Good ‘Shetiquette’
A new term has recently hit the blogosphere, ‘Shetiquette’, that I find interesting.
The term ‘Shetiquette’ is derived from a combination of the two words ‘SharePoint Etiquette’. In general, ‘Shetiquette’ is defined as ‘the practice of using and configuring the SharePoint environment in a way that is thoughtful and meaningful for your fellow collaborators.’
While most technical people have an innate understanding of ‘Shetiquette’, the user community that’s new to collaboration probably does not understand what to do and what not to do.
While SharePoint Etiquette is generally considered to be focused on the end-user, I’ve added some thoughts regarding site owners and administrators.
Examples of POOR end user ‘Shetiquette’ include:
- Checking out a document from a document library and not checking it back in
- Entering garbage into meta-data fields
- Changing an individual’s permissions without notifying them of the change (‘I don’t understand…I had permissions to modify this information yesterday’)
- Sending SharePoint document links to people that don’t have proper permissions to access the document
- Adding too many web parts to a page so that users must scroll their browser window to the right to read all of the content on a page
- Using animated clip-art in the Image Viewer/Content Editor Web Part (<<<shiver>>>)
- Signing people up for a large number of site alerts without their knowledge
Examples of POOR Shetiquette for administrators/site owners include:
- Building poor site navigation for your users in the Global and Current Navigation
- Overuse of the Content Editor Web Part instead of SharePoint Lists. This creates, in effect, a ‘Brochure-ware’ site
- Giving too much permission to individuals on a site (‘I’ll just give everyone full control, that way no one will feel left out’)
- Not creating unique views of SharePoint lists to display information in meaningful ways
- Deletion of ‘authenticated users’ read-permissions on an intranet site without any reason or game plan
- Not educating your Legal team/CXX/Department Heads about permissions so that every document they place on SharePoint responds to any and all search queries (Whoops!)
- Turning off the ability for people to use the Content Editor Web Part
- Turning off the ability for people to use ‘My Sites’ because someone is worried about what information or pictures people will post ‘out there’
- Turning off SharePoint Blogging
- Trying to ‘protect people from themselves’ by blocking features in SharePoint rather than enforcing existing corporate policies for the proper use of corporate technology systems
- Not building a SharePoint Governance Committee that determines policy and focus for the tool
- Not entertaining the use of third-party web parts
- Managing SharePoint without a Governance Plan
- Not providing your user community with SharePoint Training
- Thinking that your end user community will NOT be unable to understand the more advanced features (content types, web part connections, SharePoint Designer Workflows, Excel Services, InfoPath)
- It’s also bad Shetiquette to give people the additional responsibilities of managing their Departments SharePoint site without adding the responsibility to their job description so it will be considered during their performance evaluation.
I’m certain you have your own ideas of what constitutes good and bad SharePoint Etiquette. What have you seen or experienced that you care to share?
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.
Sorry but that is an absolutely horrendous term! Sounds like something else … sh*tiquette.
Sharetiquette would have been better despite being longer! May aswell say the whole thing SharePoint Etiquette or even SPEtiquette.
Zoidy – Agreed! When I first saw the term, I laughed out loud. I like your suggestion … Sharetiquette.
Lee, did you make up the term or have you actually heard it “in the wild”? When I googled it, most items referred back to this post, or to a show/Broadway usage. — Mark
I actually heard it in the wild, so I have no pride of authorship on the combo. I’m glad it made you laugh, though, which was my intent.
I agree as well that it sounds a little ‘iffy’, but if it contributes to the discussion on how to educate you user community on proper SharePoint Etiquette then it’s played it’s role acceptably.
Quite like the idea of Shetiquette, but the article is titled Good Shetiquette, and these are all examples of poor shetiquette!
Although it’s not difficult to turn them round and make them into good examples, would have been nice to have these already, and make a postive from a negative.
Richard,
Thank you for your comments.
cheers,
Lee
Since we are grooving on bad practices…
(1) Drop SharePoint on a 3000+ IS dept without any heads up or training. “We are an IBM shop, but our new VP digs SharePoint. Let’s humor her, she will probably lose interest in 6 months. ummm… she’s wondering why only 100 people are using it.”
(2) After 9 months gestation, review the lame sites that have been created without any guidance. Identify the sites that suck the least & congratulate the owners for their resourcefulness.
(3) Make sure that the SharePoint support staff has enough misanthropists on hand to ensure that nobody will ask a second question.
(4) You site owners are not smart enough to use SharePoint Designer. Plus, additional licenses are an additional cost. If you get a note from the CIO, maybe we will let you play.
(5) Determine that the user community is not cool with new stuff. Adoption is not in alignment with what the Microsoft sales exec was promising. All the peer examples are WAY AHEAD of us!
Maybe some or most of the above is tongue-in-cheek. or not.
This is a great list of ‘don’ts’. For those of us in beginning stages of implementing MOSS, a list of ‘do’s’ would be great. What kind of training does an end-user need? What delivery vehicles seem to be most effective given the novelty of the technology and the level of knowledge an end-user needs? Does anyone have an example training plan that they could share? Has anyone run across a site that provides guidance but, more importantly, specifics about the whole topic of end user training?
As you can tell, I’m hoping you can help in my hour of need! ;>
Hello Roxanne,
I am working on something that will address your need. There are a number of DO’s and DONT’s to watch out for, but they are listed here and there in various locations on the Internet. I’m working on a recommended training approach article and, I’ll admit, it’s taking me much too long to write and complete. Once it’s done, I will post it here at EUSP. I don’t have a time frame on completion as it’s in a pre-draft format currently.
Keep watching EUSP.com as there are a lot of great SharePoint professionals posting here and our goal is to make you (and SharePoint) look good and help to reduce your learning curve.
As you are a beginner in rolling out MOSS in your environment, allow me to welcome you to the obsession!
Lee Reed