SharePoint-Videos.com hosted a webinar titled “Conquer the Chaos Of SharePoint End User Support” on Thursday, February 6, 2014. Over 200 people attended this hour long presentation by Asif Rehmani, SharePoint MVP and MCT. Some of the questions submitted by attendees presented the familiar problems often accompanying the dark side of SharePoint adoptions. So it makes sense to devout a post to this blog on the topic. If you fear your organization resides on the dark side of a SharePoint adoption campaign, and need to confirm your concern, here are some points to look for: “We have a questionnaire we use…
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User Adoption
A Training Portal Can Be a Useful Feature of a SharePoint Adoption Strategy
The Productivity Hub is not available for SharePoint 2013, but SharePoint communities looking to add a training portal feature to a farm can incorporate the features required to deliver a lot of the benefits with our SharePoint End User Video Tutorial Sets. It may be useful to describe where a training portal makes sense. After all, most of our content is attractive to SharePoint communities in need of an in-context, on demand system of exposing training content to SharePoint users. But we think it makes sense to build a training program for SharePoint users responsible for so-called “higher” level tasks:…
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SharePoint Adoption Strategies Benefit When Users are Trained to Implement New Methods
When an organization’s computing infrastructure already includes SharePoint, it makes sense for the IT Department, and even Line of Business (LoB) units to evaluate the suitability of SharePoint for any of a wide range of enterprise objectives. The key ingredient, regardless of the plan, will likely be user training. We market a help system for SharePoint, VisualSP™, which is designed to support precisely the type of training effort promising to contribute to a successful SharePoint user adoption campaign. If readers need some background on this point, I would point them to SharePoint user adoption planning & tips – Part 1….
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If you have a stake in the success of a SharePoint implementation, then user adoption is still a big deal
A number of colleagues have lately spoken about a diminished importance for SharePoint user adoption as an activity worth pursuing. But I think any member in an organization with a stake in the success of an implementation of SharePoint has to be concerned with user adoption. Bottom line: if end users do not use SharePoint computing options, then almost any rationale for implementing the platform will likely fail. No on wants a potentially expensive project like an implementation of SharePoint to fail. So user adoption is likely to be a very important consideration for any stakeholder in SharePoint success. We…
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Organizations Supporting a Mix of SharePoint Versions Benefit from Online Video Training Options
For organizations with a mix of SharePoint® server versions, group subscriptions to online video training content are a sensible method of providing administrators, developers, and systems architects with the technical training content they require to successfully support all SharePoint users. One might ask “when does it make sense to support a mix of SharePoint server versions?” The best answer to this question is when a migration plan is still under consideration. In this scenario, the proof of concept still hasn’t been verified, so it doesn’t makes sense to move an entire organization over to a new server platform. Usually a…
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Custom, Organization-Specific Apps May Help Hasten End User Adoption of SharePoint 2013
On Thursday, November 21, 2013, SharePoint-Videos debuted a new video tutorial set, “SharePoint 2013: Beginning Development”. This tutorial set is available for purchase for either individual viewing, or for unlimited viewing by groups. “SharePoint 2013: Beginning Development” can be useful to any organization looking to hasten end user adoption of SharePoint 2013 with Apps specifically developed for the organization. End users will more quickly adopt new methods of processing work, like storing documents in shared libraries in SharePoint 2013, rather than in file folders, or replacing email updates with list updates on SharePoint team sites, when the new methods are…
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Any Useful End User Training System for SharePoint 2013 Should Include Familiarized Content
SharePoint end users will be more likely to assimilate technical training content if the content includes familiar features of their daily computing environment. SharePoint stakeholders should, therefore, seriously consider the pros and cons of building this type of training content for their communities of SharePoint users. A community of end users trained in the technical steps required, of them, to successfully accomplish their work in a SharePoint 2013 computing environment, are much more likely to adopt the SharePoint computing experience, and, therefore, can make a much more meaningful contribution to return on investment in the platform. When higher levels of…
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On the Imperative of a Successful Adoption Campaign for SharePoint 2013
Stakeholders in an implementation of SharePoint Server 2013 should approach the task of persuading end users to adopt the platform as an imperative. If the participants in the adoption campaign lack a sense of urgency, the possibility of a failed effort may substantially increase, which should be an unacceptable outcome. Why the urgency? Simply put, SharePoint 2013, like any of its competitors in the market for enterprise collaboration, or document management, is not an inexpensive solution. The benefits of the system cannot be realized if end users abandon it for other methods. The danger of abandonment is high. In fact,…
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Any Successful Adoption Program for SharePoint 2013 Must Include a User Friendly Query Feature for Site Search
Managed properties for the search service of SharePoint Server 2013 do not conform to fuzzy logic. This is potentially a very serious limitation for SharePoint stakeholders determined to prod end users to adopt the computing platform. Ostensibly, the advanced search box feature of the query component of the SharePoint 2013 search service can help end users be more successful with their search queries. After all, end users cannot be expected to remember the exact name of managed properties. So serving them with a highly detailed, complex advanced search interface should go far to provide them with better support for their…
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Project Management Applications for SharePoint 2013 Drive User Adoption of the Computing Platform
In the first two video segments of our series, SharePoint 2013: Project Management, Dux Raymond Sy, PMP, SharePoint MVP, and author of “SharePoint 2010 Project Management” provides a lot of factual information about popular methods of managing projects in the United States. Two points we found interesting were the following: eMail is the most popular automated tool organizations use to manage projects, per the Project Management Institute Project Management applications represent the most popular reason organizations cite for deciding to implement SharePoint So, organizations looking to drive user adoption for SharePoint should think about opportunities to use the platform as…
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