As many of you know, we’re currently upgrading from 2007 to 2013 (well, we will be if we ever get licensing issues resolved). Anyway in a casual conversation with a co-worker yesterday, she mentioned a need and ask if we could solve using SharePoint. Here’s the scenario:
The user is the Research Coordinator for the college. As such she creates many survey instruments in Survey Monkey. The dilemma is the process by which individuals/departments request to have a survey created. or data from the surveys compiled The coordinator gets requests directly or her VP gets the requests and many emails fly back and forth about what is needed, when it is needed, and for what purpose.
What she would like is a way for users to submit their requests for either a survey or survey data through SharePoint. (The surveys will remain in SurveyMonkey) Her VP would receive this and approve/reject. This would serve two purposes: 1) her VP would know what is requested and approve her use of time/effort/resources and 2) it would avoid duplication of data/resources for research that has already been done or is being done by other divisions/departments.
I am thinking a custom list with a simple OOTB approval should work for her purposes.
The larger picture is we’d like to create a calendar where we can track all upcoming accreditation, program review, self-study projects that will require data to be collated so that timing of needs is included in the process.
The question is how do we get the various departments/divisions to use this calendar so that all the information we need is readily available in one place?
Anyone have thoughts/ideas/recommendations to share?
I love your item level, action specific response. The type a business analyst would love.
Adoption Suggestions
The Research Coordinator, as the owner of the process, will need to communicate the business case or big Why to the audiences involved as well as publish the Why story on the process page for future users. A high level description of this process should also be visible on the department services page to advertise this service along with the others. Your users need to understand why they need to do this new process versus that, the length of time it will take to complete the request, the means by which completion will be communicated and the deliverable(s) to be expected.
Survey Resources @ University of Virginia
http://web.virginia.edu/iaas/survey/home.shtm
List
The fields (required and optional) should be identified based on your process flow requirements; the ultimate goal is to capture everything you need up front. Provide descriptions or example snippets for each field as needed for clarity.
Workflow Approval
As opposed to the OOTB workflow, a custom workflow may be needed if a custom email title or content is required.
Calendar
A calendar view can be created from any list as long as a date field is available to be used as the start & end date. At a bare minimum, the Create Date on a list entry could be used for both the start & end dates. I think a calculated date column could also be used.
Summary
The departments/divisions will want to use the list/calendar if they find it relevant to them. They have to see the value that the new process or feature or calendar provides…is it going to save them time or reduce/eliminate current headaches.
Calendar Overlays
Both Outlook 2010 and SharePoint(SP) 2010 now have the ability to overlay calendars. Multiple calendars in the same SP site may be overlaid; as well, a SP calendar can be connected to Outlook where multiple calendars may be overlaid.
I agree a simple list with OOTB approval should work fine. I guess you can put two webparts on the page. One with the calendar and one with the list, so when they add an item to the list, they can browse the SP calendar same time 🙂
