Determine number of users and user types

Applies To: Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

Topic Last Modified: 2016-05-06

In this article:

• Determine number of users

• Identify how users will interact with sites

• Determine user access requirements

• Worksheet

Part of understanding your organization's needs is to understand your users. How many users do you have in your organization? Will they all be using your sites based on Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 at the same time, and for the same reasons? Are there special requirements in your environment that you need to plan for?

This article prompts you to ask questions about your users to help you determine not only server capacity, but also any special features or settings you need to incorporate into your sites.

Determine number of users

Step one in understanding your users is to estimate how many users will use your SharePoint sites. Considerations include:

• How many users in total do you expect to use your sites?

• How many users do you expect to use your sites concurrently?

Identify how users will interact with sites

Step two is to identify how users will interact with your SharePoint sites. Identify what percentage of users you expect to use specific feature sets in your sites. Considerations include:

• Communication   Will users view announcements, calendars, and so on, or contribute items to those lists?

• Collaboration   Will users add or change items in task lists or discussion boards?

• Document storage   Will users save to document libraries, or check documents in and out?

• Search   Will users search for people, content, or information in the sites?

• Third-party and earlier systems integration   Will users query for data in a database to display in a list or Web Part?

Determine user access requirements

Step three is to determine any special access requirements that your users might need. Most of these requirements must be taken into account when configuring your servers and making authentication choices. Considerations include:

• Remote access   Do users need to access your sites from outside of your domain?

• Internet access   Do you need to expose your sites to the Internet?

• Mobile access   Do users need to be able to access your site from a mobile device, such as a mobile phone?

• Offline capabilities   Do users need to be able to take the content offline and work on it when not connected to your sites?

• Anonymous users   Do you require users to be able access the site anonymously?

Worksheet

Use the following worksheet to determine the number of users and user types:

• Users and user types worksheet (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=798133&clcid=0x409)