The SharePoint Shared Service Centre



  • I work for a company where they finished a Documentum to SharePoint migration in February. Documents were migrated into SharePoint site collections and sites, preserving the hierarchy and metadata as much as possible.

    So now we're on SharePoint, and several site owners are starting to explore the new features that SharePoint offers. Think of custom lists, additional fields, some workflow features, things like that. Overall people seem to appreciate it, although I haven't asked everyone (as the company has people on all continents).

    Customizing a site on SharePoint is easy. If you want to add a column to a list, just click the "Add column" button and tell SharePoint what you want. If you want something changed to the settings of a document library, you just go into the settings and turn the knobs to your liking. It's really simple and anyone with a bit of a brain should be capable of doing so just fine.

    However, recently someone thought it would be a good idea to "make the life of SharePoint site owners easier". A Manila-based "SharePoint Shared Service Centre" is being created, for which a couple of people will be hired - including a service manager. By now, the project is well in its execution phase.

    Scenario: I, as a site owner, want a new column in my list

    Currently, it works like this:

    1. I click on the "Add column" button and specify what I want
    2. Click "Create". BAM, done, field is there

    In the future, it will go something like this:

    1. I have to go to the IT Services Request Site (ISRS)
    2. Find the correct form in a gigantic list of InfoPath forms. There are over 500 forms there, which includes everything from requesting a new keyboard up to physically building a new data centre!
    3. Wait for the form to load, fill in a dozen fields that sometimes have cryptic labels and whose definition of a "Required field" does not always match the expectation
    4. Submit the request, which could even require approval from my manager and/or the "service manager"
    5. Some guy in Manila receives the request in his mailbox, he starts working on it. If I specified everything correctly that is, otherwise my request will simply be rejected and I have to file a new one.
    6. I have to check that the change has been done correctly. If not, I have to file a seperate correction request - once again I have to specify what I want, but this time even more clearly than before.

    Great work, guys. You're really making it easier for me... :facepalm:



  • @AlexMedia said:

    all continents

    ALL of them? Including Antarctica?



  • Yes, even Antarctica.



  • @AlexMedia said:

    all continents

    Does this include mythical lost continents?



  • @AlexMedia said:

    Great work, guys. You're really making it easier for me...

    I have observed that Microsloth loves making peoples lives "easier".



  • What, no XML?
    Then it is clearly not enterprisey enough.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @nerd4sale said:

    What, no XML?

    There's plenty of XML inside the belly of Sharepoint (e.g., in lots of the documents that have been shared). You just don't see it directly. The :wtf:s are at a higher-level here…


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