Internet SharePoint

Governance Plan
Author:
Joel Oleson
http://www.sharepointjoel.com
Quest Software
Nicola Young
SharePoint911
Date published:
September 2009
Summary:
The following sample governance plan is designed to help illustrate how to utilize the functionality
of Office SharePoint® Server 2007 for a public Internet site. The fictitious company plans to utilize
the functionality to ensure that site content is consistent, updated in a timely manner, branded in
line with corporate standards, and tightly controlled.
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Unless otherwise noted, the companies, organizations, products, domain names, e-mail
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association with any real company, organization, product, domain name, e-mail address, logo,
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2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

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All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

Contents
.............................................................................................................................................................................................1

Internet SharePoint Governance Plan..............................................................................................................................1

EXECUTIVE OVERVIEW...................................................................................................................................1

GOVERNANCE PLAN GOALS.........................................................................................................................1

SERVICE DELIVERY GOALS...........................................................................................................................1

SHAREPOINT STAKEHOLDER TEAM ROLES...............................................................................................2

SharePoint Service Team...................................................................................................................................................2

SERVICE DELIVERY REQUIREMENTS...........................................................................................................2

Technical Requirements....................................................................................................................................................2

Infrastructure......................................................................................................................................................................4

Client Configurations........................................................................................................................................................4

Server Diagrams..............................................................................................................................................................4

Installation & Configuration..............................................................................................................................................5

DNS Settings....................................................................................................................................................................7

Site Quota Templates.......................................................................................................................................................7

Recycle Bin Settings........................................................................................................................................................8

Usage Reports.................................................................................................................................................................9

SQL Server Management.................................................................................................................................................9

Server Monitoring.............................................................................................................................................................9

Backup & Restore..........................................................................................................................................................10

Anti-Virus........................................................................................................................................................................10

Site Policies....................................................................................................................................................................11

Customizations...............................................................................................................................................................11

Information Architecture..................................................................................................................................................12

Site Creation..................................................................................................................................................................12
 Site Design.....................................................................................................................................................................12

Site Management...........................................................................................................................................................13

Permission Management.................................................................................................................................................13

Navigation.........................................................................................................................................................................14

Approach to Site Navigation...........................................................................................................................................14

Branding............................................................................................................................................................................14

Master Pages & Custom Themes...................................................................................................................................14

Search................................................................................................................................................................................15

IFilters............................................................................................................................................................................15

Global Search Scopes....................................................................................................................................................16

Local Search Scopes.....................................................................................................................................................16

Search Center................................................................................................................................................................16

Search Analysis..............................................................................................................................................................16

Best Bets........................................................................................................................................................................16

Keywords.......................................................................................................................................................................16

Federated Search...........................................................................................................................................................17

Development & Customization........................................................................................................................................17

Use of SharePoint Designer...........................................................................................................................................17

Development..................................................................................................................................................................17

Development & QA Environments..................................................................................................................................18

Staging/Authoring...........................................................................................................................................................18

Features & Solutions......................................................................................................................................................18

Custom Site Definitions..................................................................................................................................................18

Support..............................................................................................................................................................................18

Development of Internal Support Skills..........................................................................................................................18

Service Level Agreements (SLAs)..................................................................................................................................19

Support Availability.........................................................................................................................................................19

Scheduled Downtimes....................................................................................................................................................20

Training.............................................................................................................................................................................21
 Levels of Training...........................................................................................................................................................21

Additional more advanced training will be given to users in the roles of Infrastructure Administrator, Designer,
Developer, and Help Desk. This training will be conducted and provided by a 3rd party vendor....................................21

Appendix A: Server Diagrams.........................................................................................................................................22

Appendix B: Definitions & Acronyms.............................................................................................................................23

Appendix C: References..................................................................................................................................................24
Executive Overview
Fabrikam has decided to utilize the functionality of Office SharePoint® Server
2007 for its public Internet site, Fabrikam.com. The company plans to utilize
the functionality to ensure that site content is consistent, updated in a timely
manner, branded in line with corporate standards, and tightly controlled.

This governance plan ensures that the system is managed and used in
accordance with its designed intent to prevent scope creep and chaos.
Managing this enterprise-wide system involves both a strategic, business-
minded board to craft rules and procedures for the use of the system and
also a tactical, technically-competent team to manage the routine
operational tasks that keep the system running. Users of the system will be
empowered by a support and developer community sponsored by the
business leaders.

Governance Plan Goals

• Establish the service definition and governing IT policies by which the
SharePoint service will be run based on the requirements outlined.

• Avoid inconsistency in management of the web site as users within

each role change over time.

Service Delivery Goals

• Provide the ability for visitors to the site to quickly locate the desired
information whether they choose to use the navigation or search.

• Provide content authors the ability to ensure their content is always up

to date by putting the management of content changes back in the
hands of content authors.

• Reduce inconsistency in content structure through the controlled

publishing of content.

• Provide consistent corporate-branded (Master Pages) site that reflects

the corporate image on every page of the site.
SharePoint Stakeholder Team Roles
SharePoint Service Team

Service Delivery Requirements

Technical Requirements
• Design requires avoiding all single points of failure including storage

• 24/7 monitoring with operations staff

• Health based application monitoring (synthetic transactions which
proactively identify downtime and performance identified at the page
level.)

• Disaster Recovery – Disaster recovery environment setup in alternate

datacenter to avoid further points of failure due to acts of God
(flooding, fire, tornado, hurricane, and extended state wide power
outages)

• Uptime target 99.95% or better. (Not including planned 1 week notice -

communicated maintenance windows)

• Recovery time objective 4 hours or less for non-catastrophic outages

and 24 hours for catastrophic outages. (Recovery/Failover datacenter
should also contain dependent services including SMTP,
AD/Authentication services, DNS, and SQL storage)

• Recovery point objective for Intranet portal is 4 hours or less.

(Requiring full logging and more frequent incremental backups.)

• Support calls to the 24/7 support desk should receive attention within a
maximum of 15 minute hold time without prior notification of high call
volume, and resolution should be a maximum of 3 days for 90% of
calls. Resolution is considered resolution by the client with the
exception of no response. This service is considered business critical.
More detail provided by the support desk service offering.

• The hardware needs to scale and support company growth. The initial
deployment should support at least 300GB of data with the ability to
grow to 1TB over the first year. SAN storage for Microsoft® SQL
Server® needs to support 5TB at maximum capacity.

Business Requirements
• Editing/Design/SharePoint® Designer Usage Policies – Master pages,
theme, and page layouts will be authored by a single design team. This
is to ensure a consistent presentation of all content across the site.
SharePoint Designer will not be approved for use on the production
Fabrikam.com site.

• Auditing – The default auditing settings will be turned on consistently

across all sites for the purpose of tracking item deletions and auto
expiration policies.
 • Site Templates –Sites will utilize the publishing site with workflow
template only.

• Workflow – The Fabrikam.com site will use a two-step approval

workflow to publish changes to the site content. The change will first
be approved by the site owner; the second level of content approval
will be handled by Corporate Communications. All changes will go
through this process to ensure that content is in line with the corporate
guidelines and does not contain any errors.

Infrastructure

Client Configurations
In order to best support the SharePoint environment, support will need to be
limited to specific client configurations. While every effort will be made to
support multiple environments, Fabrikam.com will need to put limitations
around the standard environments that are used to access SharePoint. The
following list identifies the different supported environments and
configurations:

 Supported Client Configurations

o Microsoft® Windows® XP SP3, Vista SP2

o Microsoft® Office 2007

o Microsoft® Internet Explorer® 7 or Mozilla Firefox 3.X

In addition to the supported environments, the following environments will be

tested and any issues identified and communicated to users:

 Macintosh operating system

 Office 2003

 Internet Explorer 8

 Windows 7 and Office 2010 (post release)

Fabrikam.com will make every effort to provide solutions for multiple

environments, but under certain circumstances it will be necessary to use the
supported configurations to take full advantage of the features available
within the Portal.

Server Diagrams
Refer to Appendix A
Installation & Configuration
The following information will be used for the installation and configuration of
the SharePoint environment.

Accounts used during installation

When determining the strategy to be used with account management in
SharePoint Server, there are several options. The minimalist approach
involves creating two accounts, one to run and manage SharePoint Server
and the other to manage Search. On the other end of the spectrum, the most
secure option is to run in least-privileged mode by creating user accounts for
each SharePoint process. Fabrikam.com will run in a mixed environment
using a hybrid of both solutions. Unique accounts will be created, but where
overlap exists, one account will be used for multiple processes. The table
below outlines the different accounts used in the installation and
configuration of SharePoint.

Account Type Description Account Name

SharePoint Admin Account used to log in to Fabrikam.com\spadmin

Account the server and install and
configure SharePoint
Server.

SharePoint Farm Account provided when Fabrikam.com\spfarm

Account completing the initial farm
configuration.

SharePoint Create unique accounts to Fabrikam.com\spinfoapp

Application Pool manage each of the
Accounts application pools created. Fabrikam.com\spteamsapp

Fabrikam.com\spperonalapp

SSP Service Account Responsible for running the Fabrikam.com\spssp

Shared Services Provider
(SSP) Application Pool and
SSP Service

Search Service Responsible for running Fabrikam.com\spsearch

Account SharePoint Server Search,
Windows SharePoint
Services Search, and
Windows SharePoint
Services Crawl

SharePoint SQL Account for SharePoint Fabrikam.com\ssql

Server Server dedicated SQL
Server
Account Type Description Account Name

SharePoint Email SharePoint Server email Fabrikam.com@company.com

Account account (notifications)

Local Storage Locations

When installing and configuring SharePoint Server, many logs by default are
configured to be stored in the c: drive. They can be configured to be moved
to a new location; however by default they will be stored in c:. This should be
taken into consideration when planning for the amount of storage space
allocated for the c: drive or alternately, during configuration the settings can
be updated to point to alternate storage locations. Below is a table of the
common log items and the location configured for storage during the
installation process.

Storage Type Location

Usage Logs D:\USAGELOGS

IIS Logs D:\IISLOGS\

Diagnostic / ULS D:\DIAGNOSTIC\

Logs

Index Files E:\Index\

Temp DB Files Refer to Appendix A

Admin Accounts
In order to properly support the SharePoint environment, several different
users in the organization will need to have full access to all SharePoint
content. Users who require this type of access will have a user ID created
specifically for SharePoint access. This approach will allow them to contribute
and access SharePoint content based on their current username and role
within the organization. The separate user accounts created will require them
to log in with the elevated account whenever they need to perform admin
functions. The following table outlines the elevated user accounts that will
need to be created:

User Elevated Account Name Elevated Rights

Oliver Lee (Corp Comm) Fabrikam.com\SP-OliverL Full Control

Holly Holt (Corp Comm) Fabrikam.com\SP-HollyH Full Control

Eric Gilmore (Mktg) Fabrikam.com\SP-EricG Full Control

Hani Loza (Support Desk) Fabrikam.com\SP-HaniL Read Access

Alex Simmons (Legal) Fabrikam.com\SP-AlexS Read Access

These accounts should be limited to only those users who require full access
to the system. Any new accounts added at this level should be approved by
the SharePoint Owner prior to creation. The access of these accounts will be
managed through a Web application policy based on an Active Directory®
domain services (AD DS) Group. The following table defines the different AD
DS Groups and Web applications:

AD DS Group Users

SP_Admins John Kane (Ops)

Edmund Silva (Ops)

Wendy Richardson (Ops Lead)

SP_Readers SP-Crawler

SP-Legal

Zone Display Name User Name Permissions

(All Zones) SP_Admins SP_Admins Full Control

(All Zones) SP_Readers SP_Readers Full Read

DNS Settings
Fabrikam.com SharePoint environment will be published with Internet
Security and Acceleration Server (ISA) and Load balancing and Security using
the same https address for both internal and external access.

Site Quota Templates

Site Quotas will be used to manage the team collaboration sites. Three
different quota levels will be created. By default, each site will start at 1 GB.
When they are notified (90%) that the site is approaching the quota limit, the
help desk will work with them to review the current site and make
adjustments to the existing content. If no adjustments can be made the site
will be elevated to 5 GB. Users who want to increase their quota they shall
contact the support desk which will again review the site content and assist
with cleanup and recommendations. If it is determined that the site will
continue to require additional storage space, then downtime will be
scheduled and the site will be migrated to a dedicated database. Single site
collections larger than 10 GB will be handled by a case-by-case basis with a
hard maximum of 90 GB.

The following flowchart describes the process defined above:

User is Notified User is Notified

Site is Created with they are Site is Reviewed they are Site is Reviewed Site is Migrated to
Quota is Expanded
Default Quota approaching by Help Desk approaching by Help Desk Dedicated Database
Quota Quota

Content is Archived Content is Archived

Quota Template Quota 1 Quota 2 Quota 3

(Dedicated Db)

Limit site storage to a maximum of: 1000 MB 5000 MB 10000 MB

Send warning E-mail when site storage 900 MB 4500 MB 9000 MB

reaches:

Recycle Bin Settings

The recycle bin settings will be configured as follows:

 Recycle bin – 50%

 Site recycle bin – 90 Days

Adjustments to these settings will need to be approved by the SharePoint

Governance Committee.
Usage Reports
Usage reports will be turned on when the server is configured. Usage
patterns will help predict and prevent scalability issues that could cause
deviation from Service-level Agreement (SLA) requirements.

The reports will be available to anyone who has Full Control to the site. This
access will be granted only to users who have completed training for Level 2
access. Users who have not completed level 2 training and want to see the
access reports must submit a request to the help desk. A file with the usage
reports will be generated for them on a request basis for up to 3 maximum at
which time training would be required to provide access to reports.

SQL Server Management

In order to properly maintain and manage the SQL Server environment, the
following best practice guidelines should be used:

 SharePoint databases will not be accessed directly; instead they will

only be accessed via the SharePoint API.

 It is recommended that SharePoint databases be limited to 100 GB.

 Site collections will be split as will content databases to accommodate

growth.

Server Monitoring
The following tools are being configured within the environment to support
server monitoring:

Tool Description of Services

Systems Center Windows SharePoint Services, SharePoint Server

Operations Manager 2007, SQL Server, and Internet Information Services
(IIS) application monitoring including Web sites and
services synthetic transaction monitoring to ensure
uptime across Web applications.

Microsoft SharePoint The Microsoft SharePoint Administration Toolkit

Administration Toolkit (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=125907)
X64 contains functionality to help manage Office
SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint
Services version 3.0. This toolkit contains the ability
to diagnose performance issues, perform bulk
operations on site collections, an stsadm command-
line tool operation to update alert e-mails after the
URL for a Web application has been changed, and a
 User Profile Replication Engine tool.

The Microsoft Best The Microsoft Best Practices Analyzer for Microsoft
Practices Analyzer for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and the 2007
Microsoft Windows Microsoft Office System creates detailed reports to
SharePoint Services 3.0 help administrators achieve greater performance,
and the 2007 Microsoft scalability, and uptime.
Office System

Backup & Restore

The following tools are being configured within the environment to support
Backup and Restore:

Tool Description of Services

SharePoint Backup To back up the “Services” primarily the Search

(Native tool) Index

SQL Server Backup To back up the SharePoint Databases including

(Native tool) all content, SSP, and the configuration database

Quest Recovery Manager Quick and easy file, list, site, and site collection
for SharePoint Server recovery without requirements for recovery farm
integrating with Data Protection Manager (DPM).

Data Protection Manager Backup and Snapshot Solution for offsite backups
2007 for SharePoint
Server

To speed recovery, the site collection can be separated into its own content
database.

Backups of the database will be stored on the server for a 6 month period.
After the 6 month period has expired, the backup will no longer be available.

Anti-Virus
The following anti-virus tool is being configured within the environment:

Tool Description of Services

Forefront™ Security for Microsoft Forefront Security for SharePoint integrates multiple
SharePoint scan engines from industry-leading vendors and content
controls to help businesses protect their Microsoft SharePoint
collaboration environments by eliminating documents
containing malicious code, confidential information, and
 inappropriate content.

Fabrikam.com should have separate anti-virus policies for its servers and
clients. The servers should not use the default Desktop file-level anti-virus
client. If the servers use the default client, IT should consult KB 952167
(http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=123963) to ensure accurate and
complete anti-virus scanning results.

Site Policies
Results from an ongoing site inventory will be used to create and refine
policies to improve site performance and security, for example:

• Use of incoming email and alerts

• Security for Web Part connections

• Use of alternate access mappings, managed paths, or vanity URLs

Customizations
Fabrikam.com maintains a mantra of “Do no harm.” They take future
upgrades and supportability very seriously while at the same time, they want
to empower the business to truly create composite applications and perform
rapid deployment. They follow a strict application lifecycle management
policy based on the Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF) and try to follow the
patterns and practices, best practices to team development. Fabrikam.com
recognizes the potential need to allow for site and server customizations.
The following guidelines are being put in place in order to control the various
custom elements that are being installed:

 Custom Solutions cannot directly touch or access the SharePoint

databases.

 Customizations must be packaged as a Solution (.wsp).

 All development efforts including third party solutions must be funded

and supported by a business unit rather than a team or individual. The
only exception to this is infrastructure-based off-the-shelf solutions
funded by the IT organization.

 All Solution packages must be validated in a test environment prior to

being installed in production.

 Any exceptions to the items stated above must be approved by the

SharePoint governance committee.
  The overall guidance of supportability of customizations is based on
Sean Livingston’s “Customization Policy” document.

For specific information on what type of customizations users will be making

(for example- using SharePoint Designer) refer to the Development &
Customization section later in this article.

Information Architecture
The Information Architecture of the site determines how the content will be
organized within the environment. Planning for this design should be done
based on studies conducted by the marketing department. The main goal of
the design is to ensure that visitors can easily find all content while ensuring
that the permission structure is manageable.

Site Creation
The site hierarchy will be defined when the site is rolled out. Additional sites
will only be added when it is determined by Corporate Communications that
the current sites do not have an appropriate place for this additional
information.

Additional pages may be added to the sites through requests to Corporate

Communications. New page requests may only be made by Site Owners.
Whenever a new page is requested, Corporate Communications will verify
that the page fits into the overall information architecture, navigation, and
communication guidelines set forth for the Internet.

Site Design
Master Page
See the Branding section later in this article.

Site Design and Layout

All sites created in the Fabrikam.com will follow a predefined format using
only the approved page layouts. Users who are responsible for updating
content will be trained to use the specific templates created for the
Fabrikam.com Internet. For further description see the Branding section
later in this article.

Site Columns & Content Types

Within Fabrikam.com, Site Columns and Content Types will be created as
needed by the Solution Architect. Additional site columns or changes must
be approved by Corporate Communications.
Site Management
The Fabrikam.com site will be owned and managed by Corporate
Communications. Any changes to the structure, design, or layout of the
Fabrikam.com site must first be approved by Corporate Communications.

Corporate Communications will assign site owners to the subsites on

Fabrikam.com. Site owners will be in charge of content changes to the sites
and pages. Within each subsite no more than 3 users may be assigned the
ability to update content on the site. To ensure that content is created in a
controlled manner, every page on the site will utilize the following features:

• Each page must have versioning turned on. This will allow Corporate
Communications and the Legal Department to review changes over
time at any point.

• Each page must have a scheduled start date and scheduled end date
to ensure content is only being shown when it is relevant.

• Each page must go through the two step approval workflow defined by
the SharePoint Solution Architect for that site. The two step approval
will first route the content to the Site Owner for approval and then to
the SharePoint Owner (Corporate Communications) for final approval
and publishing.

Permission Management
Due to the purpose of our public internet site to clearly display information
about our company to the general public, strict guidelines surrounding
permissions will be in place to ensure only a small number of users within the
organization can make changes. The following default permission levels will
be used:

Permission Level Description SharePoint Role

Full Control Has full control. SharePoint Owner

Design Can view, add, update, delete, SharePoint Designer

approve, and customize.

Approve Can edit and approve pages, list SharePoint Site

items, and documents. Administrator

Contribute Can view, add, update, and delete. SharePoint Content

Author
 *Note: Some permission levels above are created only when certain
features have been enabled in the site collection.

Custom Permissions are not currently authorized for the Fabrikam.com site.

The SharePoint Owner will determine and assign the permissions to the
SharePoint Site Administrators. The SharePoint Site Administrators will then
have the ability to request SharePoint Content Authors for their site. The
SharePoint Owner will review these requests and assign the Content Author
the contribute permission for that area of the site if they approve the request.

Navigation

Approach to Site Navigation

Navigation on the Fabrikam.com site will be controlled by the Fabrikam.com
site Owner (Corporate Communications) and will be based on the following
guidelines:

 Top level navigation will be restricted to five tabs: Collections, Where

to Buy, Why Fabrikam Furniture, About Us, and Customer Service.

 Ability to easily navigate to all content within 3 clicks.

 Tabs will be reviewed annually to determine if adjustments are

needed.

 Landing page of Fabrikam.com will only use the top navigation.

Subsites and pages will utilize the left hand navigation with no more
than 7 links.

 Left hand navigation and Top level navigation will be restricted to one
level of fly-out navigation.

Branding
All sites will be required to use the Fabrikam.com Master Page and custom
theme.

Master Pages & Custom Themes

In order to promote the corporate image and brand that Fabrikam’s
marketing department has created, a custom Fabrikam.com Master Page and
custom theme will be created. Changes to these must first be approved by
the Fabrikam.com site owner and then tested in the development
environment prior to being deployed into production. To allow for better user
experience, changes will only be pushed to the Fabrikam.com site once per
year.

Page Layouts
To ensure consistency in how content is display, there will be 4 page layouts
created: one page layout for the landing page, one page layout for each of
the top level sites, and two page layout options for subpages. Every page in
the Fabrikam.com site must use these page layouts. Any variations will need
to be approved by the Fabrikam.com site owner.

Search
Over time search will become one of the key benefits within the SharePoint
deployment. Getting started, search will be limited to a few content sources
that will continue to grow over time. The decision has been made not to crawl
the existing file servers due to legacy security issues. This approach will help
ensure the value of the content within the indexes. The following content
sources will be created:

Content Source Schedule

Local Office SharePoint Server Sites (Default Search Daily, every 4 hours*
Scope)

Miscellaneous Business Unit Web Based Applications Daily off hours

(Intranet)

External Fabrikam.com Web Site Daily, every 12 hours

*IT must monitor these crawls to prevent overlap that might cause
performance problems.

Major external content sources and intranet sources above 100 GB will be
added only with the approval of the SharePoint governance committee.

IFilters
IFilters provide a way to index non-standard document types. In addition to
the MS IFilter pack, the following IFilters will be installed and configured
within the environment:

 PDF

 MSG

If additional file types will require indexing, a request to purchase and

install an additional IFilter can be submitted to the help desk. The request
will then be reviewed by the SharePoint governance committee.
Global Search Scopes
Global search scopes will be created for any content that is relevant for all
portal users. For phase 1, the following search scopes will be created:

 All Sites (Default Global Search Scope)

 Fabrikam.com Web Site

Additional global search scopes can be requested; however they will only be
created when they will benefit all users of the Fabrikam.com site. For any
requested scopes that are not classified as requiring a global search scope a
local search scope can be created instead (see below).

Global search scopes will be created and maintained by the SharePoint

Infrastructure Admin. Any new global search scopes must be approved by the
SharePoint governance committee.

Local Search Scopes

Site collection administrators will manage their own scopes based on their
content by using out-of-the-box features. Additional requests will go through
the support desk. Site administrators will be trained on creating custom
search scopes during their level 2 training.

Search Center
For phase 1 the Fabrikam.com Portal will be configured to use the out-of-the-
box search center. No customizations will be made during Phase 1. Any
future customizations will need to be approved by the SharePoint governance
committee.

Search Analysis
Search analysis processing will be configured for the farm. Once a month the
results will be reviewed by the SharePoint Architect and presented to the
SharePoint governance committee. Based on the analysis, additional search
elements (such as keywords and best bets) will be configured.

Best Bets
Best bets will be requested through the support desk and handled by tier 2
support.

Keywords
Keywords will be requested through the support desk and handled by tier 2
support.
Federated Search
Federated Search will not be configured during the initial phases of the
project. For future phases, it will be approved by the SharePoint governance
committee before being added to the SSP.

Development & Customization

Use of SharePoint Designer

SharePoint Designer will be restricted for all users through the use of a
Desktop Management based Group Policy. Users must complete an advanced
level of training and sign an agreement before they are approved and added
into the SharePoint Designer group. Training for SharePoint Designer will be
limited to the following:

 Data View Web Parts

 Form View Web Parts

 Workflows

 Usage Reports

 SharePoint Master Pages, Page Layouts and Styles (for the

Designer/Consultant exclusively)

Using SharePoint Designer to unghost/customize pages without prior

approval is prohibited.

Development
All custom development efforts must be approved and managed by the
SharePoint governance committee and will be considered only when no out-
of-the-box options are available. Appropriate levels of security will be
imposed on all custom solutions and Web Part connections.

Business Unit Development teams will be approved for SharePoint

development projects after training and company-based certification is
approved. The development team will be supplied with a development Image
copy of production. A common integration Development environment
supported by the operations team for consistency will be supplied and
maintained for integration of development projects. All development efforts
will be packaged prior to introduction to the development integration farm.
Development & QA Environments
All custom developed solutions must be implemented and fully tested within
a development environment prior to installation in the production
environment.

The QA team or lead will be notified by the development team when a

development package or upgrade package is ready. It will then be introduced
into the change control process to approve and validate the package for
introduction into the staging environment.

Staging/Authoring
The staging environment will mimic production while the development and
test environments are fully virtual environments and have a representation of
the data that’s in production. Production and Staging should never be more
than 1 week on different versions of the product or development projects.

Authoring will be performed in place by default for most pages, but the
primary site collection will be set up with content deployment.

Features & Solutions

All changes and customizations to the server must be packaged as
SharePoint solution files. All solution packages should be preserved and
updated so they can be deployed with future upgrades or used for disaster
recovery.

Custom Site Definitions

Custom site definitions will not be created because of the issues encountered
when trying to upgrade to any new releases of SharePoint. As an alternative,
a blank site definition can be used and all customizations will need to be
packaged using feature stapling while leveraging solutions that can be
activated when the site is created.

Support
In order to provide the best possible support to Fabrikam.com, guidelines
have been created for the support of the environment. Over time, these
guidelines will be updated to reflect the increased supportability of
SharePoint and applications built on it within Fabrikam.com.

Development of Internal Support Skills

In order to continue to provide a high level of support of SharePoint Products
and Technologies within the organization, it is essential that SharePoint skills
are developed in house. For Phase 1 of this project, the help desk will work in
a tiered level approach (see below). For Phase 2 and beyond, the help desk
would like to increase its ability to support SharePoint Products and
Technologies so that individuals have the ability to support multiple tier
levels. This approach will require a dedication to continually training and skill
advancement that will most likely occur through the following channels:

 Hands On Experience working on SharePoint Solutions

 Classroom Training

 Technical Conferences & Networking

 Online Forums

 Blogs and Technical Websites

 3rd Party Support & Consulting

Each member of the help desk that has been identified as a support for
SharePoint Products and Technologies should work with respective managers
and the SharePoint Service Owner to coordinate the appropriate training.

Service Level Agreements (SLAs)

The following service level agreements have been put in place as guidelines
for the expectations of authors on the ability to support and maintain
SharePoint deployments. Any exceptions to these guidelines must be
approved by the governance committee or processed through the SharePoint
Owner.

Request Estimated Response Time

New Internet.COM Site Request 7 Working Days

New Site Collection 2 Working Days

Site Restore / Recovery 2 Working Days

Disaster Recovery (Complete Restore after Under Investigation – SLA to be maximum of 2

Failure) Days

Request to Governance Committee 1 Working Day to Acknowledge Request (gather

additional information if needed) ; Within 1
Meeting Cycle (bi weekly) for Response from
Committee (See Meeting Schedule Above)

Support Availability
The following table describes the different support options available within
the organization.
Support Group Special Functions SLA
Level 2 & 3 Self-  SharePoint FAQ Site Online /
Help  Training Materials Normal
Business
Hours
Tier 1  General how to and SLA to be
troubleshooting questions from established by
 Site Administrators / users the Site
Collection
Site Owners (Level 2  Guidance on layout and structure
& 3 Users) of site
 Escalations to tier 2
 Permissions
Tier 2  Site access issues (escalate to Call returned
Owners) within 24
 Help Desk hours for
 Change site ownership normal
 Escalations to tier 3 priority; 4
hours for high
priority
Time to
Resolve 72
hours or
escalate
Tier 3  Increase storage quota 24/7 support
 Create or delete portal sites with 4 hour
 SharePoint maximum
 Redirect or rename site response
Operations Team  Site restore requests Time to
 Resolve escalated issues / Resolve
escalate to tier 4 Maximum 1
week
 Other- TBD

Tier 4  Resolve escalated issues 2 week

 Provide architecture and design resolution or
 SharePoint call to
changes consultant
Engineering Team &  external
External support TBD
Consultants
Tier 5  Solutions MSFT SLA’s
 Hotfixes Per Contract
 Microsoft
SharePoint Product
Support

Scheduled Downtimes
Uptime requirements are 99.9% SLA including scheduled downtime. All
scheduled downtime should be performed during the outage window of
Friday night from 00:00 to 05:00.
Schedule Downtime is defined as times where Fabrikam.com notifies users of
periods of Downtime at least 3 days prior to the commencement of such
downtime or scheduled regular maintenance time.

Scheduled regular maintenance downtime for the SharePoint service is

essential for upgrades and maintenance. SharePoint services may not be
available during the scheduled maintenance periods.

Training

Levels of Training
Training will be conducted based on the permission level of the user of the
site. Training will be conducted and created by the Training department.

Permission Level Description

Full Control  Users will be instructed on how and when to edit the
content of the site.
 Manage Permissions
 Users will be instructed on how to approve and publish
content changes to the site.
Approve  Users will be instructed on how and when to edit the
content of the site.
 Users will be instructed on the method to approve
content changes to their site.
Contribute  Users will be instructed on how and when to edit the
content of the site.
 Users will also be informed of the approval policy for all
content changes.

Additional more advanced training will be given to users in the roles of Infrastructure
Administrator, Designer, Developer, and Help Desk. This training will be conducted and provided
by a 3rd party vendor.
Appendix A: Server Diagrams
All environments will have this same configuration. All servers should be
Windows Server 2008 64-bit and SQL Server 2005 or SQL Server 2008 with
64-bit operating systems and 64-bit versions of SQL Server. The development
and test environments these boxes below represent the Images and not
physical machines. For Staging/Authoring and Production the servers below
are represented as physical machines.

MOSS
WFE
Query
Excel
Network Load
MOSS
Balancer
Index

Database
SQL 2000 or
SQL 2005

Active/Passive
MOSS Cluster
WFE
Query
Excel
Appendix B: Definitions & Acronyms
The following glossary includes common definitions and acronyms that are
mentioned within this governance document.

Farm – collection of servers that act together to provide a set of Web

applications. The farm is most easily defined by the configuration database
which defines the server member and roles of the farm as well as database
servers used for storage.
Web application – In a SharePoint deployment, contains IIS Web Sites
previously known as IIS Virtual Servers that have been extended with
SharePoint Server and have been set up to use the .NET assemblies to
provide the SharePoint Application. There are content Web applications, and
administration Web applications for both the central admin and the SSP
admin. Web applications are known for their ability to isolate content in
separate memory space with application pools which contain worker
processes. In a collaboration service the Web application provides the
container for the site collections in the farm.
Site Collection – A site collection is the most scalable unit in a SharePoint
deployment and is a container for sites. The special properties of the site
collection are the ability to have a quota, contain a global navigation, master
page, and various galleries provided across the sites below it, and the ability
to contain ownership. Considered the most scalable object in a deployment
and the easiest to manage for its ability to be backed up and moved with full
fidelity across databases.
Site – a container of multiple lists which can inherit security, and leverage
the galleries of the site collection above it. Primarily usage in a collaboration
environment is for delegation of projects or to divide content for easy
navigation.
Portal – A special site template designed to host many sites below it.
Common properties include special page galleries for Internet, or site
directory on an intranet portal. Another term might be hub based on
navigation and a common place to go where you don’t know where to look for
something. It’s the top of the breadcrumb navigation.
Quota – The SharePoint Server feature of Quota allows for a notification level
and a maximum level. The notification advises the owners that the site is
nearing the maximum quota and the site should be “cleaned up.” When the
maximum quota is reached, the state of the site is read only and no further
content can be added. When one quota is referred to, it is always the
maximum quota.
Site Administrator – The manager of the permissions, providing delegation
of rights and permissions levels.
Site Owner – Specified during creation, the primary and secondary owners
provide the determination of the site. They receive both quota notification
and expiration notifications for the site collection. It is common that site
administrators and owners are the same individuals.
Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer / SharePoint Designer – Tool
used to create master pages, create and manage workflows, and Web Part
designer. A powerful tool for managing sites and usage of SharePoint
Designer should be monitored.
WSS – Windows SharePoint Services provides the foundation of the
collaboration platform with permissions levels and common templates.
MOSS – Office SharePoint Server provides application functionality on top of
the base platform including auditing, expiration, common workflow
templates, better master page galleries, and intranet and internet templates
for quick deployment scenarios.
Master page – Controls the consistency and look and feel of a site or site
collection.
Gallery – A special list or library containing Web Parts, master pages, and
layouts.
Web Part – A snippet of code used for displaying lists, libraries, images,
navigation or functional UI. Also used synonymously with widget, gadget,
JQuery plugin.
List – A collection of items with rows and columns similar to a table. A list can
contain documents, images, a user contact, a row of text, as well as business
data.
Content type - Controls the aspect of what data can be added to a list and
how that data is handled, but this document won’t provide the depth of the
abilities of content types as this is primarily a collaboration environment with
flexible content types to be delegated and managed by the site owner.

Appendix C: References
This document was created using the following sites and documents as
references.

 SharePoint Governance Checklist (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?

LinkID=91896)

 SharePoint Governance Template (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?

LinkId=162169)