Identify users and analyze document usage (SharePoint Foundation 2010)

Applies to: SharePoint Foundation 2010

The first step to plan your document management solution is to identify users and analyze how documents are used. This article provides guidance to identify users and analyze document usage for your solution that is based on Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010.

In this article:

• Identify users

• Analyze document usage

• Worksheets

Before reading this article, you should understand the document management planning process described in Document management overview (SharePoint Foundation 2010).

Identify users

To identify the stakeholders and participants in your document management solution, you can use a survey to collect this information. For example, your survey might contain the following questions:

• Who in your organization creates documents?

• What kinds of documents do they create?

• What role does the user of the document have?

  • Who reviews documents?

  • Who edits documents?

  • Who uses documents?

  • Who approves the publication of documents?

  • Who designs Web sites used for hosting documents?

  • Who deploys and maintains the servers on which documents are stored?

Identifying content stakeholders can help you ensure that your document management solution is comprehensive and that you design sites and document libraries that suit your enterprise's content needs and processes.

Analyze document usage

After you identify your content stakeholders, collect information from them that will help you analyze how documents are used in your organization. This is an important part of the planning process because the analysis helps you determine the following:

• How document libraries should be structured.

• Which site templates to use.

• How many sites you will need.

• Which physical server topology you will need to implement your solution.

The information to collect includes:

• Document type, such as equity research note, employee performance review, internal memo, or product specification.

• The purpose of each document type, such as "provides customers with recommendations about equities along with supporting data."

• The author of each document type (it is helpful to list the role of the author — such as "financial analyst or "product manager" — rather than individual names).

• The users of each document type, such as "customers" or "team members."

• The format of the document. If the document has to be converted from one format to another at any point in its life cycle, record that information.

• Other roles that apply to the document's life cycle, such as "technical reviewer" or "copy editor."

• Location of the document, such as "client computer," "Web server," or "file server." Note that this question could have multiple answers, for example when a document is authored on a client computer and then published to a Web server.

The following are examples of information that might be collected and recorded in the worksheet from two different organizations in an enterprise.

Analysis   The separate authoring and publishing formats require a format conversion. The large number of reviewers requires one or more workflows (business processes implemented on the server). The two sites (authoring and testing) require mechanisms for moving the content from one site to another.

Analysis   Two authors and multiple reviewers require one or more workflows.

Worksheets

Use the following worksheets to record the information discussed in this article:

• Document management participants worksheet (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkId=165871)

• Analyze document usage worksheet for SharePoint Foundation 2010 (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkId=219646)