NorTel KSU's and Call-pilot) deserve mention.

1. Our NorTel Call-pilots, which host our voicemail boxes, are capable of providing voice mail to email with a reasonably priced add-on.
2. Unlike the BCM's (Business Communication Managers) the call pilot version won't hook directly to our exchange server, rather they present as seperate mail boxes through each Outlook client.
3. That means that it will be limited to the users home workstation, be unable to put voicemails in the general inbox, and require deployment on a site by site basis.
4. To avoid (3) I could go with replacing the callpilots and KSU's with BCM's but won't... because I'm a cheap bastard unwilling to spent several thousand dollars per site just to avoid having to push a bunch of buttons on my phone.

I really don't care...

...If anyone ever reads this...

That may seem strange, to go to the effort of creating a blog that you don't really care is read, but there is a method to this madness. You see, one of the things I have discovered over the years is that if you have to explain something, especially something you think you already know well, the concentration involved actually improves your understanding.

As such, I've developed the habit of writing about the things I have learned in my job. Namely, stuff about technology and it's application in the real world. I just generally throw away whatever it was I've written, but as a change of pace I decided to write it in a blog.

Which should be all the explaination this site needs, although doubtless it will get much much more.