Educause 2009 - Sharepoint 2007 - Yes Please!

Arrived slightly late for the session, so hoping that it's the right one .... we have committed to Sharepoint for our VLE (or LMS, whichever you call it) and for corporate document management, content management system etc. So I'm keen to hear from other who are further down this path than we are .....

Speaker is showing an IT service web site - with integration with data from underlying systems displayed - service incidents etc. Each IT Function department has its own area which looks different if they are logged in as a member of the team with a lot more information and the ability to post, also integrated with document management where they keep all files and documents - AhHa! - screen looks like Sharepoint - so I am in the right presentation!

They also have their service catalogue on Sharepoint with all the services that they offer - it looks great and exactly where we want to go with our Sharepoint implementation. When they load documents onto Sharepoint they can decide which documents should be published as public - rather than having to have a seperate public folder. They also have it integrated with Remedy as their helpdesk solution. (We use Support Works, but same principles apply).

95% of the development was done through the browser and only 5% needed to be done through the development tools - that sounds good!

Comment from the developer was that it is a bit like a blank canvas and you have to provide a structure in terms of metadata, forms, schemas etc ie: an Intranet template and then push that out to customers who can use it to create their own Intranets. Usage of this is now starting to approach the functionality of web content management, and they are evaluating whether or not this is how they should do their web content management (if you're using it for document management and your Intranet already why wouldn't you?)

They showed an example of a Sharepoint content managed web site which they thought was a very good case study http://www.cps.edu/

The presenter rutns out to be from the University of Iowa - Information Technology Services, and the Intranet he was showing us is called Ohana. http://its.uiowa.edu/

Next up is a project manager from the ITS department. The sharepoint intranet has proved very useful for communicating about projects and for reinforcing the project management process and why it's there. The Intranet has a list of all the current projects. There is an on-line form with all the fields you would expect to see on a project mandate/pid. The data in these fields in then used to drive how the information about the proejct is used elsewhere. All the related documentation for the project is also stored here. This form is something that the customer fills in (Crikey! I wasn't expecting that!). The customer then submits this to a weekly 'review' meeting where the form and documentation can be viewed on-line be the review committee. They can then approved or reject the project on line. Am I hearing this right. On-line Project Governance - or how to say No automatically! They must have a fantastic relationship with their customers! :-)

The project manager is now saying that a key benefit is being able to access all historical documentation about a project. There is a tool on the internet that allows you to search through all project documentation involving a named individual and reports on what that individuals current work load is, it looks like they have fairly large IT function. They also use it as a time management system so ITS staff can fill in hours worked against different projects and services. It all looks very impressive but it does come across as a bit of a 'command and control' way of doing things - perhaps it's just that they already have a very trusting and collaborative culture and automating all these things that normally need lots of delicate handling is just not an issue. It would be good if we could!

Next speaker was from the Open University of Hong Kong and talked about use of Sharepoint 2007 for Communciation, Collaboration and Learning. http://www.ouhk.edu.hk/

They are a distance learning university - (Note to self: LDS back home may well be interested in this!) 13,000 distance learning students with 700 courses.

Speaker gave an overview of Sharepoint functionality: BI, collaboration, Portal, Search, Content Management, Business Forms, BI - all good tools for sharing information, managing workflow and team collaboration ie: all the kind of stuff you need for an LMS (VLE)

They are using Sharepoint in 8 main areas: Portal, Document Management, Team collaboration (esp. research), student support and administration, teaching and learning, workflow and process improvmeent, BI, social computing.

The presenter then talked about the maturity model for BI - ie: from decriptive and evaluative reporting through to predictive reporting for decision making and strategic planning. They have a 'mature' BI tool written in Sharepoint called InfoShare. It took 100 man (sic) days to develop the BI tool and 67 man days to develop their On-Line Learning Environment tool in Sharepoint. Crumbs - that's a bit speedy! Perhaps we ought to talk to them. We were using a third party to help us with our VLE development using Sharepoint but are currently doing much of it ourselves. It might be useful to have a more detailed follow up conversation with the HOng Kong OU about their Sharepoint project. (Note to Self: Pass this info on to the architect working on our project)

The speaker reccomended this document as a resource: http://www.eduserv.org.uk/research/studies/~/media/research/SharePoint%20Study%20LiteratureReview%20Sep2009%20pdf.ashx

It is a report on the use of Sharepoint within HE.

Question time - and an interesting point that emerged was that there is a limit on the number of documents in Sharepoint 2007 of 30,000 after which Sharepoint become unstable. Presenters were asked if this had been a problem, but they said they hadn't come anywhere near that limit yet. Apparently, Sharepoint 2010 removes this limitation. (NB: Couple of comments subsequently posted on this blog to say that the 30,000 limit of Sharepoint 2007 is not correct. See comments below.)

Right - next stop Brenda Gourley's closing keynote. Looking forward to that .....