I have been tasked with designing a solution using SharePoint to help us manage our SOP’s + policies. Our business is heavily manufacturing based so we naturally we have a lot of regulation and processes that need to be documented, sent and confirmed by our employees. Some of the SOP training is also delivered via video (but most is Words Docs, PDF and sometimes Powerpoint slides).
So my question’s are :
- How can I manage the creation and approval of a SOP in SharePoint (I am thinking a site with documen library, metadata and Workflow).
- Is it a good idea to add video (outlining a SOP) into SharePoint?
- How can I get (force) the engineers to train on the SOP?
This two links will give you help you to understand and implement.
http://www.convergepoint.com/sharepoint-standard-operating-procedure-sop-software
Regards,
Dinu|Tech Support
www.cloudappsportal.com
Hi Melanie –
I wrote a couple blogs on the matter that might be helpful.
http://shareknowledge.com/blog/tools-setting-standard-operating-procedures-sharepoint
http://shareknowledge.com/blog/compliance-issues-can-be-solved-sops-sharepoint
http://shareknowledge.com/blog/learn-how-create-effective-sop-training-sharepoint
Hi Melanie this is a very common problem we have with our customers. My advice is as follows:
1. Depending on the Sign-Off process required for your SOP I would create a new SharePoint site. We actually wrote a blog on how to improve your SOP Training in SharePoint that you might like. Within that site you could have a document library for managing the creation of a a new SOP. You can also add all the supporting documentation to help the team produce it. Once it’s ready review use a workflow to route to the various members of your team. Finally, once it gets approval use a “SendTo” connection to send it over to your “SOP Library”. At this point you will need to send an email to your team members to get them to take the SOP training and then confirm they’ve done it. The nice thing about a sub-site approach is that you can configure the permissions just once and be confident that anything you drop into the library inherits those permissions.
2. I would recommend NOT adding video to a SharePoint document library as these files can be pretty large and can be detrimental to your performance. Consider using a service such as Vimeo (paid), Brightcove (paid) or even youtube (free). All of them have video players that can pretty easily be embedded into a SharePoint …. You can easily create a Link To a Document to make it appear like it’s stored in SharePoint.
3. Forcing the engineers to train on the SOP isn’t something you can do easily. The best you are looking at is to email them and to get someone to chase them down.
However, have you seen DocRead / DocSurvey for SharePoint (*disclaimer* I am one of the developers)? They are an inexpensive way to automate the distribution, testing and tracking of your SOP. Here’s a quick overview the process if you used our products.
- Create, Review the SOP in SharePoint.
- Gain Approval from your SOP stakeholders.
- Once, approved send to the ‘SOP’s’ document library.
- With DocRead assign the SOP / policy to a group of users (e.g. “Engineers”) and set a deadline.
- DocRead will then create a ‘Reading Task‘ for each Engineer and ask them to read / watch the SOP.
- You can also optionally set a quiz / test (with DocSurvey) to ensure that they comprehend the SOP.
- Finally, you can track and monitor who has an hasn’t completed the SOP training.
If this sounds like something you would like to see then happy to demonstrate them. However, if you aren’t interested in a 3rd party product then, feel free to ask me any other questions about how to do this with standard SharePoint..
Hope this helps
Mark
Hi Mark,
I am tasked with a similar goal where we are migrating from Twiki to Sharepoint 365. Rather than using libraries where documents have to be uploaded, is there a way we can use pages and each page has an SOP and create a workflow that requires approval when adding a new SOP page or updating a current one?