SharePoint Online is a powerful collaboration platform that can help organizations streamline workflows, improve communication, manage documents and enhance productivity. However, to balance the full benefits of SharePoint Online with manageability, it is essential to implement effective governance and user adoption practices. In this blog post, we will discuss some best practices for SharePoint Online governance and user adoption.
Define Your SharePoint Online Governance Plan
The first step in effective SharePoint Online governance is to develop a governance plan. This plan should define the roles and responsibilities of stakeholders, establish policies and procedures for managing SharePoint Online, and outline the security and compliance measures that will be put in place. The governance plan should also include guidelines for content management, user access, and customization. Try to make your governance plan focused on specifics and plan for evolving use of the platform.
For example, we would not recommend enabling and promoting every SharePoint feature on the first day. With SharePoint’s many capabilities, enabling and advocating use of too many different functions and capabilities would overwhelm users and makes governance project planning implausible, by too thinly spreading governance oversight. Begin by enabling a small portion of the capabilities corresponding to only some relevant business objectives. Start with collaboration opportunities with a small group of users as your pilot group.
Educate and Train Users
To ensure that users understand how to use SharePoint Online effectively, it is essential to provide training and education. This can include training on basic features and governance policies. Training can be provided through online resources such as posted FAQs, documents, user guides, videos, online screenshare training, or customized one-on-one training sessions.
If you’re creating a governance plan proactively, the first step is to talk with your future users to understand their content, business usage, workflows, and anticipated needs. However, SharePoint is so useful and simple to deploy that sites are frequently initiated prior to any discussion, followed by governance as a reactive afterthought. In that case, the first step remains the same: talk with your users. Identify some power users that are eager to engage. Discover how they interact with SharePoint, including what sites are available, how they navigate, how frequently they are used, who has access to them, what kinds of information are stored there, and what user frustrations arise.
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Configure SharePoint Online to Meet User Needs
Configuring SharePoint Online to meet the specific needs of your organization can dramatically improve user adoption. This can include configuring navigation, features and options, and could go as far as customizing web parts, creating custom workflows, and developing custom solutions. Customizations should be made in accordance with the governance plan to ensure that they are secure, compliant, and meet the needs of the organization. No customization should be permitted without prior governance board approval.
Remember that your strategy should be constantly tuned and refined based on a strong understanding of your particular business requirements. Adapt your policies (content restrictions, permissions, knowledge rights management policies, and so on) to fit the organizational priorities by following a consistent and open change management process.
Establish a Communication Plan
A communication plan should be put in place to inform users about new features, changes in governance policies, and other important information related to SharePoint Online. This plan should include regular communication through email, newsletters, and other channels. Make sure to obtain their feedback using venues such as the intranet, community sites and polls, as well as data such as lookup metrics — and take their suggestions seriously.
Develop a Content Management Strategy
A content management strategy should be implemented to ensure that SharePoint Online content is organized, searchable, and functions optimally. This can include refining metadata and tagging and metadata definition policies, establishing content retention and disposition policies, and providing guidance on content creation and management. Avoid rushing through migrations by simply transferring all the information from the source environment into the target. Instead, use metadata to categorize your content based on category, type, relevance, age, success, team, geography, and other factors and define content types to capture the metadata and document retention and disposition policies.
Monitor and Manage SharePoint Online Usage
SharePoint Online usage should be monitored and managed to ensure that governance policies are being followed, and the platform is being used effectively. This can include monitoring usage reports for content growth, user activity, and security policies. Regular audits should be conducted to ensure that SharePoint Online is secure, compliant, and meeting the needs of the organization. You can make informed decisions about where to spend time and money if you can see and surface concrete analytics for management.
Develop a Plan for Ongoing Maintenance and Support
SharePoint Online requires ongoing maintenance and support to ensure that it continues to meet your organization’s needs. This can include regular updates, to ensure it has a fresh look with accurate up-to-date information on the intranet. An ongoing support plan should be developed to ensure that SharePoint Online remains secure, compliant, and effective. The hard work is done when the site comes online, but it does not mean that improvements should stop. Governance teams can help push your SharePoint projects’ major development and additional stages forward.
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In conclusion, effective SharePoint Online governance and user adoption require a well-defined governance plan, education and training and periodic configuration to meet user needs, communication, content management, monitoring and management of usage, compliance, and ongoing maintenance and support. By following these best practices, organizations can ensure that SharePoint Online is secure, compliant, and effective in meeting their collaboration and productivity needs.
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