Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/37773
10 KEY CONSIDERATIONS FOR SHAREPOINT 2010 PORTALS • Leverage data-rich relationships: Consider, for example, that an “experience database” in your intranet can be much more than a Web display of a structured database. You can pull from Active Directory, HR systems (PeopleSoft, ADP, Ceridian, HR Perspectives), DMS and financial systems to create a much deeper view into your expertise pool. Put another way, knowing that an attorney speaks French may be valuable, but wouldn’t it be better to also see that she has billed 500 hours for a French client? And to retrieve the briefs she drafted on legal comity with France? • Use templates: The more diverse your client base, the more important it can be to implement templates. You don’t need to customize numerous individual client pages, but instead can have a scalable, sustainable client model. • Enable user-generated customization: In addition to basing permissions on practice area and case assignments, you can allow your users to subscribe to different areas of the portal. A greater sense of ownership may follow when users are empowered to design their own personal content collections and publish accordingly. 4. IMPLEMENT AN EFFECTIVE TAXONOMY PLAN. One of the key perceived goals of a new intranet is the ability to find valuable data. Enterprise search is useful for dealing with unstructured data (e.g. the mass of content on the Web), but the more structured your data is, the more effectively your users can access and use it. Incorporating a good legal taxonomy into your intranet helps keep your users from being inundated by unfiltered, full- text search result sets and makes it more likely they will find similar matters efficiently. Whether your firm already employs a taxonomy in an outdated intranet, leverages one or more third-party product’s taxonomies or has none at all (other than in a DMS), now is the ideal time to revisit this. Recommendation: Look to implement a taxonomy in your intranet that’s simple, clear, globally consistent and easy for end users to leverage. It should contain not only legal categories (such as practice area and jurisdiction) but also geography, know-how and financial/business terminology. Such diverse categories empower content-generating users to automatically publish it to all who may find it valuable, without the recipients having to be grouped in teams or workspaces. We’ve seen multinational firms with thousands of attorneys truly consolidate their content management and publication processes via their portals, while decentralizing control and fostering organic collaboration. 5. MAKE SURE YOUR SEARCH ENGINE MEETS YOUR NEEDS. As of July 2010, 50 percent of ILTA KM survey respondents did not have a firmwide enterprise search solution. Deploying a SharePoint 2010- based intranet opens up new possibilities, providing you with the following options: • Leverage the SharePoint Search Service application included in the SharePoint 2010 Enterprise framework. www.iltanet.org Portal Platforms 17