As they say, there is more than one way to skin a cat. In the SharePoint world, it’s no different. For many SharePoint users, SharePoint gives you the ability to perform your function in more than one way. The first obvious barrier to SharePoint is the licensing costs. This post thankfully, is not about the different ways to develop or configure SharePoint. Rather this post is brainstorming different ideas to increase end user adoption.
The problem is not the technology platform but rather a paradigm shift on how end users work. In many large organizations, end users have become used to using email to share documents, storing multiple versions of documents within file shares and have multiple logins to view different data. SharePoint has become the platform to implement but don’t always know how to engage users and have them collaborating, communicating and participating.
I wanted to provide a place for different brainstorming ideas to be jotted down. You are welcome to contribute to the list. I’ll start with some of my ways to increase end user adoption:
1. In Person Training
a. Lunch and Learns / Workshops - provide free food during lunch hour and present on a different topic on a predefined schedule
b. Train the trainer – teach a small group of enthusiastic power users and facilitate training sessions where they each teach another small group
c. Training for Specific Role – training and workshops / labs designed around a specific SharePoint role
2. Text based Content
a. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) – provide a set of commonly asked questions and their answers
b. Tutorials – create an area where step by step instructions are provided on how to perform common SharePoint tasks grouped by roles. This tutorial area can either be a page(s) based site, wiki site, blog site or discussion board.
c. Blog – share company specific information on how to perform a task that is important or popular during that time. This could be related around company events (BBQ, Christmas party, etc.) or even around specific processes (request vacation time, retrieve payroll specific information, etc.)
3. Multimedia content
a. Podcasts – provide a site using the Podcasting Kit for SharePoint or your own home grown solution that has audio / video based content on how to perform common day to day SharePoint tasks or event specific tasks that users can motivates users to collaborate and share information on a SharePoint site
b. Videos – allow multiple departments to have an area where they can upload videos on how to use a site.
4. Community Oriented
a. Contests - ask users from every department to help name your SharePoint portal
b. Feedback – release a beta solution to your test environment / sandbox and ask users to provide feedback on it can improve or to share bugs that might have been missed
Depending on your organization, one or more of these ideas will help drive end users to adopt the SharePoint platform. What ideas have you used to increase end user adoption?