I Can’t Find It!

As a Director and Team Leader for various SharePoint deployments in a career that has spanned over twenty years on this platform alone (hello SharePoint Team Services 2001!), I have been able to re-organize existing and/or new installations of SharePoint in the most effective, productive way to find and reuse the information. And the single most complaint I get from all users when I am starting a new project is, “I just can’t find anything!”

Organizing SharePoint is a daunting task, but I approach the task in stages… First we must:

• discover what is out there,
• is it current,
• who owns it,
• is it needed still or can it be archived,
• create a mapping for migration,
• and plan for improved "findability".

Once we have this information we start to categorize it based on the organizational structure and/or the function that the information helps to provide for. We must also take a look at how search capabilities within SharePoint or the enterprise are going to return the queries made for it — so we must look at what content types and meta-data needs to be associated with it.

Next we must, from early in the project, engage the end users to ensure they can easily find things within the new structure. This will take time, and users have to make time for it too, which isn’t often easy or valued as it should be. So often we quickly dismiss this task in the name of “I don’t have time for this right now!” And we’ll put it off… and off… and off. And then when you looks its been two years and you are deeper in the weeds because you failed to look at structuring your information when you should have.

At times I will be your best friend, but at other times I am your worst nightmare. Some may like me, some may hate me… but in the end your work life will be improved tremendously and your productivity will also be increased from when you first met me. Getting folks to change the way they’ve been doing things is always a tough endeavor and one that is not so easily adopted. But you can all agree… when you can’t FIND what you need to FIND quickly enough, you cannot be as productive as you should be. And if you can’t be productive, the person that is waiting for you to finish your task can’t be either, and the person waiting on that person… etc. etc.

So you see as we so often realize, “Finding has becoming the new doing!” And making finding what you need easier and faster is going to hurt… but like when you rips a band-aid off, its been when you just right to it.