Case Study:SharePoint As A Service

Delivery Management Platform

Brian Mair (MCT)Co-founder, Principal Consultant – Born Solutions Ltd

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Why this case?

Agenda•Ark Relocation – the company•Their situation and requirements•The solution•The challenges

Born Solutions Ltd

Ark Relocation• Specialty: Shanghai-headquartered China destination

specialists

• Clients: Foreign nationals (assignees) relocating to China and Hong Kong for assignments or long-term postings

• Founded: 2006

• Services: Move Management, Immigration, School Search, Orientation counseling, Airport transfer, Etc.…400+

Born Solutions Ltd

The Situation• File server for document storage

• Email for file sharing between SH/HK

• Steady growth since 2006, expanded set of services

• Outgrown their legacy move management software

• Subscribed to Office 365 for email

Born Solutions Ltd

Requirements• Manage detailed information about their partners,

clients and assignees• Have remote access to company and internal project

documents• Ability to manage each relocation like a project• Ability to select a unique set of services for each

project, and then track project tasks with scheduled reminders• Ability to securely share documents, calendar and other

information with clients• Migration of legacy PM/CRM data, and documents

Born Solutions Ltd

The Solution – Ark Relocation Portal•Contact management•Project management•Service design and delivery

Born Solutions Ltd

Contact Management

Contact Management• 1,200 companies (assignee companies, relocation partners)• 2,500 assignees• Other contacts• Total > 5,000

• Contacts are assigned to:• Project Assignee• Project Relocation Partner• Project Orientation Counselor• Immigration Officer• Etc.

• Contacts need follow-up remindersBorn Solutions Ltd

Contact ManagementOne contacts list, multiple content types

Born Solutions Ltd

Self-referencing Lookup Columns

Born Solutions Ltd

Related items on contact display form

For companies, shows contacts/assignees

For parent companies, shows locations

Born Solutions Ltd

Project Contacts

Born Solutions Ltd

…a list on each project site, used as a project contact directory.

One lookup column to the main contact list

Contact Management (SharePoint vs Exchange)• Exchange Advantages

• Outlook accessible• Mobile accessible

Born Solutions Ltd

• SharePoint Advantages• Rich SharePoint interface (sort, filter, views, quick

edit)• Search• Export to Excel, Alerts, Versioning, Open in Outlook,

Etc.• CRM: References from other lists, such as:

• Opportunities, Contracts, Invoices, Expenses, Timesheets• BI• Extensibility

* With custom app, can sync SharePoint contacts to Exchange GAL

*

Extensibility…Contact follow-up reminders

• Custom app runs once a day• Checks for contacts with follow-up date on or before today• Sends email notification to those assigned to follow up

Born Solutions Ltd

Reminders

Contact Management - Summary• Customized contacts list on top site• Multiple content types• Self-referencing lookups• Related items web parts on contact display form• Contact follow-up reminders

Project Management

Project Management• Each assignee is a project• 250 projects/year• Each project needs a site• Each project has:• Project Contacts• Internal Documents• Client Shared Documents• Calendar• Project Services/Project Tasks• Appointments, Trips, Dependents, Etc.• Newsfeeds

Born Solutions Ltd

Projects list

Site Creator

Born Solutions Ltd

Project Site

Born Solutions Ltd

Email/Attachment Filing

Born Solutions Ltd

Emails saved to project site library

Born Solutions Ltd

Project Management - Summary• Project Centre site

• Projects list with links to Contacts list

• Controlled project site creation based on site template

• Project sites, navigable from projects list

• Ability to save emails and attachments to project sites

Born Solutions Ltd

Service Design and Delivery

Service Design• Service Design, by the Services Designer on the top site• Service Types• Services• Service Tasks• Task Documents

Born Solutions Ltd

Service Design

Born Solutions Ltd

Service Design

Born Solutions Ltd

• Each service can have associated tasks

• Each task can have associated documents

Task Generator Actions

Born Solutions Ltd

Service Design – Summary• Services are grouped by service type

• A service can have one or more associated tasks

• A task can have one or more associated documents

• Each task document can be either a reference document, or one that is copied to the project site when project tasks are generated for the project

Born Solutions Ltd

Service Delivery (project execution)• Service Delivery, by the Assignee Manager• Select project services• Generate:• Project Services

• Project Tasks

• Task Documents

Born Solutions Ltd

Service Delivery

Project Services Selector Tool

Born Solutions Ltd

Service Delivery

The Services Selector tool has add the selected services, related tasks, and documents to the project site

Born Solutions Ltd

Generated Task

Born Solutions Ltd

Task Rollup• Custom add-in

• Runs hourly

• Consolidates tasks from all project sites

• Includes manager of those assigned to task

• Views include:• All tasks• Completed• Upcoming• Late• My Tasks• My

Subordinates• Calendar

Born Solutions Ltd• Email reminders have been setup for this list for due/overdue tasks

Service Delivery - Summary• Services are selected and added to the project site

using the Services Selector tool

• Service-related tasks and documents are copied to the project site

• Tasks are then managed, tracked using Task Rollup views and due/overdue reminders

Born Solutions Ltd

Challenges

Challenges• List view threshold• Some user-pain moving from a traditional file server to

SharePoint – mainly attachments• Calendar overlay URLs can’t be updated

programmatically• SharePoint built-in lookup field interface in need of

improvement• Office 365 “new experience” detrimental effect on third-

party add-in • Content Types and calculated fields

Born Solutions Ltd

Not OOTBFeature Technology Why?

Site Creator Provider-hosted SharePoint Add-in

Create sites/folders in a strictly controlled manner

Services selector Windows Forms app Provide a rich interface for adding services and tasks to each project site

Plumsail Cross-site Lookup

Third party SharePoint Add-in Improved lookup field interface

Content Query Reminder

Provider-hosted SharePoint Add-in

SharePoint doesn’t support time or complex condition based alerts/notifications

Task Rollup Provider-hosted SharePoint Add-in

Unique requirement

Outlook Attachments Tool

VSTO Add-in for Outlook SharePoint still clumsy with attachments

Summary• Manage detailed information about their partners,

clients and assignees• Have remote access to company and internal project

documents• Ability to manage each relocation like a project• Ability to select a unique set of services for each

project, and then track project tasks with scheduled reminders• Ability to securely share documents, calendar and other

information with clients

Questions? / Thank you