Sharepoint 2010 : Putting Your Site on the Web - Additional Features

So, you’ve seen some of the key improvements made with existing SharePoint content management functionality. But there’s actually a lot more. SharePoint 2010 has added some additional functionality that now offer more compelling reasons to consider SharePoint for Internet-facing content. Let’s look at a few.

Content Organizer

This is a new tool with SharePoint 2010. It allows you to define rules-based logic to help determine where new content should be placed on your Web site. First, let’s look at how to enable it. Under Site Settings, pick the Content Organizer Rules. If you don’t see it under Site Settings, it may not be activated. Go to Site Features and activate it. See Figure 1 to see where this is located.

Figure 1. You can define content organizer rules by selecting the appropriate link under Site Settings

Rules can be based on any fields available to you on the specific page. These rules can help define where new content will be placed. Think of it like a wizard that understands your site topology. Figure 2 shows an example of a rules creation page.

Figure 2. Users can create rules to determine where new content will be placed on the Web site

This is a nice way of controlling how new content is placed on your Web site. By setting up a few key rules, you can dictate the automatic placement of new content on your Web site. This allows a consistency in how content is presented and maintained by enforcing an overall topology for content.

Managed Metadata

We’ve already talked about one of the key themes in SharePoint 2010—a richer user experience. Well, another important theme is metadata. What does metadata have to do with WCM? Lots. Metadata can be used to provide another means of getting to specific Web content, specifically through search. Don’t expect your users to always work their way through your page navigation. They’ll want “shortcuts” to key content by simply entering a keyword in the search box. That’s where metadata fits in. SharePoint 2010 offers a new Column called Managed Metadata. This lets your users tag pages with the keywords from a defined set and therefore offer an alternate means to getting at Web content. Figure 3 shows an example of how you would tag a page with known keywords.

Figure 3. Users can create metadata tags for specific pages, thus increasing their “findability” in search

User Ratings

Have you been on sites such as MSDN where you can rate the page that you’re on (typically 1–5 stars)? This has become a core part of most Internet sites that interact with customers. You’ve seen this on sites like Netflix.com and Amazon.com. SharePoint 2010 now offers the same type of functionality. There’s a new field Column that you can enable for your Pages library that will automatically offer the display (and tracking) of a page rating. This is the traditional 1–5 stars (where 1 is the lowest rating and 5 is the highest). This has been a core piece of other ECM products for some time and is now a part of SharePoint as well. While this is not something that should be used on every page, it does offer a good feedback mechanism for core content sites that are customer-focused.

Note that user ratings do not work out of the box with anonymous access, so if you plan to use them on your Internet site, you will need to configure usage accordingly.

Web Reporting and Analytics

For those of you who are interested in who is coming to your Web site, where are they navigating, what are they looking for (and if they are finding it!), and what is the more popular content, SharePoint 2010 offers some very compelling tools for analysis. The usage analysis tools in MOSS 2007 have been replaced with a new Web Analytics service that tracks and reports user activity. There is a collection of Web Parts that comes with SharePoint 2010 that will show you this data. There is also an ability to define alerts associated with key usage data so you can be notified when, for example, a search is executed and no results are returned. Note that SharePoint 2010 does not offer trending analysis and is more focused on click activity for specific users.

Social Networking

Yes, social networking functionality should be considered as you look at Web Content Management. Why? Today, with highly popular Web sites like FaceBook and LinkedIn, users have come to expect a sense of community when repeatedly visiting a Web site. Offering core functionality like bookmarking, setting ratings, tagging, and even a personal page will entice users to visit your Web site often. SharePoint 2010 has core social networking tools that will enable you to turn this functionality for a subset or a complete collection of users. You may even leverage things like workflow to allow content submission from external users and an approval process for accepting and sharing it.