The Client
This Dallas-based midstream natural gas company provides a broad range of services, including gas gathering, treating, processing, transmission, distribution, supply, and marketing.
The Problem
The company’s intranet portal, built upon the SharePoint 2003 platform, was not effective. Since its launch in 2003, portal usage levels had steadily dropped and were now nearly non-existent, and for good reason. The user interface lacked visual appeal, and its look and feel was inconsistent with the company’s corporate Web brand. The search capabilities were greatly diminished, so much so that finding documents had become an object lesson in frustration. The document repository lacked structure and had not been adequately maintained. Users often would not find needed documents or would find multiple copies of specific document or outdated versions. As a result, employees in the company’s 14 functional departments stopped using the portal and went back to saving documents on shared resources and network share drives.
Despite the portal environment’s dysfunction, the company’s management team, led by the business leaders in the GIS and Pipeline Integrity departments and with IT’s endorsement, still believed in a vision of a corporate intranet with robust and intuitive functionality that would enable employees to be more efficient, more collaborative, and more productive.
The Solution
The company selected Stonebridge to provide consulting and implementation services in order to deliver a more effective intranet portal. On Stonebridge’s counsel, the company elected to migrate from SharePoint 2003 to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 as the platform for the intranet portal environment. Next, Stonebridge proposed the MOSS Catalyst Program, a defined Stonebridge solution designed to accelerate the design and deployment of a core MOSS foundation. To meet the client’s business requirements for greater portal functionality, Stonebridge also augmented the base MOSS Catalyst deliverables with other custom-developed features.
This MOSS project had four primary components:
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MOSS Installation – Stonebridge installed and configured MOSS 2007 Enterprise Edition. This effort included defining the hardware architecture based on anticipated performance and scalability requirements. It also included assigning inherited security rights for users by department in order to ensure that only authorized users and groups could alter and/or access content.
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Custom User Interface – Using SharePoint Designer, Stonebridge created a graphic design for the portal that inherited the look and feel of the company’s Web brand. In the process, Stonebridge developed a new master page based on defined content, layout, and menu-navigation standards. Using these standards, Stonebridge developed a new home page for the portal as well as departmental home pages for all 14 functional departments. Each department site included standard content, including department rosters featuring employee pictures that provide a quick link to contact information.
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Document Management – Based on interviews with personnel from each functional department, Stonebridge defined a basic taxonomy for documents and records for the new portal. MOSS’ native search capabilities were extended to enable users to find documents in file shares. To demarcate between departmental and public documents, Stonebridge leveraged user access rights and targeted views to separate libraries for internal and shared documents, and then managed the migration of content from SharePoint 2003 application to MOSS based on the new portal’s navigational structure. Stonebridge worked with each department to identify and eliminate redundant and expired content prior to migration.
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Forms-based Workflow – Stonebridge created InfoPath forms to Web-enable new user equipment requests for the client’s IT department. Using the original Word-based form as a template, the Stonebridge team created a standard InfoPath form and then documented the new user on-boarding process to develop an automated workflow utilizing MOSS’ native workflow and notification functionality.
The Benefits
The company’s new MOSS intranet portal, which was delivered in just five weeks, has given employees a boost in both productivity and morale. Portal usage levels have significantly increased and are still growing. Searching for and quickly locating needed documents is now the norm. End users have greater confidence in the portal’s value, which has resulted in increased usage and quick adoption. The InfoPath workflow has accelerated the on-boarding process for new employees and contractors, and the success of the initial workflow has created new demand to extend MOSS workflow functionality to other parts of the company. Lastly, the company’s management team reports that the portal’s improved appearance has boosted morale and teamwork, giving employees a visible reminder of their individual department’s unique contribution and value to the entire company.