Microsoft Official Course

Module 2

Designing an Information
Architecture
Module Overview

• Identifying Business Requirements

• Understanding Business Requirements
• Organizing Information in SharePoint 2013
• Planning for Discoverability
Lesson 1: Identifying Business Requirements

• Essentials of Requirements Gathering

• Approaches to Requirements Gathering
• Planning for Functional Requirements
• Planning for Nonfunctional Requirements
• Organizing Your Information
Essentials of Requirements Gathering

• Do:
Assemble the right business team
Prepare your questions
Focus on the business requirements
Incorporate available information architecture
Establish a licensing budget
Include functional and nonfunctional requirements
Maintain documentation
• Do not:
Focus on the technology
Ask leading questions
Lead requirements analysis to fit a predefined technology
Provide the solution based on features
Regard the design documentation as a first draft solution
Approaches to Requirements Gathering

• Methods of information gathering include:

• Sponsor and stakeholder interviews
• Focus groups
• User interviews
• User questionnaires
• Existing business processes

• Rules of engagement include:

• An agenda
• Time constraints

• Types of information include:

• Qualitative
• Quantitative

• Documentation reviews
Planning for Functional Requirements

• What is a functional specification?

Functions that a system, or its components, must perform

• Functional planning should include:

• Business function
• Administrative functions
• Authentication and authorization
• Legal or regulatory audit requirements
• Data management
• Reporting requirements
Planning for Nonfunctional Requirements

• What is a nonfunctional specification?

A statement of how a system must behave; it is a

constraint on the system’s behavior

• Nonfunctional planning should include:

• Performance
• Capacity
• Scalability
• Availability
• Security
• Manageability
• Interoperability
• Business continuity
Organizing Your Information

• Structure requirements information:

• Categorize functionality:
• Functional
• Nonfunctional
• Identify exceptions

• Pool common requirements:

• Identify commonality
• Minimize duplication

• Validate information:
• Ensure customer acceptance
• Test against business processes
Lesson 2: Understanding Business Requirements

• What Is Information Architecture and Why Is It

Important?
• What Drives an Information Architecture?
• Undertaking Your Information Architecture Design
• Information Architecture Goals
• Information Architecture Design
• Information Stakeholders and Context
• Information Architecture and Technology
• Discussion: What Is Your Experience of
Information Architectures?
What Is Information Architecture and Why Is It
Important?

• What is an information architecture?

• A means of structuring information in an organization
• Specific to each organization
• Must be flexible to support change

• Why information architecture matters

• Increased usability and discoverability
• Enhanced performance
• Better user adoption
• Responsiveness to change
What Drives an Information Architecture?

• Information architecture drivers

• Information types
• Information contribution
• Information consumption
• Information volatility

• Information formats
• Documents
• Web pages
Undertaking Your Information Architecture
Design

• Design elements for an information architecture

project
• Goals of the business organization
• Design constraints
• Resources
• Organization style requirements
• People
• Business leaders
• Users
• Information context
• Technology
• Available functionality
• Limitations and boundaries
Information Architecture Goals

• Ensure an information architecture project has well-

defined goals

• Establish goals against success criteria

• Usability
• Maintainability
• Extensibility

• Define documentation standards

Information Architecture Design

• Information architecture design options

• Traditional
• Information-driven
• Validation through user interviews
• Completed information architecture drives development

• Agile
• Faster development lead-time
• Multiple, continuous iterative cycles, including light user
acceptance testing
• Hierarchical design methodology
• Initial, top-level information architecture
• Development of iterative information architecture components

• Plan iterative information architecture updates

Information Stakeholders and Context

• Identify stakeholder knowledge

• Business leaders
• Users

• Beware of organizational hierarchy mapping

• Contextualize information
• Information purpose
• Contribution (storage)
• Consumption (retrieval)
• Information value
• Security
• Confidentiality
Information Architecture and Technology

• SharePoint 2013 services and features that help you

implement your information architecture:

• Managed Metadata Service

• Site columns

• Content types

• Term sets

• Information management policies

 Discussion: What Is Your Experience of
Information Architectures?
• What is your experience of IA in your organization?

• Does your organization have a documented IA?

• Is it based on an organizational hierarchy or some other structure?

• Who are the key stakeholders of information in your organization?

• What do you see as the key elements of your IA?

• What do you feel a documented IA offers you as a SharePoint

specialist?

• What do you feel a documented IA would offer your organization?

Lesson 3: Organizing Information in SharePoint
2013

• The SharePoint Information Architecture Container

Hierarchy
• The Managed Metadata Service Application
• Planning Site Columns and Content Types
• Planning Term Sets
• Planning Information Management Policies
• Navigation as a Feature of Information
Architecture
The SharePoint Information Architecture
Container Hierarchy
Farm
Service Form Content Managed
Services Features
Applications Templates Deployment Accounts

Web Application
Auth. Managed Service
File Types Throttling Quotas
Providers Paths Connections

Site Collection
Content Site User Content
Web Parts Features
Types Columns Solutions Databases

Site
Lists Features Alerts Workflows Themes Layouts

List & Libraries

Event
List Items List Views Workflows Forms Indexes
Handlers
The Managed Metadata Service Application

• Manage Metadata Service provides:

• Storage of terms for an enterprise taxonomy

• Distribution of taxonomy elements across business

divisions
Planning Site Columns and Content Types

• Custom columns and site columns

• Content types
• Drives document management consistency
• Governance
• Reuse
• Workflows

• Content type inheritance

• Deploying content types across site collections

• Content type hubs
• Publishing
Planning Term Sets

• What are term sets?

• Manage and unmanaged lists of data that can be associated with
information

• Term set terminology

• Terms
• Term set
• Term set owner
• Term set group
• Term set group manager
• Contributor

• Term set functionality

• Folksonomies
Planning Information Management Policies

• Information management policies

• Manage information item governance

• Settings for document or item behavior

• Retention
• Auditing
• Barcodes
• Labels

• Configurable across:
• Lists
• Libraries
• Content types
Navigation as a Feature of Information
Architecture

• Use metadata and business taxonomy to facilitate

user navigation
• Navigation hierarchies

• Key filters

• Builds navigation that reacts organically to changes

in information architecture
Lab A: Creating an Information Architecture Part
One

• Exercise 1: Identifying Site Columns and Content

Types

Logon Information
• Virtual machines: 20331B-NYC-CL
• User name: admin
• Password: Pa$$w0rd

Estimated Time: 60 minutes

Lab Scenario

The IT team at Contoso has finished gathering the business

requirements for the new SharePoint 2013 deployment, and the key
stakeholders have approved its findings. Your task is to create an
information architecture design that incorporates these business
requirements.

The information that your team has gathered is detailed in the

supplied documents. Use these documents to design a site structure,
including potential site columns and content types.

Your whole class will work together to discuss the requirements and
complete the Content Types sheet in the Information Architecture
Planning worksheet. Your instructor will facilitate your discussions.
Lab Review

• In this lab, you identified site column and content

type information for Contoso.
Lesson 4: Planning for Discoverability

• Designing a Taxonomy
• Discussion: Identifying a Taxonomy for Litware Inc.
• Designing Keywords
• Query Rules
• Managed Properties
Designing a Taxonomy

• Taxonomies are most often associated with Enterprise Content

Management

• Taxonomy columns should be mandatory

• Limit the number of subclassification levels in your taxonomy

• Avoid taxonomy options, such as Other

• Avoid Windows Explorer view access, because this may allow

users to bypass taxonomy columns

• Remember that you can have more than one taxonomy in your
organization
Discussion: Identifying a Taxonomy for Litware Inc.

• How would you amend or augment this literary

taxonomy for literature genres?
Literature Literature
Poetry Prose
Epic ??
Lyric Romance
Dramatic Comedy
Drama Fantasy
?? ??
Satire Non-fiction
Tragedy Computing
Melodrama Accounting
?? ??
Designing Keywords

• The keywords option is available across the range

of SharePoint products

• The keyword set

• A single, non-hierarchical term set
• Configurable as:
• Open
• Closed

• Available for user tagging

• A potential tool in developing a transitional term

set to develop a user-driven, stable taxonomy
Query Rules

• Query rules promote a range of results that are

inferred from a user query
• The relationship between query and results is one to
potentially many
• Query rules have replaced search keywords
• Search keywords promoted results based on the specific
content of a query
• Query rule structure
• Query condition
• May include multiple conditions
• Query action
• Publishing option
Managed Properties

• Managed properties are available at:

• Service application level
• Site collection level

• Managed properties:
• Must be text
• Cannot be sortable
• Cannot be refinable

• SharePoint 2013 ships with managed properties

that provide these functions
Lab B: Creating an Information Architecture Part
Two

• Exercise 1: Designing a Business Taxonomy

Logon Information
• Virtual machines: 20331B-NYC-CL
• User name: admin
• Password: Pa$$w0rd

Estimated Time: 30 mins

Lab Scenario

After completing your information architecture

design for manageability, you must now extend
the information architecture to include
discoverability.

Your whole class will work together to discuss the

requirements and complete the Taxonomy sheet in
the Information Architecture Planning worksheet.
Your instructor will facilitate your discussions.
Lab Review

• In this lab, you identified keywords, synonyms,

managed properties, and a core taxonomy for
Contoso.
Module Review and Takeaways

• Review Question(s)