The search experience within SharePoint has a huge impact on user experience.

SharePoint search can be difficult to manage because it has many moving parts: quantity of source documents, site structure, metadata, permissions and document lifecycle management as well as ongoing governance. There are often multiple stakeholders with differing priorities and approaches.

This report provides a straightforward SharePoint search approach to meet user expectations now and in the future.

FREE REPORT

6 SECRETS TO EFFECTIVE SHAREPOINT SEARCH

Updating Active Directory on a Surface

SEARCH AND DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT

Poor document management practices can often lead to a poor search experience. When your SharePoint search is not working it is almost always because of one or more of the following:

  1. Poorly structured document libraries
  2. Lack of metadata
  3. Outdated and duplicated documents
  4. Issues with permissions
  5. Incorrect search settings

Thanks to Google, employees have high expectations when it comes to search speed and relevance of results. WebVine are SharePoint Document Management experts, with experience in solving a wide range of search and information surfacing challenges.

Show me the employee that is happy
with their enterprise search!

Sam Marshall,
Governance Still Matters in a Digital Workplace

OPTIMISING SHAREPOINT SEARCH

Setting up SharePoint for effective document management and optimal search requires planning – it cannot be an afterthought. Every organisation is different, with its own cadence of document creation, approval and updates, processes, metadata complexities and varying levels of user skill.

The main areas to consider are:

1. Document Rationalisation
Most organisations have outdated, poorly filed documents and inactive sites slowing down their SharePoint search. Reducing the volume of items SharePoint has to wade through to deliver search results is probably the most effective way to improve performance.

2. Data Structure
Correct conventions, library structures and meta tagging will help enhance your search process and improve results via:

  • Structure – Create a logical hierarchy with libraries, folders and subfolders, metadata and content types.
  • Metadata - This helps SharePoint search more efficiently, pulling out key document criteria.
  • Indexing - A database index is a structure that makes data retrieval faster.
  • Permissions - Set up appropriate permissions and access controls to ensure that all users have the appropriate level of access.

3. Version Control
Version control, check-in / check-out and document approval workflows can also contribute to sound
document management and effective SharePoint search.
These features allow users to collaborate effectively on documents and ensure that only the most up-to-date and accurate information is shared.

SharePoint Intranet

  • Sophisticated Search
  • User friendly document hub
  • Policies and Procedures
  • Virtual assistant

4. Search Set-Up
Presenting search results effectively makes content easier to find and setting up search scopes and verticals also contribute to a positive search experience. Display templates can help users narrow down results by highlighting important information and “promoted links” can display relevant results based on a user’s search query.

5. Governance
A Governance framework will give end users some guardrails to create useful, searchable SharePoint content. Create a set of simple rules and permissions that minimise SharePoint sprawl.

HOW WE CAN HELP

Our friendly Australian team can help get your documents – and search results – under control using your existing Microsoft technology. Our thorough discovery process will uncover key insights, then our experienced consultants will design a SharePoint document management strategy tailored to your organisation and your users.

WebVine offers:

  1. SharePoint strategy development
  2. Information architecture design and development
  3. Education, training and change management
  4. SharePoint migrations
  5. Workflows and automation
  6. Governance planning

Let us help you take control of your information today.

SHAREPOINT SERVICES

For consulting, advice or designs, please get in touch