The difference with SharePoint 2010 content

In my last post ‘It’s how you use SharePoint 2010 that decides the value it brings 2’ I covered how vital it is to set the right level of permissions for people using the information published.

In this post I will show how people can distinguish different types of content in SP2010.   The value to be gained by your organisation can vary tremendously depending on how you achieve this.

You can break SP2010 published content in to two types:

Accredited

Accredited content is official, authoritative, reliable & up to date.  People will able to trust it,  use it with confidence, knowing it is current and relevant.  It is usually information that has a large audience.  A limited number of people can edit the information, with access controlled by permissions.  Usually one person will have clear ownership. 

Collaborative

Collaborative content can be owned by everyone, an individual or community.  It can be open to anyone to contribute or comment upon the information.  It can be an opinion expressed on a blog posting or a wiki article for others to contribute to and improve further.

Branding

The best way is to brand the content types differently.

SP2010 ‘out of the box’ functionality is good enough for most people publishing and viewing content.  So, you can use this for your collaborative content.

Customising the SP2010 masterpages with your corporate branding for accredited content will show clearly the difference from what is ‘out of the box’.

To keep costs down design the branding so that it is minimal – enough to make a difference so people spot it when they use the content – but easy to maintain the masterpages.

With SP2010 you can have a page published with both types of content shown on it.  This is because you have different webparts – sections of the page – that can be inserted by the publisher.

You need to consider very carefully if you need to extend the customising to each webpart.  The costs and maintainability will increase greatly.  It is best to test out with a sample of people what is needed, if anything, so they can distinguish accredited from collaborative content in each webpart.

As with any planned changes, test as early as you can with a sample of people, act on their feedback, be flexible in what the final versions could look like. 

That will give you the greatest chance of success of maximising the value your organisation can gain from using SharePoint 2010.