1,550 articles and 11,124 comments as of Thursday, May 20th, 2010

Thursday, May 13, 2010

EndUserSharePoint.com: An Uncertain Future

I had dinner during SharePoint 2010 pre-launch with Dux Raymond Sy, David Mitchell and Debbie Rosen to talk about how a community has been built around SharePoint. When the discussion turned to EndUserSharePoint.com, Debbie had a comment that I’m starting to hear often, and it disturbs me:

“I went to your site and couldn’t find any content for day-to-day users of SharePoint. Everything seems to be centered around jQuery and providing coded solutions.”

The Current Situation at EndUserSharePoint.com

The truth is, she and the other people who have written and spoken with me are right. There has been a major shift in content created for EndUserSharePoint.com over the past year.

As I look over much of the new content, it is centered around presentation layer enhancements with the use of jQuery. Looking at the site some days seems like I’m just swept away in a sea of jQuery code.

We have a set of incredible authors who are providing jQuery and javascript solutions for just about any interface problem that comes up: Marc Anderson, Christophe Humbert, Alexander Bautz, James Love, Peter Allen, Paul Grenier, Michael Greene, Jason MacKenzie. These guys are on the job daily providing intermediate level solutions for SharePoint Power Users. When I speak at conferences and SharePoint Saturdays, it’s their solutions I am presenting because that’s what Advanced Power Users want to see.

But where does that leave the people who are coming to the site based upon the original premise when EndUserSharePoint.com was created: No GeekSpeak on SharePoint. How are the beginning and intermediate Site Managers going to find content when it’s surrounded by articles on how to hack the SharePoint interface with jQuery?

The main point is this: There is now so much content on the site, it’s impossible to find answers to specific questions, at any level, not just at the beginner level. As I was teaching on-site this week, there were two solutions I needed to show the class immediately and I couldn’t find them on the site. Hey, if I’m the OWNER of the site and can’t find stuff, where does that leave people who really do need help finding what we have here?

Between Stump the Panel, EndUserSharePoint2010.com, the SharePoint Community Calendar, the EUSP Weekly Newsletter, and EndUserSharePoint.com, there has to be a better way to expose the content.

Where to Start

In answer to that dilemma, I am working with Marcy Kellar, The SharePoint Muse, to restructure the site into various silos and create a more user friendly interface for finding content. There will be a vertical for business talk. There will be a verticle for business solutions. There will be an area for projects you can do with out of the box SharePoint, completely ignoring the debate about what “out-of-the-box” means.

There will be a HUGE area for interface enhancements. I don’t intend to stop publishing those articles. In fact, I’m trying to encourage the jQuery authors to provide more solutions based upon the feedback they are getting from their original articles and through questions in Stump the Panel.

In the Short Term

What you’ll see developing on EndUserSharePoint.com over the next few months will be silos of information, giving readers the ability to find information based upon their interest level. I will host the site on fpWeb.net using a SharePoint 2010 site. All of the content we currently have will move into SharePoint 2010, using all the slice-and-dice functionality we can muster to make all content available through multiple verticals.

In the meantime, I’m going to concentrate on finding more authors for business case scenarios that will help users see real world examples of how SharePoint can be used to help with business process management. I want to hear about immediate solutions that can be used to steamline business processes. Debbie Rosen is going to be the first new author, writing a five part series, “Kill the Things that Kill Productivity“.

I want as much content as I can get from the SharePoint Community in general, from the people who are down in the trenches making a difference in their company by providing solutions to their in-house user communities.

There will be two major additions to the site, starting as early as next week: an EUSP eBook Store and a SharePoint Self-Help Center.

EUSP eBook Store

We are going to re-expose popular content through batching up the major article series on EndUserSharePoint.com into eBooks. You will be able to read an entire series without having to jump all over the place to get at the content.

The first eBook in the EUSP eBook Store will be Marc Anderson’s 20 part series, “Unlocking the Mysteries of Data View Web Part XSL Tags“. Over the next month we will be offering a basic End User series, starting with Dessie Lunsford’s “Taming the Elusive Calculated Column” series.

I’m working with other authors such as Jim Bob Howard, Marc Anderson, Peter Allen, James Love and Jay Simcox to package up their articles and make them available in the eBook Store. As new articles and series are created by the various authors, we’ll add them to the EUSP eBook Store. For a nominal fee, you get the convenience of a complete set of articles packaged as an eBook and the authors get a little spending money in return.

EUSP Self-Help Center

Pat Iovanella is working with me to build an EUSP Self-Service Support Center. The entrance area of the EUSP Support Center will be a free resource, acting as central launch point not just for EndUserSharePoint.com, but for all content we can find and point to as a resource for the various End User levels in SharePoint, such as John Anderson’s SharePoint Blank and the Get the Point team.

There will be a premium subscription area of the EUSP Support Center that will contain recordings of all of the modules and workshops that I have taught over the past four years. We are creating new recordings for each module, not just for 2007, but also for SharePoint 2010.

If there is one thing I am going to concentrate on in the next three months, it will be the recording of modules for the EUSP Support Center. This is a major undertaking, but I think the value of having this content at your finger tips as it is needed will be indespensible for people working in companies that can’t pay thousands of dollars for consultants or in-house SharePoint talent.

Community Events

I recently sent Jeremy Thake, founder of SharePoint Dev/Wiki, a box of SharePoint Saturday shirts. There were about ten of them, from the events I have spoken at in the past year. It made me realize how vital a community Michael Lotter has built through this type of event.

When I produced Live Online: SharePoint Saturday EMEA earlier this year, I thought of it as a beginning for a new type of event. That model has now been used by other people to create SharePoint Saturday Arabia and SharePoint Saturday India.

I intend on expanding upon that idea by creating an EndUserSharePoint.com Conference. The conference will be aimed directly at the audience of EndUserSharePoint.com: Site Managers, Power Users, Site Collection Administrators and SharePoint Business Users.

It’s still in the planning stages, but it will definitely happen within the year.

How Can You Participate?

All that said, I hope you’ll stay with me through the transition.

It’s going to be tough, but I’ll need your help and your suggestions on how to make the content on this site more “consumable” for the different audiences that have found us. I’m going to need your content, whether it’s full blown solutions or documented case studies from SharePoint projects you’ve done in-house.

It’s not like we have a rigidly defined struture. That’s both a blessing and a curse, but if we can find a way to make things more visible, more findable, more accessible, the SharePoint Community will be all the better for it.

Mark Miller
Founder and Editor
EndUserSharePoint.com

 

Please Join the Discussion

64 Responses to “EndUserSharePoint.com: An Uncertain Future”
  1. James Love says:

    Hi Mark,

    These are exciting times for EUSP, and the SharePoint community. I do look forward the new site layout and the other features that will be in store!

    I believe that this content findability issue is one that many of us will relate to in all sorts of projects involving redefining an Information Architecture for a client, and I’m sure the community will be supportive in assisting the restructure of the site.

    I give my very best of luck to the EUSP Team to this new coming era.

  2. Shalin Parmar says:

    Hi Mark,

    I feel that EndUserSharePoint.com is on the correct path and having more jQuery solution is okay even for the end users. I would say rather then drastically changing the content and layout consider below points:

    1) End users will get bogged down by out of the box functionality and may turn to SPD which if they don’t have access have to move to jQuery solution.
    2) Organize the articles as
    a) Site Collection Administrators (Pros)
    b) Site Collection Administrators (Novice)
    c) SharePoint end users (with max of site contribute access)
    so basically I want the content to be tagged/organized by the level of access for the end users. I bet that you will find better terms for above then me!!
    3) Current stream of articles I feel is perfect for the one who has been following the site for >1 year and they are growing and flowing with the content and new ways to do things out of the box.
    4) The point above demans that there needs to be a path created for new comers to the site.

    Just my 2 cents…….

    Keep up the great work Mark!

    Thanks! Shalin

  3. Romain says:

    Hi Mark,

    I do not have any suggestions right now but you can clearly count me in your “sustainable readers”. It’s true that we do not find some basic tips on using or managing SharePoint, but as a SharePoint power user, 2 out of 3 articles are useful for my job on a short term basis, so congratulations for your site.

    The migration to a SP2010 site is a very good news also.

    Keep doing, you and all your team, all this great job.

  4. Mark:

    I think it’s great that you want to take EUSP to another level. As you know (and given that my eBook is the first!) I’m on board. I’m very interested in hearing more about your plans and how I might be a part of them. Marcy and I have exchanged a few emails (where she has been appropriately cryptic) so I knew something was up.

    As the corpus of content at EUSP has continued to balloon, once of my concerns has been a lack of a good taxonomy. Everything is tagged, but I always wonder if folks are finding exactly the right content to solve their problem at that moment. In other words, there’s a lot of great content to read or watch, but it needs to be delivered in a JIT type of framework, as with any great knowledge base.

    As part of my [relatively] new role on the faculty of the USPJ Academy, I’m also thinking about how the different constituencies can traverse across EUSP, USPJA, SharePointOverflow, etc., etc., etc. to find the BEST answer. It’s not always going to be in a single place. The audiences are going to be different for each delivery mechanism, but there will also be a lot of crossover.

    I look forward to hearing more at SPSDC!

    Thanks,
    M.

    • > traverse across EUSP, USPJA, SharePointOverflow, etc., etc., etc. to find the BEST answer

      That’s an interesting proposition. If I can set it up properly, the EUSP Support Center will be able to point people to the proper resources no matter where they reside.

  5. Joel Ward says:

    I am interested to see where this goes too. We’re interested in an end-user like Codeplex, and some of the stuff you mention makes me think that could be a part of the new EUSP.

    Keep up the good work!

  6. eric says:

    Product maturity, you can’t keep how to upload a document in Sharepoint the forefront of your content. As the product matures, the content around the product matures to fill the gaps of the njormal deployment of Sharepoint.

  7. Mark Gehringer says:

    To re-phrase her comments about ‘every day’ content:

    I always take a development approach with every product I support and every system I administer, and each has a beginning, middle and end. Your Sharepoint focus has changed as the product itself has evolved, and as your depth of skill with it has deepened.

    Just remember to be able to speak to the ‘every day’ users that are learning about Sharepoint for the first time. Those people will probably want quick answers to the more basic capabilities and functions.

  8. I feel like I need to make a couple more comments, then I’ll shut up.

    “An Uncertain Future” seems like such a negative way to portray the changes you are proposing. I think that if EUSP had stayed the way it used to be, it would have died. If it stays the way it is, it will die. Just like a shark, you’ve got to keep moving forward to survive. (Turns out that isn’t really true about sharks, but you get the point.)

    I don’t think that silos are the right way to think about the content. The key is, just like with our SharePoint implementations, to improve “findability”, but at the same time let everyone define what their own set of interests are for themselves. One person might be interested in STSADM tricks + DVWPs + plus cool use of graphics; another might be interested in Christophe’s awesome calculated HTML columns exclusively; another might be interested in anything they can possibly read. I think it would be a mistake for EUSP to assume to know what the 13,500 people currently on the mailing list want, or more importantly, *will* want going forward.

    Keep making continuous improvements, add them in over time, and see what the reactions are. So far, you’ve got the best game in town for end users and many others. Keep the momentum going.

    M.

  9. George says:

    To put it succinctly, thank you !

  10. Greg Yost says:

    I am just learning SharePoint as my company will be implementing it soon. I receive the newletters and have visited the site often. It is very difficult to find info for the novice user. I look forward to the new layout and will continue to be a regular visitor to EUSP. I have even downloaded a couple of your latest solutions and put them on our test site.

    Thanks for all your help.

  11. I’m actually rather enjoying the irony of a SharePoint-oriented site where people struggle to wade through rich content to find something relevant to particular questions pertaining to the central mission of the site. Anyone who does SharePoint for a living should get a kick out of it I think. From my experience, that’s one of the problems SharePoint technology is most directly marketed to solve, and of course the reason people do this for a living is that it is far from trivial to accomplish this “findability” in practice. The truth is, it’s a tough thing to do even with a good technology and a lot of expertise and a clear vision, as is the case on this site. It makes perfect sense for a site *about* end user sharepoint to have a lot of depth about power users leveraging script to improve the user interface. But people who support end users and end users themselves are most often different people. The site can and should support both, I think. The interesting challenge is exposing the end user content usefully now without giving up on the power users. This is a wonderful site, I’m looking forward to seeing how you solve it.

  12. Keith says:

    Marc, I love what I’m hearing, especially the e-books so I can get all of the articles in a series in one spot. This is obviously a major undertaking, but well worth it from what you described!

    Your decision to keep up with the jquery and other advanced topics also warms my heart because, while there will always be beginners, that is only a temporary state (hopefully!).

    There is one point I hope you can clarify. As I read your post, it sort of outlined in my mind like this:
    I. We have a growing problem that EUSP is getting away from its original premise of no geek-speak and being geared toward end users who are not programmers
    II. We will solve that problem by:
    A. Continuing the jQuery and other advanced topic articles
    B. Re-designing the site into silos to organize our content and make it easier to find things
    1. The silos will be organized into things like Business Talk, Business Solutions and Interface Enhancements
    2. We’ll also have a silo for out-of-the-box projects
    C. Creating e-books to group series of articles together

    While all of paragraph II. is an incredibly great-sounding design (can’t wait!), I did not see how that is solving the original problem you stated in paragraph I. What changes will you make for beginners or users who do not want to write code – other than the out-of-the-box projects? Will it be possible for users to choose some kind of universal filter that says, “Just show me the view of EUSP that is Beginner level?”

    • > Will it be possible for users to choose some kind of universal filter that says, “Just show me the view of EUSP that is Beginner level?”

      Yes :-)

      Not only will readers be able to filter by user level, I’m looking at tagging all articles so that we can have some kind of faceted search. It’s a HUGE undertaking, but then again, this is a HUGE site.

      I have had an incredible response through email of people offering to jump in and fill the gap when in comes to beginner articles from a non-technical point of view. You will start to see those articles trickling out next week. Hopefully it will become a raging flood as intermediate site managers become comfortable with sharing their war stories with the rest of us.

      Mark

  13. JoyceMR says:

    The title (”Uncertain future”) was more than a little scary! EndUserSharePoint.com has been the most valuable SharePoint resource I have. Count me in as a premium user and I hope the future becomes very certain!

  14. David Kovacs says:

    I am just blown away reading this Mark. Thank you for recognizing this trend and “rebalancing your portfolio. I predict your subscribers numbers will take off and it is well deserved. You will not lose me during the transition and I can’t wait to see what you guys come up with.

    Best,

    David

  15. Rob Foster says:

    Mark,

    I have to say that I was shocked when I read this. EUSP is a great community resource and I reference quite a few articles on the site all the time. I do like the idea to segment the content into “silos”, though as I have referred people to the site before (mostly business users) and the feedback that I got was something to the effect of: “there’s nothing there for me”. I guess they were focused more on the jQuery stuff as you indicated and didn’t really dig.

    I hope that you can make it VERY clear on the homepage by creating something simple that’s also easy to navigate so that as you enter the silos, you know exactly what’s in there and when you enter a silo, you know what to expect. I wouldn’t look at this as an uncertain future of EUSP, just an evolution of the site based on constructive community feedback (do you remember Microsoft.com from 10 years ago? YIKES!).

    I’m happy to see you take this feedback and are doing something with it. Keep up the great work with the site and I look forward to seeing this fantastic community resource evolve over the years!

  16. Trudy says:

    Mark-
    You can count me in a s one of your sustainable users.

    I found EUSP about a year ago and when I started to be honest much of it sounded like gibberish, but not for long. One of the things that makes EUSP so special is the willingness of the contributors, and the community in general to help new users understand and use the content. No one is offend if you need it broken down Barney style.

    This, to me is EUSP greatest asset; empowering users to learn and grow. Once you have someone explain it to you clearly you can then take the information and start to use it in new ways. Before long you are ready to try out some of those jquery projects, you want to see just how much you can do.
    I started off a confused and frustrated newbie, and today I am a power user.

    I like the idea of having a path, so to speak, where you can start with the OOB stuff and move on to the intermediate projects when you feel confident. GIve users the tools to make a difference right away, if even in small ways, and they will come back time and again.

    Keep up the good work!

    Trudy

    • Keith says:

      “One of the things that makes EUSP so special is the willingness of the contributors, and the community in general to help new users understand and use the content. No one is offend if you need it broken down Barney style. This, to me is EUSP greatest asset; empowering users to learn and grow.”

      Trudy, amen to that!! You nailed it! I’ve participated in many different user communites since the early 80’s (yes, a 300-baud modem and an electronic bulletin board) and I agree wholeheartedly that this community of users and contributers is unique in is more helpful and encouragin than any I have seen. And Mark, you lead the pack because of your sensitivity to this community and your willingness to move heaven and earth to support it.

      I’m not enough of a cyber-sociologist to say how well these changes will meet everyone’s needs, but they sure “feel” right. Full steam ahead! Just keep the newbie community on board so that you always have a fresh crop of new users visiting. And when they aren’t newbies anymore – wow! With this new design, they’ll have a rich resource to keep them coming back!

  17. Greg says:

    Hi Mark,
    The title for the article/ newsletter certainly got my heart pumping!
    I was already imagining the worst – no EUSP anymore?
    Have been a reader for roughtly 1 1/2 year and my knowledge of SP has expanded thanks to the incredible articles, screencasts on EUSP & all the topics discussed on STP.
    I will have to agree with your current assertion about the site (quite a lot of jQuery based solutions lately may have overcome some good articles on SP ‘basics’. It doesn’t bother me as I have read articles as they were posted and I kind of know where to find the solution to a new issue/ who may have adressed it depending of the type of solution involved (Laura for DVWP, Christophe for HTML based graphics, Dessie for calculated columns, Paul Grenier, Marc Anderson for jQuery and so on…)
    A couple of ideas:
    * introduce a ‘level’ tag to the articles Easy/ Medium/ Hard (see jQuery for Designers by Remy Sharp)
    * have a EUSP main/ central page without the blog roll but expanding on the ‘Topics’ tab
    This tab seems a litlle bit ‘unbalanced’ compared to the other tabs?
    * have a ‘Basics’ section (see Basix tab on NetTuts.com) so new readers can ‘catch up’ by reading the ‘basics’ articles first

    All that said, I will never express enough how grateful I am to you, Natasha, all EUSP/STP contributors and your sponsors for time and efforts spent building this incredible ressource for SP end users – whichever level of knowledge they currently are at.

    Greg

  18. Mark, I believe things are currently on the right path, but I do have to agree with what everyone else has been saying about “findability” with respect to EUSP content.

    Call it user-focused or “User-Centric”, or whatever catch-phrase of the moment is best descriptive, but along with the restructuring of content into “Silo’s” (am I the only one getting tired of that term?) representative of the major reader audiences, content should be rolled up in the manner in which each individual prefers.

    Maybe its a “Remember Me” option, or since you’re moving to SP2010 it might be “MySites” for each registered user, whatever works best (and is realistic), but to have a way in which each user can choose or customize a presentation of content tailored to their specific needs, I think this would be of a huge benefit for anyone getting lost in the sea of articles already existing on EUSP. Not saying it has to be like “iGoogle” or even “My Yahoo”, but personally I’d like to see a list of categories in which to choose from (not just a single choice in which to filter by) where you could build a out a custom list of content that you could subscribe to or view when on the site.

    Marc said it best that we cant assume to know what each and every subscriber (and visitors who dont subscribe to the newsletter) would want, now or in the future, so having a framework in which they can get what they want, when they want it (on their own terms) would (should) be a great option.

    As you and I have already discussed, I’m obviously on-board with where things are headed, I just want to make sure that everyone has the ability to find what they need without having to ask how and where to find it – we’ve all had the experience on a forum somewhere when we’ve asked a question only to have some smart-ass respond with “Did you use the big ‘SEARCH’ button at the top of the page?”. Thats the last thing this site should ever turn into especially with the varying “Technical” degree of readers that frequent here. Sure, as a seasoned SP admin with 7+ years of experience you may know what terms to search by to find the articles relavant to your situation, but what about those that just had SP dropped in their lap (how many people mentioned that very thing in the recent “How did you learn about SharePoint?” article) and dont know where to start?
    It’s frustrating for them (weren’t we all in the same situation sometime?), so we need to make sure that everyone has a seat at the EUSP table and can get what they need, when they need it…

    “No User Left Behind!!”

    - Dessie

  19. Matt B. says:

    Well you definitely caught my attention with that title. For a second, I thought EUSP was going away permanantely. I thought the “cesspool” caught up with you Mark. I have been a fan of this site for a long time and even contribute my 2 cents when I can. When I first found this site, I set out to read/watch every post that had ever been put up. I think I got about halfway. This was because while I was doing this, your site exploded! With any explosive growth, there has to be a revision to the long term plan. Moving more of your series articles to E-book is a great move. One I’ve done myself already by printing the articles that I liked and putting them together as a pdf.

    Another great aspect of this site is there are articles that come directly from the STP forum. This is fantastic, not only for the great content, but you get the context of the exact pain-point. Knowing the reason(s) or pratical application of the solution is crucial for reproducing within your company. Some solutions I’ve read, I’ve had a hard time figuring out why or how I could use it…

    I really don’t think you have to worry about losing your fan base as much as you should focus on the *real* goal here: End User content. One of the first videos I watched on this site was you showing how easy it was to implement a solution. It was a solution that was provided by one of your authors. I just tried to find it, but after the umpteenth click, I have given up… I think you know already, so I won’t go into that… I was left with a feeling, if only I had a webpart connection setup for authors and your tags, I’d be set. As it is, I still find myself visiting this site daily. This site has made my sharepoint administration that much better. I don’t think I would like Sharepoint at all if it weren’t for this site. I think that’s the best compliment I can give because Sharepoint ROCKS!

    It’d be nice to keep your audience engaged during your transition phase as well. I feel you have made an honest effort in keeping everyone aware of your thought process. That’s very much appreciated. An uncertain future? I think not… An uncertain site design/taxonomy, maybe…

  20. Mark, I have been following the site for years and have watched it evolve. I can definitley understand the perspective of someone coming in today and thinking that jquery sounds pretty geeky. I have gone down the jquery route on my installation thanks to this site, and have got some great results. What you are discussing is just a natural evolution of your site, and I am happy to see you have identified the issue. It will only make the site better!

    - Jeremy

  21. Art says:

    Mark,

    I’ll admit that I’m an oddball in more ways than one. To start with I’m a scientist in the medical field with no experience to Sharepoint but was designated by my company to develop sharepoint pages and team sites to improve visibility and efficiency. Your site was recommended to me by an expert Sharepoint user who had a 3 year jump on me. What I learned over time (1 year I’ve been doing this now) was that Sharepoint is very powerful and I want to be able to do more with it. I keep hoping to see something that I can reasonably implement (other than the weather toolbar, which I thought was really cool by the way). Thanks to you and your team for trying to assist all levels of experience.

  22. Xene says:

    Mark, Anyone who reads this site knows I’m a die-hard fan! I see your problem mirror the most common of problems with Sharepoint: taxonomy > putability > findability. Aren’t we all dealing with this to some degree as we watch our sites grow and blossom? We can all learn by example as we watch you restructure, thanks for the lessons!

    Any chance the eBooks will be Kindle friendly?

    • I looked into Kindle. Can they read a straight .pdf file? — Mark

      • Yes, you can email a PDF into your Kindle and it usually reads great. The tricky part would be any special formatting for code and such, which wouldn’t necessarily transfer well (and the Kindle has a black and white screen).

        Just for kicks, I sent my “Unlocking the Mysteries of Data View Web Part XSL Tags” eBook to my Kindle, both with and without converting it. While it’s pretty legible, I can’t change the font size. This makes it a little tough to read.

        M.

      • Kirk says:

        Email through Amazon will convert PDF to kindle format, but I am less than impressed. Formatting problems make the benefit of changing text size negligible and table of contents don’t link to page, a problem with longer files.
        My boss loves both of his, especially for newspaper subscriptions. Borrow one first.

  23. Uncertainty, why not. As Mick would say “da best stuff came out of reaching into the unknown”.

    Mark, you are just moving up to bigger promoted title shots fights. When fighters stop being prospects (a blogger) and move into contender status (full blown site) they gain PR guys, managers, fitness and nutrition guys added onto their existing trainers and cut man, i.e a team. When done correctly the fighter (or in our case the community) gains. Sounds like you have plenty of talent to draw from and you can count me in.

    DING

    Go get’em champ!

    See you this weekend.
    @SharPtContender

  24. Dean says:

    I’d like to suggest that the taxonomy and structure help users find web part specific info. The Help from MS is pretty weak for many of the web parts and this site could become the one stop shop for any info you need about each and every web part provided by MS (in each of the editions/versions). I can imagine a page for a web part that starts off with info about the what all of the various settings really mean, why you want to choose one over another etc. and then expanding down/out into topics about how the web part can be enhanced/extended with jquery and/or SPD. The current web part tag is to vague and needs to be broken out into the specific parts because there are very few articles that apply to all of them.

  25. Jay says:

    Mark,

    As I mentioned to you earlier I am definitely onboard and will help in any way I can.

    It’s interesting to me that this has come up; about 3 months ago I read a book by Steve Krug on web usability titled “Don’t Make Me Think”. It has quickly become the premise behind which I am trying to drive my current project and it’s probably safe to say all my future projects as well. I think that sums up the “problem” here. People are having to think about where or how, to find the content they are looking for and when they can’t find it they get frustrated and you know what happens when people get frustrated, they leave and go elsewhere (or they complain).

    As the skill set of the primary contributors here has evolved the site has moved away from the original intention of no geekspeak. That’s not a bad thing; in fact it’s a great thing. As people like Dessie, Marc, Christophe, Jim Bob etc… have grown their skills they have been more than willing to share the knowledge they have acquired with those of us that are “lacking” and that is one of the things that makes this community so special. The other thing to consider is that your call to action has obviously motivated others to become more involved, to share their knowledge and experiences and to help lead instead of follow. What was being viewed as a negative has yielded positive results. Does that mean it’s still a negative?

    There are some great ideas on how to address the “problem” in the responses above. I especially like the possibility of a universal filter that shows the user the level of content they wish to see. That goes directly back to “Don’t Make Me Think”. Some of the other things you mentioned that have huge potential (in my opinion anyway) were the Self Help Center, the Premium Area, the EndUserSharePoint.com conference and the E-book store.

    I would have to admit I’m not sure how much I like the term “silo” I think that Marc, Dessie and a couple of others have mentioned “findabilty” as being key and I would tend to agree with that. There are a lot of areas within SharePoint that overlap enough that to categorize them and put them into a specific bucket might turn out to be difficult. How do we improve findability? You mentioned facted search, that’s one and it’s a good one. Maybe instead of having silos come up with a better tagging scheme where the identifiers you had chosen for the silos are tags instead. That would allow content to overlap as needed.

    There are a lot of different ways to look at the issue and with your plan to move to the 2010 platform there will be a growing number of solutions. If I was a typical end user looking for help here for the first time all I would ask is that you don’t make me think.

    To quote one of my favorite stupid movies, One Crazy Summer, Ack Ack Raymond says “Without a plan, there’s no attack. Without attack, no victory”

    Sounds to me like you have a plan. In my mind that puts you at least half way to victory!

    - Jay

  26. Dean says:

    I’d like to make another suggestion. How about using the tools from MetaVis to develop the information architecture and show us how this is done online through a series of articles? this could be a great way to teach us while accomplishing the redesign objectives.

  27. Mike Bunyan says:

    The dilemma lies in the description of what is an ‘end user’. Microsoft has pushed out the concept of ‘Information Worker’ being those who use SharePoint for daily activities of a productive nature. There are other categories that can be identified. For example the Developer who is engaged to improve functionality that enables the Information Worker and the ‘Site Owner’ (Microsoft concept) who has full control on a Team Site and needs to understand what is possible and then engage the Developer to implement a solution. At a higher level the Information Owner, those ‘managers’ responsible for information management need help to improve and manage usage for reasons of business productivity, return on investment, and protecting corporate information resource.

    There are other roles to consider, but essentially I am addressing the roles in a governance model for SharePoint, their responsibilities and the interaction between them.

    EndUserSharePoint may wish to concentrate on one or two of the key roles. However, we know how SharePoint penetrates all aspects of a business environment, from IT infrastructure to the sales floor, and it is important that those wishing to learn best practices have the opportunity to appreciate the impact of this tool. Such discussions would not be discouraged, just considered ‘off topic’.

    In EndUserSharePoint I would like to see differentiation between ‘business engagement psychology and planning’ and ‘front end functionality and usability’ as I see these as the key areas the site has been addressing. This is not to be a constraint, but speciality or focus. Other areas like ‘IT infrastructure’ or ’specialist tools’ or ‘powershell’ are given a fair hearing on other sites and can be referred to as needed.

    I admire this site and the work put in by Mark and all contributors. The challenge of managing a community in any subject lies in the leadership and governance. Very few web sites ‘do everything’, they are not supermarkets or high streets on steroids.

    Focus on what you know and do best.

  28. Julien says:

    I have been following this site over the past year and I would have one suggestion to make. I remember before the crash and the change to the site that on the left there was a handy link bar that brought me to some main articles on the site, Jquery for everyone and stuff like that. I think that would help to navigate the site if you could divide it between. Jquery, DVWP, CSS, and so on. Found an infinite amount of solution and I get endless praises for some of your content, thank you for all the solutions you bring us and I hope that I will be able to follow throughout Sharepoint 2010 and beyond.

  29. Kirk says:

    I have been disappointed as SharePoint Saturdays’ have become 2010 centric, but being pushed from technical sessions in Michigan I found the presentations from Ford and Borg Warner to be eye opening. I would suggest you find some of those SharePoint success stories and let them brag a bit at what problems they have solved and some of the hurdles overcome. Ford has created a support team from their administrators using a discussion site and alerts to support users and to build a knowledge base for people to refer back to. Wish I could say I’ve been able to implement it here, but at least the seed has been planted and I will get there.
    And now to back slide. Ford’s actual implementation is in 2010, but the ideas are not tied to a version. I am already signed up for my next SharePoint Saturday and poised to jump for the Chicago July date when registration opens.

  30. Kirk says:

    I found Mark and EndUser because he wasn’t Joel Oleson. The site and Mark have evolved, Mark now seems to talk with Joel on a regular basis. What I appreciate is that tone has always been helpful here and I don’t think the ladder has been pulled up to stop new people from joining, asking, and learning. The task of reorganizing looks daunting if only because I fight with search engines daily trying to home in on version related problems. Is it possible for the community to rate information at difficulty level and add tagging? Some of this effort will have to come from those of us using the information.

    • Keith says:

      Kirk’s great idea of adding user ratings gives me an idea. I’m assuming that all of the plans for silos, universal filters, and so forth really boil down to some kind of metadata or attribute for a given item. This could be a Choice field in a list, right? So each article, or discussion, or whatever-content-type you have might include Choice fields for Silo, ExperienceLevel, Rating, and so forth.

      Mark, you said that it is a mammoth task to go into all of the content and tag it with these attributes. By making these Choice fields, is there a way that the user community could help? That is, don’t just have users rate the content, but also let them help categorize it as they consume it. This may not work for all of the attributes, and you may not want to give this over to the end users, but in some cases it may be a way to lessen your internal burden of categorizing thousands of content items.

  31. I think the breadth of reponses and suggestions shows that while there is no best way for everyone. I personally probably come to the site 3-5 times a day to see what new content has been posted and typically make a note of who wrote it.

    A tend to take an author-centric approach to finding things on the site. I know if its DVWP related Laura probably wrote it, Marc for SPServices etc etc. Perhaps a more intuitive way of finding authors by category of expertise and contribution would be helpful. Or a more robust profile of the key contributors to the site with their articles categorized by tag, where those articles are referenced in other articles on the site like a trackback mechanism, stump the panel contributions etc. I think it will increase the sense of community and also help new visitors get sense of not only what is on the site but who the go to people are.

    Keep up the great work and I’ll happily help in any way I can.

    Jason

  32. JohnnyM says:

    Sign me up for the Recurring Reader and Paying Subscriber, that is a great idea that will drive great content (and hopefully some revenue)
    I imagine real EndUsers will only stay subscribed as long as there is content they can rely on.
    That self help center sounds like an extension of technet to me.

    Do you envision TWO communities? EndUser/NoGeekSpeak and Developer/Geeks?

  33. ricknology says:

    Mark,

    I love seeing you go to SharePoint 2010. What better case study to document!

    Rick

  34. Bill Bowman says:

    I’ve read many of these comments and having a fairly good handle on SharePoint from a users viewpoint, and a bit of developers knowledge, including SPD customizations (6 yrs experience total) I echo many of the pleas for simplicity in being able locate content.

    It’s apparent that the “charter” for this site is to be able to help people grow in their knowledge and understanding of SharePoint regardless of their “lane”. I applaud the use of “silos” to separate content into usable bites, however, I don’t think that goes far enough. It would be nice to have a navigation/filter system that allows someone not only to see information that they can handle with their current abilities, but also link together other higher level tips/techniques with the same article so a person can attempt to build on their skill set using this site in a mentoring fashion. Sort of a “now you’ve done this, now try adding… building block approach.

    The usual approach sometimes leaves users stranded when there is something in the process they don’t understand or are limited by their network environment, permissions, or other impediment to completing the task. Building on a success gives the person confidence to tackle other things and having some related topics readily available can provide that encouragement

    I realize not everything fits nicely together, and many of the problem/solutions provided are not at all related, and that organizing content in this manner would take a lot of work. I typically don’t like presenting a problem without addressing a solution as well, you smart folks are a lot better at this than I, but here goes.

    If the authors created their “posts” with this graduated system in mind it might make it easier to catalog several different “flavors” of the same article, creating “baby-steps” if you will;
    or
    You could build a meta-tag catalog system that submissions from the experts could use to “link” topics of similar characteristics that would make the cataloging of items easier.

    Example menu items:

    [user-beginner] [user-intermediate] [user-advanced]
    [developer-beginner] [developer-intermediate] [developer-advanced] [jJQuery]

    Hope this helps. I look forward to embracing the new version of EUSP.

    • Trudy says:

      I know this would probably mean more work, but I love this idea. It is not unusual to find an article that comments on “after reading this article I thought what if I could use that do do this” sort of thing. This sounds kinda along the same lines.

      Start small, add on in steps, and ultimately build big.

      Trudy

  35. Marcy Kellar says:

    These comments are fantastic! It’s wonderful to see the community engaging and interacting. We definitely want to see more of that.

    The user experience (UX) strategy will balance best practices in content management, information architecture and design with user needs and goals. Your visits to End User SharePoint should provide you with answers.. not just any answers, but the answer you came here for.

    Mark and I will be recruiting users for testing of the update in the next few weeks. . We are looking forward to additional feedback from users.. Keep sending in your painpoints and suggestions.

    I’m signing off now because I’ve got to get some zzzzs before SharePonit Saturday DC Speaker dinner.

    Marcy

    • I’m sure Marcy meant “SharePoint” not “SharePonit”, but I think you got the “Point”. Keep them cards and letters coming in. Very much appreciated. — Mark and Marcy

  36. lisa says:

    Mark, I appreciate your updates. I am on a team that enforces governance…we don’t like giving our end users SharePoint Designer, or even Site Collection Administration. Our “admins” are essentially powerful contributors.

    I love sharing tips from the site, but would like to see more “out of the box” solutions that our end users can actually implement. Frequently I see that “out of the box” includes anything but opening up Visual Studio.

    If possible, I’d love to see solutions broken up – in some way – that covers solutions for site contributors, designers, those with SharePoint Designer or the know-how of jQuery, etc.

    Good luck! I look forward to see how the site will continue to be successful.

  37. akram says:

    What will be the Charges for Premium Subscription Area?

    • Not sure yet… working on having a multi-tiered structure so that individuals won’t be charged the same as companies.

      • Akram says:

        Looking for some day today business solutions which are Out of the Box without much coding.
        We the Endusers are more in numbers compared to developers.

      • Trudy says:

        I have no problem paying a subscription if I can fit it in the budget, but please don’t price me out of the good stuff! :)

        Trudy

  38. Dear Mark,

    You know I’m on-board with EUSP. I have been since I first saw it a little over a year ago; not long after I started working with SharePoint. I’m looking forward to the eBook store and new layout/tagging/silo features.

    I know that findability has been difficult on EUSP (and elsewhere online). So, whenever I write an article, I try to give it a title that matches up with the search I did online trying to find an answer to my dilemma.

    Something that I think would be helpful would be some sort of user-generated difficulty level and/or helpfulness rating. Users who register would be asked to rate their own proficiency with SharePoint, HTML, XSL, jQuery, Excel, SPD, etc. As they read articles, they could rate the articles Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced. Based on a user’s self-rating and how they had rated other articles, EUSP could make recommendations on how helpful certain articles would be: a la Netflix.

    Keep up the great work, Mark!

    Blessings,
    Jim Bob

  39. Janelle Kessler says:

    Yeah!

    I have never even HEARD of jQuery. I can also say that the rest of the items to which you refer, data view web part xsl tags and calculated columns for example, are equally mysterious. As a neophyte, will there be a place for people like me who don’t even know WHAT they might want to do with Sharepoint? I will happily subscribe to something that will give step-by-step instructions for doing the more mundane things (that even after 6 months we still can’t figure out) such as porting an access database or posting an excel spreadsheet that can be worked on by multiple users simultaneously. I like the silo idea, perhaps there can be a “silo for dummies”.
    Can’t wait!

    • Larry W. Virden says:

      For a year or more now I’ve said to those willing to listen that the biggest complaint I’ve heard from people newly exposed to SharePoint was “but what would I do with it”. The training that I typically see provided reminds me of people being taught the names and functions of the items in a kitchen. This is a stove,a blender, a food processor, a mixer, a beater, a frying pan – but without introducing the idea of planning a menu, selecting ingredients, and teaching how to saute, broil, poach, set a table, present the food on the plate, etc.

  40. Jennifer says:

    I couldn’t agree more…it seems like SharePoint is such a massive program that the simple tasks seem to be swallowed up into the black hole.
    I look forward to the changes. It would be great to see some examples of how SharePoint can be applied to common day tasks and such.
    They might seem too simple/obvious to those that have experience with the platform, but the simple things can really help out those of us who are at the beginning stages.

    BTW… this site has helped me out so much. So keep up the great work!

  41. Larry W. Virden says:

    It seems to me that, in the midst of the churn of change, it would be worthwhile to spend some time discussing wtih the “day-to-day users of SharePoint” what specific information they are generally looking for, then finding a way to highlighting the type of information they are seeking. Also, it seems like it would be useful to find a way to determine what a visitor to the site is seeking and keeping a “to do list” of items that were sought and not found, to be used by the many excellent authors on the site as fodder for new articles.

    One of the areas that I know I keep seeking is a place to go to research questions that come to the attention of a SharePoint administrator. Most sites that I’ve found to date seem to associate the term administrator with product installer/deployer. But as administrator, one has questions regularly on “why doesn’t such and such work” or perhaps looks in the volumous log files from sharepoint and associated utlities to see all the error messages – and in my case at least, spends hours searching the web in hopes of coming across some tidbit somewhere that might apply to correcting the problem. Having access to a site that deals with day to day use of SharePoint by the site’s admnistrative stafff would really be helpful.


Notify me of comments to this article:


Speak and you will be heard.

We check comments hourly.
If you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!