Our library structure sucks, and what to do about it: Putability and Findability

From the Mailbag

"Our library structure basically sucks. There are several places any one type of document can be stored. As a result, they are all over the place. I went looking for some Sponsor Meeting and Steering Committee Meeting items this morning and was seriously let down trying to locate what I wanted. Is there a quick and dirty way that an analysis of the structure and contents of the library can be pulled for analysis? If so, it won't be that hard to find the dupes (and potential dupes), and figure out how to fix it."

Bill English, SharePoint MVP, on Putability and Findability

"It is amazing that otherwise very smart people will expect they can load high volumes of documents into SharePoint with little thought to organization and then expect to find individual documents quickly and easily. …

Secondly, users will resist taking the time to put quality information into the system. Managers seem to be especially resistant to having their information workers take time to properly tag their information as it goes into the system. "

Tactics and Strategy for Improving File Sharing with SharePoint

Here is a very tactical hands-on approach to solving this problem, both right now and for good. The most important step is #3.

1.       Find what you need RIGHT NOW

2.       Root cause analysis: Findability needs Putability

3.       Socialize the Problem and Collaborate on the Solution

4.       Solve the Root Cause with Metadata and Views

Remember, collaboration is the great leveler. Finders of content are naturally more likely to be senior to putters of content, and in fact, imposed top-down structures can (and do) make matters worse. Treat your team as colleagues on a level playing field, and improve findability by placing putability first.

Find what you need RIGHT NOW (5 min): the No-Folders View

You don't have time to solve everyone's problems. So, solve yours fast:

1.       Create a view that shows all items without folders, sorted by Modified > Descending.

2.       Filter the view, or use the dropdown filters, to identify the group of files you're looking for.

3.       Use Created/Modified and Created By/Modified By as clues to whether this is the latest version and who uploaded it.

4.       Use your browser's search function to scan the filenames to find what you're looking for.

OK, so now you can SEE the mess. Ugh. This will fill you with loathing for your untidy team members. Be kind. They were in just as much of a hurry to put these files as you are to find them. Moreover, no one wanted to define a file plan because everyone knows that the first person to define a folder structure is stuck doing everyone else's filing. The resulting game of chicken is what you see before you.

So, set aside some time to dig in, and go do what you were trying to do before you stopped to hunt for a document. You will need not to be in a hurry for the next step.

Root Cause Analysis: Findability needs Putability

"User resistance is one of the most difficult obstacles to overcome when implementing a robust information organization effort. When asked who is responsible for tagging information, the same survey elicited the following responses (multiple answers were allowed to this question, hence the total of more than 100%):

·         Authors: 40%

·         Records Managers: 29%

·         SME's: 25%

·         Anyone: 23%

·         Don't know: 12%

·         No one: 16%

Step 1: Files

Here's how to THINK ABOUT cleaning up the existing mess.

1.       Open Excel and create a web query pointed at the view you created. (Alternatively, you may want to make another one with more fields.)

2.       Look at the file names to see if you see any patterns: many people add version numbers, dates, project IDs, approvers, &c into the file name.

3.       Create some additional columns and pull that data out into consistent fields. Common ones are Reporting Period, Version, Owner, Project, &c.

4.       Create a Y/N column and label "near-duplicates" including manual versions.

Once you have a plan, you will want to invite your teammates politely to work with you to rationalize these. Otherwise, you will be stuck doing it yourself.

You should now have a reasonably good idea of where your file plan is falling down. At this point, most organized people have a burning desire to create a nice clean new folder structure, with subfolders for all the categories you found, throw everything into it, and send a stern email telling everyone to use it. STOP! This is an antipattern (something that should work and doesn't). Here's why.

Step 2: Folders

Multilevel folder structures are what created this problem in the first place. When there is more than one logical path to file something, there is no one logical path to find it. Take a deep breath and remind yourself that this is a collaboration space, and that since you don't want to become the librarian, you may have to tolerate people filing things in places that don't make sense to you. The solution is to replace folders with views.

If you already have a multilevel folder structure, you will want to capture the folder labels as part of your new metadata plan. You can browse down into each folder, or you can do a little Excel wizardry.

1.       Your Excel sheet should have a column of filenames with hyperlinks. You want the URL path of each file.

2.       Extract the hyperlinks using a function or a macro:

a.       http://www.techonthenet.com/excel/macros/extract_hl.php

b.      http://excel.tips.net/T003281_Extracting_URLs_from_Hyperlinks.html

3.       Copy the raw hyperlinks into the last column of your table. You want empty cells to the right.

4.       Use Text to Columns to split the URLs at each /. This will give you a column for each level of the library structure.

5.       Delete the columns for the htttps:, site name, and library name. Now you have 3-9 (!) columns of folder names.

At this point, you can eyeball the list and update your column plan and be done. For a very large library, you can do some quick-and-dirty content frequency analysis.

Frequency Analysis for Large Libraries

1.       Copy all the columns that contain folder labels. Most of these will be empty, but the rest hold the archaeological remains of a once pristine file plan.

2.       Paste the entire mess an online frequency counter like http://www.wordcounter.com/.

3.       Analyze the results for familiar business terms: document/template types. Clients, projects, technologies, processes, phases, &c are common.

4.       High-frequency business terms are good candidates for metadata columns. You will recognize them when you see them.

5.       Scrutinize numbers for process dates: Date Received, Date Signed, Date Submitted. &c. Consider creating system date-stamp columns and/or workflows for these.

6.       Ditto for version numbers. If manual versioning is rampant, it means people don't trust check-in/checkout. Don't scold them. Investigate.

7.       Go back to your Excel file plan, create any additional columns, and tag your files with the values from the folder labels.

The entire mess should now begin to make complete sense. You are now eager to go back to SharePoint and implement your file plan. In fact, you're probably ready to set all the new columns to Required to force adoption.

STOP! First, share your experience and vision with your team. (Remember, you don't want the job of librarian.) "User resistance is one of the most difficult obstacles to overcome when implementing a robust information organization effort." Plan accordingly.

Socialize the Problem and Collaborate on the Solution

"Often, if users can't find information quickly and easily, they will simply e-mail someone or just not include that information in their decision-making processes. Now, there is the reality that the more the information is needed by the user, the harder they will work to find it. But in the long run, they won't put out any more effort than they feel is minimally necessary to do their job. "

Socialize the Problem- Findability vs. Putability

1.       Create a single PowerPoint slide with the problem statement "There are several places any one type of document can be stored. As a result, they are all over the place."

2.       Add a screenshot of the library. If you really want to make a point, take a few screenshots and animate the browse process. People won't change if there isn't a reason.

3.       Send this around to a few influential people who would like to see the problem solved, with a covering note that says, "I've done some analysis on this that I'd like to walk you through."

4.       Find out how many people share the problem, or if there are people who see the same problem from a different angle.

5.       More senior roles (PM, AM, GDM) have greater need for findability, and may find it harder to accept that others have a greater need for putability.

6.       Using managerial authority/seniority to require tagging can reduce putability at the expense of findability—and you do want the content to be there to find in the first place. Otherwise, they'll just email it to you again.

More people are likely to feel the pain of putability. Leverage this to restate your problem with more WIFM (What's In It For Me) as Easier to Add Content In the Right Place.

Here's a tip from an experienced content manager, project manager, business admin, and former secretary. The more senior/important/busy a person is, the more likely they are to be a root cause of findability. Busy/important/senior people do not have time for filing, and they won't bother with putting things in the "right place." The more important/busy/senior they are, the higher the expectation that it is other people's job to put things where they can find them. (This is usually true.) If a senior/busy/important person does decide to take on the problem, it will often be to devise a solution for everyone else to follow. This is also an antipattern.

If your senior leadership is not using the collaboration space, you have a bigger problem than file planning. If the file plan isn't simple enough for the most senior/important/busy people to put documents in the right place without being told to or reminded how, then you don't have a collaboration solution.

Collaborate on the Solution

1.       Use your Excel file plan to create some PivotTable views of the new library. Play around until you have views that

a.       Show the scope of the problem without metadata

b.      Show some solution views with metadata, like What's New (Modified>Descending), By Owner, By Status, Meeting Minutes, &c.

2.       Determine the MINIMUM amount of required metadata to support these views. Guidelines:

3.       People will resist adding more than two additional tags. SharePoint 2010 supports default metadata tagging.

4.       Focus on tags that make it Easier to Add Content In the Right Place.

5.       Identify the ONE column that would have the greatest impact for the most people. (Not just you.) This will take patient, persistent listening to the people who have the least incentive to speak up, since they are the ones who will be asked to change their behavior the most.

6.       Negotiate agreement on required columns. You are asking people to change behavior. It won't stick unless they agree.

Proceeding without buy-in compromises adoption. Your mileage may vary. Throw your weight around at your peril, or you're back in the librarian's seat.

Solve the Root Cause with Metadata and Views

The First Step: One Required Tag

1.       Set the negotiated column to Required. Assign someone to bulk-tag existing content with this column ASAP.

2.       Create a view that uses this column and place it on the home page. This makes compliance visible and provides immediate positive feedback that tagging works.

3.       Assign someone to bulk-tag all the remaining content, and to monitor and update tagging as needed.

4.       Leave this sit for about a month. Remember, you're not librarians, you all have a job to do. The hardest part of a system to change is the mindshare. Let everyone adjust.

Rinse and repeat from Step 3: Socialize and Collaborate

"In many organizations, users simply don't know who is responsible for tagging information or are not directly assigned the tagging task to make that information more findable. In the absence of a governance rule that details who is responsible for tagging documents, the result is that anyone (and yet no one) will be able to apply metadata to a document. This is not a recipe for success."

When choosing a tagging governance rule for your team, be practical. Assigning one person to tag everyone's content can waste valuable, billable time by the hour. Assigning each person to tag their own content can waste valuable, billable time by the minute (for them) and by the hour (for you, in fuming and nagging).

Engage your team in solving the problem, and see what they come up with.

And before you ask: yes, your IT department can show you how the default tagging features work in SharePoint, but IT is helping every other team in the company solve exactly these same issues. IT cannot tag your content for you, but they can show you how to save time and do it effectively yourselves.

"When asked the degree to which Findability is critical to their overall business goals and success, 62% of respondents indicated that it is imperative or significant. Only 5% felt it had minimal or no impact on business success. Yet, 49% responded that even though Findability is strategically essential, they have no formal plan or set of goals for Findability in their organization. Of the other 51% who claimed to have a strategy, 26% reported that their strategy was ad hoc, meaning that they have no strategy at all. Hence, 75% of organizations have no Findability strategy, even though many believe it is strategically essential."

This four-step tactical approach is the basis of an enterprise findability strategy. Rinse and repeat on a global scale.

Further Reading: Putability and Findability by Bill English