Continental Airlines teams presented the internal and external-facing content management SharePoint efforts at the 2009 Microsoft Conference in Las Vegas.
Continental Airlines 2009 Microsoft SharePoint Conference Presentation
1. Architecting Enterprise Content Management: Internal and Customer-facing Solutions Benjamin Lee, Jason Deere, Denise Wilson Senior Managers, Technology Continental Airlines
2. Introduction Presenting two separate implementations Continental.com customer-facing CM How we structured metadata and workflow to reduce a 2-month content approval process to 2 days How SharePoint lives in the same web app space and feeds modular content to Continental.com Continental enterprise document CM How we developed a process to build our structure so that users can tag files with metadata so we can find them with filtered search
4. The ChallengeProblems with the Old Workflow Serial and manual process Can’t preview till near the end No tracking, auditing, visibility Waste of developer talent, 17,000 web files Content “pieces” are not repurposed within site, nor to other applications Bottom Line: Takes a long, long, long time (up to two months)
6. The ChallengeWhat Led Us To SharePoint Needed a structured Content Management System (CMS) Tried a leading, large-scale alternative ECM solution, but failed Overly document-centric Too expensive to customize Wealth of MS and .Net developers MS Partnership Out of the Box: Workflows, Version History
7. The SharePoint SolutionThe Enterprise Vision Content pieces not pages Stored as simple html in ListItems Each publication channel determines how to render
8. The SharePoint SolutionProblems Resolved Teams can work in parallel Content approvers can preview how page will look as soon as content is entered Built-in tracking, auditing, visibility Modular content can be repurposed and restyled to any channel Bottom Line: Process now takes just a day or two to make it to production, self-serve
14. The ImplementationThe Challenges Out of Box functionality did not meet our need for content management to co-exist with Continental.com There was no precedent for using SharePoint in the way we envisioned it with modular content Wanted to leverage thousands of existing ASP.NET assets How do we merge SharePoint content publication with an existing ASP.NET application?
15. Merging MOSS and ASP.NETKey Points That Make This Possible Virtual Directories What MOSS doesn’t know, won’t hurt it Smart routing of traffic Sharing Application Code and Assemblies App_Code /bin User controls, style sheets, etc. External Master Page
16. Merging MOSS and ASP.NETWhat MOSS doesn’t know… Virtual Directories Create under your MOSS Web Application
17. Merging MOSS and ASP.NETConfiguring Your SharePoint Site Structure Key is to make your top MOSS sub-site and your virtual directory app at the samelevel Under site collection, create root sub-site in MOSS to house all “CMS” pages & content e.g. “domain.com/cms” What does that do for us? Can run both MOSS and the ASP.NET app on the same server, at the same time Mirror SharePoint and ASP.NET folder structure
18. Merging MOSS and ASP.NETRouting Network Traffic Router makes decision based on sub-site URL http://domain/cms/mycms.aspx http://domain/web/mypage.aspx
19. Merging MOSS and ASP.NETSharing Application Code and Assemblies Allowing SharePoint to access existing business logic from web app ASP.NET Files /App_Code /bin web.config Copy from ASP.NET application folders to corresponding SharePoint folders
20. Merging MOSS and ASP.NETWhat You Need to Make Your External ASP.NET Master Page Work with SharePoint “Minimal” master page: <%@ Import Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint" %> <%@ Register Tagprefix="WebPartPages" ...%> <%@ Register Tagprefix="SharePoint" ...%> <%@ Register TagPrefix="PublishingSiteAction" ...%> <%@ Register Tagprefix="PublishingWebControls" ...%> <%@ Register Tagprefix="PublishingNavigation" ...%> <%@ Register TagPrefix="PublishingVariations" ...%> <%@ Register Tagprefix="PublishingConsole" ... %> <%@ Register TagPrefix="wssuc" src="~/_controltemplates/Welcome.ascx" %> <%@ Register TagPrefix="wssuc“ src="~/_controltemplates/DesignModeConsole.ascx" %> <WebPartPages:SPWebPartManager ID="SPWebPartManager1" runat="server"/> <SharePoint:RobotsMetaTag ID="RobotsMetaTag1" runat="server"/> <Sharepoint:CssLink ID="CssLink1" runat="server"/> <span class="siteActions“><PublishingSiteAction:SiteActionMenurunat="server"/></span> <span class="siteActions“><div> <PublishingWebControls:AuthoringContainer id="authoringcontrols“ runat="server"> <PublishingConsole:Consolerunat="server“ /> </PublishingWebControls:AuthoringContainer> </div></span> Site Actions Menu
21. Merging MOSS and ASP.NET Override Master Page On Load public class PublishingLayoutBase : PublishingLayoutPage { protected override void OnPreInit(EventArgs e) { this.MasterPageFile = "~sitecollection/_layouts/CoCom/DefaultMasterPage.master"; } }
22. Merging MOSS and ASP.NETUsing Your Master Page and User Controls in MOSS Page Layouts <%@ Page language="C#" Inherits="CoAir.CMS.Web.PublishingLayoutBase,CoAir.CMS.Web.PublishingLayoutBase,Version=1.0.0.0,Culture=neutral,PublicKeyToken=7adcdaff331ecf96" %> <%@ Register Tagprefix="WebPartPages" Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages" Assembly="Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" %> <%@ Register Src="/web/en-US/usercontrols/MileageCalculator.ascx" TagName=“Calculator" TagPrefix=“CoAirUC" %> <asp:ContentContentPlaceholderID="ContentInfo" runat="server"> <WebPartPages:WebPartZonerunat="server" Title="<%$Resources:cms,WebPartZoneTitle_Top%>" ID="TopColumn"><ZoneTemplate></ZoneTemplate> </WebPartPages:WebPartZone> <CoAirUC:Calculator ID=“Calculator" runat="server"/> </asp:Content>
23. Merging MOSS and ASP.NETVoila! Site Actions /web Asset SharePoint CQWP
24. Internal Content Management: The Process of Building the ECM Structure Denise Wilson Senior Manager, Technology Continental Airlines
25. Internal Content ManagementThe Problem Set User e-mailed attachments as ‘workflow’ No single version of the ‘truth’ Uncontrolled growth of e-mail and file shares Users can’t find anything or collaborate No way to enforce record retention policy Not searchable for compliance or security
26. Internal Content ManagementThe Evolution of the Solution Started by evaluating one group in-depth Enterprise Engineering Standardized AD site names Standardized machine names Named all new sites/devices by new convention Corrected others as projects touch the site
27. Internal Content ManagementThe Tools How did SharePoint help us do this? Automated review processes with workflow Standardized Content Types and templates Exposed data in Data Form web parts Normalized data can be viewed and filtered Started identifying anomalies and correcting them Out of the box functionality
35. Understanding Collective NeedsWhat We Learned From Each Group Continental Board Meeting Minutes Management is distributed to content owners Senior level employees can manage own sites Basic site structure, training and governance Marketing Group Airport Signage Templates / Look and feel Corporate Sales Team Kiosk Deployment Technology, Marketing, Airport Services System Operations Coordination (SOCC)
36. Evolution of the Process System Operations Coordination Phase I: E-mail to document libraries ‘E-mail enabled’ AD security groups Use now as DLs, later for SP security Log e-mails sent to DLs Phase II: Push Alerts from SharePoint Lists Install PCs beside existing Unix workstations Extend sites and training to remote airports Disaster Recovery Failover to alt data center Phase III: Integrate Mainframe Ops Data
40. Integration of the EnterpriseStructured Sites, Content Types and Metadata Standardization Get consensus / decisions on naming standards Select site columns (file properties – author, date created, airport code, etc. per your needs) Develop hierarchy of content types Continental (“Project Document”) Technology (“Technical Design”) Engineering (“Design Proposal Summary”) Continental (“Contract”) Technology (“Technology Contract”) IT Services (“ISP Agreement”) Retention Basis (e.g. “Active” plus two years) Disposal Workflow
41. Integration of the EnterpriseStructured Sites, Content Types and Metadata Department by Department Site Collections Content Types (keep it simple) Metadata (keep it simple) Establish a platform Put your new documents here (with metadata) Then migrate from file shares (with metadata) Distributed Model Site owners and training Governance
42. Integration of the EnterpriseRefined Search Scopes Free-text search yields 8448 results
43. Integration of the EnterpriseRefined Search Scopes Search by Content Type (Systems EWO) Yields 22 results
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46. Learn More about SharePoint 2010 Information forIT Prosat TechNet http://MSSharePointITPro.com Information forDevelopersat MSDN http://MSSharePointDeveloper.com Information forEveryone http://SharePoint.Microsoft.com