SharePoint 2010

Governance Plan and Other Artifacts

I would like to take a opportunity to define the governance. The below diagram depicts the definition of governance.

Governance Defined
SharePoint governance starts with the production of a “Governance Plan”, though governance of an IT asset like SharePoint requires the development and maintenance of a number of other entities it dictates, including:      

• Publication of individual policy, procedures, and recommended usage guideline documents 
• Technical controls and operational processes
•  Internal web sites referencing various aspects of the SharePoint asset governance
• Organizational roles and decision making bodies/processes

A list of key topics (as well as additional considerations re: governance communications) are listed below.

Key Governance Plan Strategy:

·         Business and Technical Service Requirements, Definitions, and Catalogs

·         Organizational Roles and Responsibilities (Board, Customer IT, Business Units)

·         Information Architecture

·         Service Management Processes (Business Service Provider, Technical Service Provider)

·         Governance Policies (Information, Customization, Security, Operations/Support)

·         Planning, Design and Ongoing Operation

·         Change Management, Training and Communications

·         Adoption and Business Value Realization

These are depicted in the figure below (note that actual sequencing may differ).

Governance Planning and the SharePoint Lifecycle

Governance planning is an iterative, collaborative process that evolves throughout the lifecycle of a project.

Governance planning evolves differently depending on the complexity of the project, culture of the customer, and the team’s experience planning for governance.

The table below lists the phases (and the activities and roles needed for each phase) for successful governance planning.

(This list should be considered a recommended practice and not all customers perform all activities)

Phase	Activities	Key roles
Envision	Establish a high-level "Governance Strategy" and include in the Vision/Scope (or other analogous) document - this defines the intended governance approach and artifacts to be included in Scope, by phase (if a phased release plan is to be used) Useful inputs (if available): ·         SharePoint Release and Scoping Strategy (including major program/project milestones) ·         High level customer requirements  and service offering definitions ·         Customer risk profile ·         Current governance standards for other unstructured information systems	·         Governance Board or Steering Committee (see discussion in previous section) ·         Governance Planning Team ·         Subject matter experts, as needed
Plan	Draft a detailed "Governance Plan" through a series of governance workshops: 1.      Review of business and technical requirements,  service offering descriptions, and Vision/Scope 2.      Identifying taxonomies and mapping the same with governance 3.      Review of roles, responsibilities, and processes 4.      Review of information architecture 5.      Review of information policies 6.      Review of other policies  Specification of custom governance controls (e.g., Provisioning or Monitoring Applications) Useful inputs: 1.      Vision/Scope 2.      SharePoint Information Architecture 3.      SharePoint Change Management, Training and Communication strategy	·         Governance Planning Team ·         Technical and business SMEs, as needed

Build	Implementation of applicable governance policies by Build team Development of custom governance control systems.	·         Governance Planning Team ·         Technical and business SMEs, as needed ·         SharePoint Build/Engineering team(s)
Deploy	·         Policies governing development and deployment will help define and guide how the deploy process will function.	·         Governance Planning Team ·         SharePoint Build/Engineering team(s)  ·         SharePoint Operations Team
Operate	·         Policies governing operations and security will help define and guide how the run/operate process will function.	·         Governance Board/Steering Committee ·         SharePoint Operations Team ·         SharePoint Support Team ·         End-Users and Business Roles

The formal Governance Plan document includes several critical elements, below are the list of such element,

SECTION 1: General Governance Guidelines

1.      Governance Plan Objective

2.      Vision Statement

3.      General Guidelines

4.      Roles and Responsibilities

5.      Guiding Principles

SECTION 2: Detailed Governance Policies and Standards

6.      Content Management Policies and Standards

•                    Posting Content to Existing Pages or Sites

•                    Posting Content to the Home Page

•                    Posting Content to Personal Pages

•                    Social Tags and Ratings

•                    Records Retention

•                    Content Auditing and Review

7.      Design Policies and Standards

•                    Creating New Subsites

•                    Page Layout and Organization

•                    Content Types and Metadata

•                    Content-Specific Guidelines/Policies

•                    Security

•                    Branding

8.      Customization Policies and Standards

•                    Browser-based updates

•                    Updates based on SharePoint Designer

•                    Sandboxed Solutions

•                    Centrally-deployed / 3rd Party Solutions

Application Governance in SharePoint 2010

SharePoint is a broad platform of technologies that can be configured and implemented in unique ways based on the organization’s needs. "SharePoint Governance" enables organizations to use the capabilities of SharePoint Server 2010 in a way that is consistent with the constraints and policies of IT as well as the business department stakeholders while simultaneously delivering value across the enterprise.

The SharePoint application governance will be demonstrated as per the below list:

1.       Architecture

·         Business requirement and governance walks parallel to design a well-defined architecture

·         Governance policies drive:

o   Farms

o   Web applications

o   Content databases

o   Site collections

o   Sites, lists, libraries & folders

2.       Policies

·         A key part of successful SharePoint Governance is achieved through the implementation of policies, either through technical controls or otherwise (policies, communications and training).

·         Application of policies will vary as a function of a number of factors, such as the type of site, audience, and availability requirements.

·         Example: in the case of My Sites, the governance policies required are simpler and less constraining than for team sites or divisional portal with a large number of users accessing the content with high availability requirements. 

Either way, governance may be applied via various means, depending on need, capability and budget - from the architecture, to implicit extension of existing corporate information policies, to new SharePoint-specific policies, to manually implement technical controls, and to automated control.

3.       Code

Guiding Principles for Governance Application

Every organization has unique needs and goals that will affect its approach to governance. No single approach will fit the cultures or requirements of all organizations.

Governance Example

(refer to OneNote screenshots of MSIT service catalog/provisioning) 

With this in mind, the next section highlights the importance of Governance using two critical areas in SharePoint Server 2010 solution deployments, namely Information architecture and hosting of SharePoint Server 2010.

Also like to thanks MS for inputs

Installing and configuring PDF iFilter

1. Install Adobe PDF iFilter 9 for 64-bit platforms (Server holding Crawl\Index role).

2. Verify that PDF has been added to the registry.

a. Run Regedit

b. Within left-side tree, browse to: \\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office Server\14.0\Search\Applications\{site GUID}\Gather\Portal_Content\Extensions\ExtensionList

c. If PDF extension is present, skip to Step 3. If PDF extension is not present, continue with Step d.

d. Right click on right-side Extension List pane and choose New > String Value

e. Add a name to the new Registry Key (e.g. “48”)

f. Double click the new Registry Key. For “Value data”, enter “pdf”

Note: This can also be achieved via SharePoint Server Search Administration page by adding ‘pdf’ to list of File Types in Search Administration->File Types. This would automatically add an entry for ‘pdf’ filetype as mentioned above in step 1

3. Verify that PDF has the correct settings in a second registry location.

a. While still in Regedit, within the left-side tree, browse to: \\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office Server\14.0\Search\Setup\Filters\.pdf

b. Verify the following values. If values are not as shown, edit them.

i. Default =

ii. Extension = pdf

iii. FileTypeBucket = 1

iv. MimeTypes = application/pdf

4. Verify that PDF has the correct settings in a third registry location.

a. While still in RegEdit, within the left-side tree, browse to: \\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office Server\14.0\Search\Setup\ContentIndexCommon\Filters\Extension\.pdf

b. Verify the following values.

If values are not as shown, edit them.

i.                    Default = {E8978DA6-047F-4E3D-9C78-CDBE46041603} Warning: You need to verify that this GUIS is there. The original value won’t work!

5. Verify that pdf.gif is present at the following location:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\14\TEMPLATE\IMAGES

6. Add an entry in docicon.xml for the pdf icon:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\XML

Note: Step 4 & 5 are done in order to have the pdf icon in SharePoint while it displays the search results.

7. Restart all SharePoint services as well as IIS.