Day 1: Some preliminary information
At this point it is impossible to determine how individual pieces of the puzzle will work, but we can easily foresee the end result. Before our first official progress report, it is important to provide a bit of info about the current application and how this small project was structured.
A brief description of the current application
The current site is a standard asp.net application. It contains quite a few aspx files and a bunch of user controls. The blogs are hosted in Community Server. The application database (SQL Server) has a simple schema and is very effective in what it does. It is a .net app after all.
The application consists of the following primary elements:
- Articles
- Advertisements
- Authors
- Newsletters
- Blogs
- Links
- Surveys
We will cover some of them as we move forward with the implementation. The application code is new to the team, so we will refine our understanding of the functionality currently provided as we complete our analysis of the application in the next couple of days. Something important to note is that the app does not contain the blogs themselves, but only references and summaries for them. The blogs are handled by Community Server.
Implementing Sharepoint
As Sharepoint 2007 adoption has increased, the amount of material available for development teams has grown proportionally. While there are many good guides scattered across the site, and a lot of specific posts as to how implementation specific features work, Microsoft provides what we think is one of the most comprehensive implementation guides here. The guide covers most aspects that are important to a successful implementation.
Having said that, given the timeframe in which the site needs to be designed, the team decided to take a less structured approach that includes progress on a number of fronts before core functionality (i.e. content types, workflows, site hierarchy) is included.
We structured the work in the following areas:
- Look and Feel: Sharepoint Theme, Content Management Strategy.
- Sharepoint: Content Types, Workflows and Security.
- Site Structure: Design, Navigability, and Information Architecture.
As we move forward, we will report progress in those areas.
The future state
So, how is the site supposed to end up looking? Here is a preview.
Next, our first progress report!