Co-Authoring in Microsoft SharePoint

Lindsey Robbins — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 20:55:00 GMT

Authoring in SharePoint – a world unto its own for those of you brave enough to venture into adding web parts, setting up sites and workspaces, and playing around with site settings. I find it’s often more like a treasure hunt than a systematic process. I’m not entirely complaining; I have had the opportunity to keep some skills fresh including the creation of a wiki for my team’s internal documentation.

However, I’ve been thinking recently about SharePoint and the concept of community or team authoring. I find if you’re tasked with authoring a SharePoint site, at minimum get regular feedback and at best get a couple of co-authors. Why?

Well as an example, another fun role I have at Blackbaud is on a voluntary team of employees who promote philanthropy and volunteerism within the organization. Participating on Team Blackbaud – Charleston is rewarding in so many ways but especially within context of our corporate value that Service to Others Makes the World a Better Place.

One of my fun tasks for Team Blackbaud – Charleston has been to update our SharePoint website. We encourage opportunities to volunteer, recognize employees’ philanthropic achievements, and promote our philanthropic quarterly initiatives. We need to educate, advertise, and encourage participation. But, for a while I was the only one working on the page. I’m not saying I’m terrible at SharePoint web design but I did learn that if you only have one perspective (and limited time to devote to the site) you can quickly find yourself on a sinking ship. We started off small and received input. However, with every quarter we kept adding content to our page. A year later and we suddenly had this lightbulb moment where we realized the page wasn’t working for us. It wasn’t achieving the desired result.

How to clean up an out of control page?

#1 – Get a couple people to thoroughly evaluate the website including an evaluation of what the desired result would be. If you have some subject matter experts in design, by all means solicit their help.

#2 – Find Help! We decided to change this position on Team Blackbaud – Charleston this year from one person to two. And instead of being the main contributer, I’m stepping back to a more supportive role. If you work on something too long, you can easily lose that fresh perspective.

#3 – Don’t let a page sit static for too long, keep the feedback ongoing and the content engaging.

#4 – If all else above fails, just delete everything and start from scratch. Seems drastic but if your site isn’t being used because it’s so unfriendly, then what do you really have to lose?

If we have some success re-inventing our site, I’ll be sure to share our results with you.

In the meantime, remember that your time and skills can be just as valuable to a nonprofit as your wallet!

Chatterbox : SharePoint

Co-Authoring in Microsoft SharePoint