Your user community is generally interested in two things when they visit your SharePoint site:

1. “What’s new since I last visited here”, and
2. “What information does this site contain that will make MY working life easier?”

A site without recent additions or current postings will, on average, be visited three times by a user and then never visited again. This is the unwritten law of SharePoint sites, or any web-site for that matter. There is no such thing as, “If you build it they will come”. Here’s one way that SharePoint offers the ability for you to interact with your users so that they know who owns the content on the site and who to contact if they have feedback on the content.

Provide a Feedback Loop

One way to increase your chances that users will frequent your site is to communicate to them that the information a site contains is important to you, the Site Owner, and that you care to make it a resource to them. This provides them with the sense that you are working hard for THEM and are open to constructive comments and feedback about the site.

The Site Contact Web Part allows you to easily add this information to your site. It’s one of the easiest web parts to configure in SharePoint and adds a lot of value to your users.

Adding the Site Contact Web Part to a web part page allows your users to open a dialogue with you. You never know what the user community might tell you:

• “Hey, the information that you have on your site is old. I’m referring to the information located in the subsite named…”
• “You know what would be really great, is if you would…”
• "I can’t seem to find information regarding your team’s…”
• “I have a spreadsheet I can send you that will better describe…”

Your user community needs information specific to them and their desires. If you aren’t providing it, or if you aren’t certain what they need, then ASK them to provide feedback to you in the spirit of collaboration. Another great thing about the Site Contact Web Part is that it shows presence information (the green bubble next to my picture) when you are running Office Communicator so people can connect to you immediately if they need to.

Continually Feed the Machine

Of course, placing the Site Contact Web Part on the page isn’t going to do anything magical if you don’t put time and effort into ensuring that people are getting what they need.

In short:

• When you receive a comment from a user through the Site Contact web part, respond back to them and let them know that you received their e-mail. This is such a small thing but people forget to respond to say, “Thank you for your comment, I just wanted you to know that I received it and will be reading it soon.”
• Tell the user why you did or did not implement the enhancement they suggested. This sends a clear message that, ‘while this comment wasn’t necessarily spun from gold, please keep suggesting modifications because I always respond to ideas.’

Using the Site Contact Web Part

Here’s what the Web Part looks like in the web part gallery after clicking “Add Web Part” button on a web part page. It’s under the heading “Miscellaneous”.

Below are the configuration options for the “Contact Details” Web Part. You can choose the location of the picture in the web part, whether to display a picture from your My Site or not and whether or not to display the contact’s job title that, more than likely, is being pulled from your Active Directory environment.

The ‘Label’ field is the text that appears next to the site contact’s picture and above the link to their My site. In my example, the text “Contact me if you have questions or suggestions regarding this site” is located in the ‘Label’ field.

Where Should I Add the Web Part on My Page?

The screen capture above with my picture in it is what the web part looks like added to a RIGHT web part zone. With the picture, text and My Site link on the right-most part of the page, it draws attention to itself given that the page it’s placed on contains mostly SharePoint lists and document libraries.

Some people choose to add this web part at the bottom of EVERY web-part page without the picture with additional contact information or actions people can take. This allows it to fade into the background of the page a little more given the lack of the picture.

In Conclusion…

Allow your site users to easily communicate with you through the use of the Contact Details web part. SharePoint provides you with this easy to use web part in the hopes that this will enhance your users experience on your SharePoint site. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at how your users will respond to the ability to have an open, collaborative discussion with you, the Site Owner.

Author: Lee Reed

ThoughtBridge, Atlanta, GA

Lee Reed is an expert in collaboration and user adoption on the Microsoft SharePoint 2007 platform. His consulting with companies large and small throughout the East Coast has resulted in many successful collaboration environments and increased user adoption.

Lee is currently the Director of Business Process and SharePoint Education for Thoughtbridge, a Microsoft Gold Partner focused exclusively on the Microsoft SharePoint 2007 platform.