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Monday, March 16, 2009

Create a SharePoint Site plan in less than 5 minutes

UPDATE: I had people tell me the audio was too low with the first recording, so I’ve redone the demo. Hopefully, you can hear it now! — Mark

At SharePoint Saturday in Boston this weekend, there was a lot of interest when I demo’ed a new idea in the presenter room. Just about everyone who saw it wanted the templates I created for generating a quick site plan in Mind Manager.

The screencast below is a five minute quick hit on how you might choose to utilize Mind Manager to do on the fly site planning with your team or client. I would sincerely appreciate any feedback on whether or not you would find this type of thing useful.

I look forward to your feedback and suggestions.
Mark

I would appreciate it if you’d embed the screencast on your site if you think your audience might find it of interest.

  

For those new to Mind Mapping and how to use it with SharePoint, there’s a live online workshop this Friday to get you started. You’ll receive copies of all the templates for brainstorming your SharePoint site plan along with step-by-step instructions on how to tweak them for your specific needs.

 

Please Join the Discussion

26 Responses to “Create a SharePoint Site plan in less than 5 minutes”
  1. Mick Brown says:

    Mark, that is an extremely useful approach that you have come up with using an extremely useful tool – a pretty powerful combination! The concept of interactively “building” a site during a site planning session would offer so much more to a client in their understanding of how the site hangs together.

    I have used the site planning spreadsheet a few times but this approach, I believe, would be more compelling as clients can really see the balances and trade offs that are undertaken during site planning. It goes without saying that I would love to use the templates you have built – I’d be willing to pay for them as they would pay me back time and again with time saved. Perhaps you have something in mind for distributing them to interested parties?

    Great post! Thanks

  2. Mick – This is actually the second step of the planning process. The first step is to define what is needed. That’s what the Site Planning Worksheet is for; the interview process. The Mind Map is then used to visualize the site structure, so both steps are essential. — Mark

  3. David says:

    How do i sign in to the newsletter subscriber area. i have signed up and received the email to say i am subscribed. Am I missing something obvious. I can’t find links anywahere.

  4. David,

    In the confirmation screen when you register, the link was displayed along with the password. It is also located in the confirmation email your received.

    Mark

  5. david r says:

    nice. does this map move on to programatically create the resulting architecture defined in Min Mpa (sorry if i missed this). cool.

    dave

  6. Dave – Nope, this is the interface development phase. I’m trying to make sure the concept works before proceeding. — Mark

  7. Susan says:

    Really nice idea. I was too late to register for the workshop but would love to play around with the templates. Is there some plan to make them available?
    -Suzi

  8. Grace says:

    Am I missing something, where is the screencast?

  9. Uhhhmmm – right underneath my name in the article? Do you have Flash installed? — Mark

  10. Sjoert Ebben says:

    Mark, this is extremely usefull! I’ve used MindManager to create site maps, but never in such detail. If you’re creating a community around this, count me in.
    Sjoert

  11. Sjoert – It’s funny… some people understand the template idea it right away, and other wonder why I “wasted so much time”.

    Yes, I am putting a community together to develop these. Anything in particular you want to tackle? John Stover is working on a Publishing Site with Workflows. What do you have in mind?

    Mark

  12. Sjoert – You’ve got some really good content on your site. I wish you would post more often. You can always send me stuff if you want to publish here. — Mark

  13. Ian says:

    Mark,

    I am enamored by the setup you have of your teamsite map and the segmented map parts.

    I have downloaded your teamsite map template and have been clicking around in it as I watched your vid a few times.

    Can you offer up any suggestions on how I can refine the downloaded teamsite template to be formatted like yours in the vid?

    Thank you for your time and assistance.

    Cheers,

    Ian

  14. Hi Ian – Specifically, what are you trying to accomplish? What do you see in the demo that you can’t do or format? — Mark

  15. Javier says:

    Hi Mark, great tool! Is it possible to download the map parts?

    Cheers

  16. Javier – If you are a subscriber to the Weekly Newsletter, the Team Site template is available for download. — Mark

  17. Ian says:

    Mark,

    In the video (at 35 seconds into it) you talk about having created templates for sharepoint that can be dragged-and-dropped into MM.

    I downloaded your awesome Team Site template. However, I’m new to MM and aren’t sure how to set it up to have the section folders as you show in the video. Is there a “beginners” way to accomplish that?

    Thanks for all your wisdoms,

    Ian

  18. Ian – I’ll create a quick screencast to show you how to do it. Give me a couple days… it’s newsletter crunch time. — Mark

  19. Ian says:

    Mark,

    Wow! Thank you! Cool!

    Cheers,

    Ian

  20. Dean says:

    Mark, in this video you mention using a Wiki Library for procedures. I am used to having procedures in Word files that we put into a Doc Lib. i’m having a hard time visuallizing how the Wiki approach would work. Do you have any examples that you could point me to?
    Thanks

    • Dean – Yes, it is a big mental shift. Instead of storing the information in Word documents, each document becomes a web page within the wiki. The advantage is that now all of the documents can have cross-reference links embedded as part of the content, so you have a 360 referencing guide. The best example I can think of is http://www.wiki.org, the mother of all wikis.

      Hope that helps,
      Mark

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