I recently had yet another client who had used SharePoint like a filing cabinet. They wanted me to migrate everything to their new Office 365 site. The mess I found was disheartening. Around 180 subsites were created as the client created one for each little thing, client site, department, project, library, etc. There were also over 150 libraries! Needless to say, the migration and cleanup would be significant. The resulting cost, of course, was dismaying to the client.
I cannot imagine administering a site like this as the plethora of libraries, redundant metadata (46 columns to change for office locations!), navigation challenges, etc. was mind boggling. Nowhere was a single site column used, nor any hint of Enterprise metadata. No Document sets, no views, no grouping, not even sorting was being employed! No wonder the staff was intimidated by the site! It was a maze that no one wanted to enter!
I cannot stress the importance of investing the time and effort in planning your site. A site hierarchy map (even a simple bullet list of sites, subsites and content (libraries, web parts, etc), can be immensely helpful to an architect and make building the site much easier for all involved. With proper identification of metadata in each library, site columns and Enterprise metadata can be set up to consolidate changes in multiple libraries to a single task. Lists and Libraries are among the most powerful tools SharePoint offers in a collaborative environment making sharing and administration light years easier for all involved.
SharePoint and Office 365 are not create and forget tools. Just like any system, it requires constant administration. In an ideal world, each subsite and list\library would have an administrator assigned to them. Unfortunately, one person usually gets assigned the entire kit & kaboodle as site admin. This can be a lot of work in a large site.
When creating a library or list, please understand the following concepts in your design (and PLEASE minimize folders!):
- Use Site Columns for commonly used metadata like Office Locations
- Use Enterprise keywords where people use multiple related terms for an item
- Use Grouping and filtering instead of folders to present items of a certain category or date range or by people or department
- Use Views in other ways to present your data instead of a myriad of folders.
- Use Document Sets to present related items from different libraries as if they are one library (do not duplicate items in multiple libraries!)
- Administer your library and it’s workflows to save administration, speed up searches and aid future migrations.
These few steps can save you all kinds of headaches down the road, especially when you hire a consultant to migrate to a newer site. It will save you money and the consultant a lot of time.