Many organizations rely heavily on Microsoft SharePoint, a powerful tool for knowledge management/sharing and collaboration, for a wide range of purposes:
- Storage and sharing of documents among members of Practice Groups;
- Project management;
- Delivery of training programs and materials;
- Online publishing of manuals and instructional tools;
- Management of projects and ongoing programs, including tracking of participation and the data that teams and initiatives generate;
- Collaboration among Practice Groups;
and many other functions.
While your IT group provides the basic infrastructure support for SharePoint, it may or may not have the resources to train or advise business users on how to adapt SharePoint to their needs. As a result, SharePoint may only be used as a passive, unmanaged storage repository for random documents — a content graveyard for material that is never used or shared.
Peter Dorfman has turned ordinary SharePoint Team Sites into applications, to:
- Display management information in a dashboard format, to track policy compliance
- Store practice group news in an attractive blog-like archive, for reference from the company intranet
- Republish book-length policy manuals as interactive web sites
- Display interactive knowledge bases, e.g. on the application of various laws in different countries
- Process requests, e.g. for approval of expenses or promotional travel by third parties
- Deliver training in a “distance learning” format, using SharePoint as a “learning management system”
and many other applications
Peter Dorfman Creative Services 