From the course: SharePoint for Enterprise: Data Management

Libraries often mirror existing structures - SharePoint Tutorial

From the course: SharePoint for Enterprise: Data Management

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Libraries often mirror existing structures

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- [Instructor] Before we start talking about how SharePoint can solve your data management woes, I think we need to talk a little about the things that can be contributing to them. Although I think SharePoint is a really useful tool, I am enough of a realist to know that a lot of people don't like it. However, I personally believe that the reason most of them have a problem with SharePoint is that the sites they're working on have been poorly set up. Document management is one of the things SharePoint does best, and it's one of the things people complain about the most. And by the way, we should probably get used to saying file management, not document. You can store pretty much any kind of file in a SharePoint library, except an executable file. So let's see the big picture, okay? Now, what is the number one thing that people complain about with libraries? It's that they can't find what they're looking for. And why is that? A huge majority of the time, it's because when the library was set up, no thought was given to structure. Someone just took the mess of folders and files out of a network shared drive and dumped the whole thing into SharePoint. This doesn't fix anything. It just moves the problem from one place to another. There are a few things you need to know about libraries in SharePoint. Thing number one, you can customize them by adding enforceable metadata collection. I'll show you exactly how to do this later in the course, but why is this important? Well, the first reason is that it allows you to flatten the structure of your library. It's absolutely possible to have a library of thousands of files with no folders at all. I've seen it done. I know it can work. The second reason that metadata collection is important is it allows you to create those multiple views I talked about earlier in the course. Those views are configurable so that you can easily give your different audiences exactly the information they need to do their jobs. The third reason is that you can have more than one library in a site. Actually, you can have as many as you need, although I'd argue for keeping the number down as much as possible. Now, why would you have different libraries? The best reason is because you have files with different levels of sensitivity and you want to control who can see what? Now this gets after the second reason people have problems with SharePoint. They can't access things that they need. And why is that? Well typically, it's because permissions are being managed incorrectly. Two very important points. Number one, you should never grant permissions to files at the file level, and I don't think the folder level either. As far as I'm concerned, permissions should only be granted at the library level. This makes giving access to files incredibly simpler. Thing number two, you should never under any circumstances ever give permissions to people. Permissions should only be given to groups and people belong to those groups. Even if you've got one person who has different rights from everybody else, you create a group that defines that and add them to the group, period. Another big reason people can't find what they're looking for, the site owner neglected to create clear navigational paths. Oh, come on guys. This is site design 101. If your site hasn't been set up to point your users to the information that they need to get their jobs done, you need to go back to the drawing board. LinkedIn learning has got some great courses in designing good websites and creating navigation in SharePoint. And if you aren't sure how to do stuff, I highly recommend that you check them out.

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