Enforce Governance by Provisioning Sites with Workflows

Ed Hild Microsoft http://blogs.msdn.com/edhild edhild@microsoft.com Technology Architect at the Microsoft

Technology Center. Author of Pro SharePoint Solution Development. Callout in the SharePoint Best Practices book.

Agenda

Review some vocabulary Why managing site provisioning is

important Site provisioning examples:

Out-of-the-Box Self Service Provisioning Using a Visual Studio .NET workflow Using SharePoint Designer Leveraging the Out-of-the-box workflows

Review

Vocabulary:Site versus Site Collection

Customers

Customer A Customer B Customer C

Project 1

Project 2

Project 3

Project 4

Project 5

Vocabulary:Important facts about site collections Can be provisioned at a

managed path Content must reside

within a single content database

Supports quotas Defines an inheritance

tree for security Supports site use

confirmation and deletion

DB

A B C

1 2 3 4 5

Vocabulary:Questions to ask yourself At what level will quotas be maintained? Are there different SLAs for different

customers? Do we need to distribute content across content

databases? Do I have to prevent accidental access across

customers or projects? Will the customer sites require their own

developed web parts? What will the naming conventions be for URLs?

Worst Practice:ie What not to do Don’t build out your taxonomy without

answering the previous questions. You may have difficulty meeting SLA Backup and Recovery procedures may be untimely You could run into scalability problems You may not be able to use OOB capability to help

you identify stale content You may not be in a position to enforce governance

policies

Vocabulary:Out-of-the-Box Provisioning Controls Site Collections

Self service site creation Turned on or off in Central Admin for a Web

Application Allows user to create site collections within managed

paths Allow user to specify title, URL, and template

Sites Permissions granted within the top-level site Allows user to specify title, URL, and template

Demo

SELF-SERVICE SITE PROVISIONING

Best Practice: Configure self-service site provisioning to create site collections for ad-hoc collaboration processes.

Vocabulary:Defining Governance “Governance develops and manages

consistent, cohesive policies, processes and decision-rights for a given area of responsibility.”

“Governance makes decisions that define expectations, grant power, or verify performance.”

Wikipedia.org 1/24/2008

Envisioning a Better Way

Enable the user to self provision sites but in a constrained way particular to their business process URL naming convention Selection of template Different approval paths Control security settings Audit log

Allow the environment to support different provisioning processes

Demo

PROVISIONING WITH A VS.NET WORKFLOW

Developers can use Visual Studio to create workflows that define a process for site provisioning adding approvals, auditing, and control.

Key Concepts

VS.NET developers can construct a workflow made up of activities

Built using MOSS SDK template if using VS.NET 2005 or the VSTO template in VS.NET 2008

A code activity can create site collections Best Practices:

Use the Contact helper class RunWithElevatedPrivileges Deploy as a Solution/Feature

Demo

PROVISIONING USING SHAREPOINT DESIGNER

SharePoint Designer can be extended to provide site collection administrators the ability to define workflows for the creation of sub-sites.

Key Concepts

Developers can deploy new activities that will integrate into SharePoint Designer

SharePoint Designer workflows are built “in production”

SharePoint Designer workflows are built against a specific list or library

Best Practice: Incorporate SPD workflows as point solutions

created by end-users not enterprise-wide workflows

Demo

PROVISIONING USING OUT-OF-THE-BOX WORKFLOWS

You can simplify supporting multiple provisioning processes by leveraging the Out-of-the-Box workflows and extending them with an extra step.

Key Concepts

You can’t modify the code of the OOB workflows

Best Practices: Analyze perspective workflows to see if you can

generalize them to this OOB+ pattern Use the Content Approval flag to know when an

OOB workflow has completed and then an event handler

Storing the provisioning settings externally in another list adds flexibility

Review

Most organizations want to add control to how sites and site collections get created URL naming convention Selection of template Different approval paths Control security settings Audit log

Workflows can support process for provisioning

Resources Governance Information for SharePoint Server 2007

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/office/sharepointserver/bb507202.aspx

Provisioning a site collection with a custom VS.NET workflowhttp://blogs.msdn.com/edhild/archive/2007/03/03/how-to-create-a-site-collection-in-a-workflow.aspx

Custom filter provider web parthttp://blogs.msdn.com/edhild/archive/2007/03/28/how-to-build-a-custom-filter-provider-web-part.aspx

Building Custom Activities for Use in SharePoint 2007http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb629922.aspx

Leveraging Out-of-the-Box workflows for site provisioninghttp://blogs.msdn.com/edhild/pages/using-oob-workflows-to-provision-sites.aspx

Resources

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