Microsoft Office SystemCustomer Solution Case Study

SharePoint 2010 Empowers Knowledge Management in Catholic Education System

OverviewCountry or Region: Sydney, New South WalesIndustry: Education

Customer ProfileThe Catholic Education Office (CEO) administers 78 catholic schools in the Western Sydney Area.

Business SituationCEO wanted to improve document accessibility for its widely dispersed stakeholders. However, a new system would need to have a very strong and intuitive document search functionality and would need to improve collaboration across the office and its schools.

SolutionIn 2010, CEO deployed the newly released document management system, SharePoint 2010 as the central element in a comprehensive knowledge management system.

Benefits Better document management Greater local control More refined search Platform for flexible development

“Instead of just being a passive reader of the data, you can write the data onto the database yourself.”

Dr John De Courcy, Head of Strategic Accountabilities Services, The Catholic Education Office

The Catholic Education Office (CEO) in Parramatta administers 78 Catholic schools across the Diocese of Parramatta in Western Sydney. After a strategic review of how the office managed information, CEO decided it needed to make it easier to locate and access all the documents produced by the Office and its schools. Impressed by the improved search functionality in Microsoft SharePoint 2010, CEO used it to form the core of a new knowledge management system. With the help of comprehensive centrally managed document tagging, CEO can enforce document hierarchies, giving a clear structure to all its documents. With informal ‘folksonomy’ tagging, staff can also devise and adapt their own information structures, so topics that staff feel are important quickly generate their own profile. Launched in September 2010, the new knowledge management system means that information is easier to find, and it has encouraged staff to contribute and share information.

SituationThe Catholic Education Office (CEO) in Parramatta administers 78 Catholic schools in Sydney’s western suburbs. Currently it helps oversee the activities of 6,500 staff, and a total of 41,000 students.

Document access and information sharing is absolutely essential to how CEO works with schools, in particular when it comes to managing student records, disseminating training material and collating informal memoranda.

Starting in 2007, CEO began a strategic review to analyse how it managed this information. The review found that information access and sharing were particular problems. In the absence of a central repository of information, staff tended to build up file structures in private silos, which could not be viewed or accessed by colleagues. By default, information that should have been shared became proprietary.

“In most organisations, you have to know who has the information or piece of data that you want – or where it is – to start digging,” says Dr John De Courcy, Head of Strategic Accountabilities, CEO. “Our idea was to make information produced by anyone in CEO or the schools easily available, so people could see what was there.”

The outcome of the review was a knowledge management strategy, and at its core lay improved linking and searchability.

“We wanted to make our system the Wikipedia of CEO, operating by search and link, rather than a system of categorisation that people needed prior understanding of,” says De Courcy.

“However, we also wanted it to be intuitive, because of the thousands of people that would use it, and we wanted it to be progressive – in the sense that if a piece of information becomes more and more important, then it becomes more noticeable, and more available.”

Furthermore, De Courcy wanted the system to encourage openness.

“We wanted the default position to be collaboration and sharing,” he says. “And we wanted to break apart the idea that knowledge equals power.”

SolutionAfter deciding what it wanted, CEO’s first step was to review potential technologies. For assistance, CEO turned to Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, Artis Group. The advice was clear.

“The new system needed to be based around a top performing search capability,” says Leon Bro, Principal Consultant, Artis Group.

Given that documents were produced by staff, teachers and sometimes students, Artis focused on how different systems used and managed metadata: the descriptors – such as date, author and topic – attached to each document so that the document registers with a search engine.

25

“In most organisations, you have to know who has the information or piece of data that you want – or where it is – to start digging.”

Dr John De Courcy, Head of Strategic Accountabilities, CEO

“In the case of CEO, metadata was particularly important because it helps with unstructured document searches, or searches where the interrogator does not necessarily know what they are looking for,” says Bro.

“By tagging key documents – such as training material records – with key metadata, they would be much easier to find. So, for example, if the metadata captures the fact that an informal record of a meeting concerned payroll, then it will be far easier for members of the finance or HR department to find it.”

In late 2009, Bro mentioned to CEO that the Beta version of SharePoint 2010 was about to be released. This version of Microsoft’s main document-sharing application was set to include a number of improvements in search capability so that documents could be tagged comprehensively, according to types and hierarchies that were centrally controlled.

However, the document management system also needed to be progressive, so that it could react to what staff and teachers thought was important. This meant preventing central control from enforcing rigid rules about how documents were grouped, since file structures would then cease to be reactive.

“SharePoint 2010 has folksonomy functionality,” says Bro. “This is where people create their own tags, so it becomes an informal way of creating classifications. For informal documents, users end up deciding their own

structure for document storage rather than having a library setup imposed.

“This is particularly important for records management, where – in the case of CEO – the vast proportion would be created by the teachers and other school staff in schools. For example, there is a legal requirement to store student records securely, but this used to come at the cost of not being able to get hold of them.”

With SharePoint 2010, staff at individual schools will be able to decide how to construct performance libraries so that individual reports are easy to find, while permissions on who can access the records will keep them secure.

Two other factors were important. The first was technical: around 50 percent of computers at CEO were PCs, the other half Macs. Since SharePoint 2010 could support the Mac-based Safari browser, there were no infrastructure impediments to basing a solution on SharePoint 2010.

Finally, SharePoint 2010 has an improved Businsess Data Catalogue feature, which does not require external tools for development.

“It allows us to pull information from multiple data sources and multiple data systems, and present it in simple graphs, spreadsheets or diagrams in an easy-to-adapt presentation tool,” says Bro. “Artis developed a prototype to show CEO what the product could do, and CEO decided to go with SharePoint 2010.”

35

“It is everything to everyone. It is a document management platform and a business intelligence tool. It is a presentation layer and a data source. It’s an information management tool and full enterprise architecture in a box.”

Leon Bro, Principal Consultant, Artis Group

BenefitsThe first phase of CEO’s new document management system – an enterprise wiki and workflow engine, coupled with Exchange 2010 and Sharepoint 2010 – is being deployed to 100–200 staff at head office in late 2010 and has already proved popular.

“The success of this solution is largely due to SharePoint 2010 immersing customer staff in business information,” says Peter Giudes, Chief Executive Officer, Artis Group. “The rapid search capability, metadata design and user-friendly presentation mean staff are engaged. This leads to better learning outcomes for all CEO students.”

Better document managementStaff quickly got to grips with the content organiser so they could create coherent document structures.

“The managed metadata service is easy to use and allowed us to develop a structured hierarchy of documents based on existing classifications,” says De Courcy.

Despite the need for central coordination, staff can also configure particular parts of the knowledge management system to their own taste, skills and priorities.

“By allowing people to tag documents, they get more control,” says Bro. “They can add their own documents to a new group within any particular catalogue or portfolio. This helps to make the way people work more open and flexible, and means they are not restricted. It means

that everyone can add material where they think it’s important.”

De Courcy believes that this will encourage staff to make contributions.

“Instead of just being a passive reader of the data, you can write the data onto the database yourself,” he says.

More refined searchThe efficiency of the metadata tags for document searching will only be clear when tens of thousands of documents have been created, but results so far are promising.

“End users are going to notice they can refine their search results based on relevant metadata in much the same way large commercial sites like eBay do,” says Bro. “SharePoint 2010 has a much more refined search capability.”

Future developmentGradually, the records system will be extended to a resource network that will connect teachers, parents and students.

“This system gives us and our schools a collaboration tool upon which we can then go and build new information architecture,” De Courcy says.

“When Sharepoint 2010 is coupled with a powerful enterprise wiki and Exchange, you create a very intuitive knowledge management tool. It has strong push-and-pull communications functionality, and because it is browser-based, staff can use it anywhere, anytime, and on any device, to get whatever they are after.”

45

“It is everything to everyone,” adds Bro. “It is a document management platform and a business intelligence tool. It is a presentation layer and a data source. It’s an information management tool and full enterprise architecture in a box. It’s everything you need it to be.”

Microsoft Office SystemThe Microsoft Office system is the business world’s chosen environment for information work, providing the programs, servers, and services that help you succeed by transforming information into impact.

For more information about the Microsoft Office system, go to: www.microsoft.com/office

55

For More InformationFor more information about SharePoint 2010, go to:www.microsoft.com

For more information about Artis Group products and services, call (02) 8404 5800 or visit the website at: www.artisgroup.com.au/

For more information about the Catholic Education Office, call (02) 9840 5600 or visit the website at: http://www.parra.catholic.edu.au

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published October 2010.

Software and Services Microsoft Server Product Portfolio− Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal

Server 2010

Partners Artis Group