How to handle too MUCH SharePoint "Buy-In"

I've learned a lot about SharePoint in the last two years or so. One thing is the concept of "buy-in". You've probably heard a fair amount about "buy-in" with SharePoint -- you need it from management to get the infrastructure, you need it from department heads and team leaders to get it deployed and put to use, and ultimately, you need it from end users, so it can be populated with the data it's supposed to manage. 

Another thing I've learned -- not coincidentally -- is that viewing a whole lot of data (entered and updated by happy users who have bought in to SharePoint) is... somewhat less than optimal. There are the dreaded page reloads, limited default filtering controls, and the generally pokey speed of the Web sometimes. 

Put these two things together, and you get the unpleasant truth/paradox that the more buy-in you get from users (a good thing), the more irritating it usually becomes for any one of them to look at data in SharePoint (a very, very bad thing). Now, the lazy person inside my head doesn't see a problem here ("it's self-regulating!"), but if you want to handle a lot of information -- and you do, since you bothered to set up SharePoint in the first place -- you're going to need to be prepared for the consequences of a successful SharePoint deployment. It's not a super technical thing, or a 2003/2007/2010 thing -- it's just a matter of equipping your sites, lists, and what-have-you to handle a real-world amount of data, and a whole bunch of users who want to sift through it without feeling the urge to reach inside their monitor and strangle a Web application.

Fortunately, this is something we at Bamboo have spent a lot of time thinking about. So let's go through three ways people use data online, and how you can help them do it (right now!) in SharePoint.

"I like to... Search."

Sometimes, you only really need to see one item -- you just have to find it. Increasingly, this seems to be the case, whether it's our e-mail, our desktop, or yes, a SharePoint List.

How to do it in SharePoint : The no-nonsense Bamboo answer is (duh), List Search, which comes in two flavors (Advanced and Simple) of search Web Parts. Either one gives you the ability to find one or more list items that match one or more of several conditions, which is pretty much exactly what you want to do when you're searching. 

Searching doesn't give you any context, and you have to really know what you're looking for right off the bat, but you're definitely going to want to equip any decently-used SharePoint portal with an effective way to search list data.

"I like to ... Browse."

Another way to look at data is to browse through it; you generally want to see a bunch of different items at the same time (so there's context), and while you've got a rough idea, you usually don't know exactly what you're looking for. You may want to see a list of products that cost "around" $500, or who's in the Accounting department, or some tasks that have been assigned to your department. I usually find myself doing this when I'm using SharePoint to "get familiar" with a project or a set of data -- I just kind of want to look, and as I do, I'd like to be able to look at different sets of the data to answer different questions that come to mind. 

Out of the box, SharePoint isn't very useful here. You can sort by different categories pretty easily, but you still don't see many items, and the sorting is pretty simple. If your portal is a little underpowered, you'll spend a fair amount of time waiting for page reloads, and before long, odds are you'll decide you've seen enough (even if you know you haven't) and simply move on. 

How to do it in SharePoint : In this case, what you really want to do is FILTER your data on the fly. You don't want to mess with the tool pane, you don't want to create a list view -- you just want to filter data by whatever value pops into your head, and you want it to happen quickly. That's what the SharePoint List Filters Collection is designed to do. When installed, it lets you pick from a bunch of different, obviously useful filters that hook up to a list via a Web Part connection -- just add the list to your page, add a filter, and they snap together like a childhood hobby. Change a date, change a name, change a choice field, and the data simply rearranges before your eyes. It's the perfect way to let people browse data the way they want. 

"I like to... just sort of fiddle around."

Finally, sometimes you just want to play with data -- you want to see it grouped, sorted, nested, expanded, and then you want to group the sorted data, and sort nested data, etc., etc., and so forth. This is kind of an "advanced browsing" concept, only you want to be able to do more than just filter; you actually want to be able to manipulate how the data is structured and presented to you.

Again, out of the box SharePoint isn't a very good place to do this. You can create custom list views, but it's not exactly on the fly, and it involves navigating AWAY from your page, to a different set of screens entirely. When you just want to see what happens when projects are grouped by status for a second, that ends up being an awful lot of work for not much return. 

How to do it in SharePoint : We created the Data-Viewer Web Part for exactly this kind of poking around; it populates a custom Web Part interface with list data, and lets you drag, expand, and tinker with your data WITHOUT altering the original list, or even having to create a custom list view. If you really stumble onto something good ("ahhh, if we group by district and filter out orders less than $10k, this makes sense!"), you can export what you've built with a couple clicks, and share it with anyone else who might care.

If you like to fiddle with data this way, SharePoint out of the box isn't going to cut it. Data-Viewer, though, will do nicely. 

So, um... action item?

None of these fixes are especially expensive, and if you actually have to use SharePoint, it quickly becomes apparent that this is the kind of thing your portal HAS to be able to do if list data is going to be useful to anyone in your organization. 

If you're only working with one of these kinds of users, it's literally just a couple hundred bucks to add this functionality to your SharePoint environment. If -- and yes, this is more likely -- you're dealing with a mix of all three, it's a great time to kill a whole bunch of birds with one stone, and check out the different Bamboo Suites (which just happen to be on sale through the end of the year).

Don't kill the SharePoint momentum you've worked so hard to gain in your organization -- equip it to meet the needs of your users, and you'll have more buy-in than you'll know what to do with.

And if you're ready for it, that's definitely a good thing.