You are one step away from the SIF Association’s new Communities of Practice (CoP) area, which replaces Yahoo! Groups as SIF Association´s main collaboration tool. It also replaces the Members Only section of www.sifinfo.org. The SIF Community is the working site for all association activities and communications. It is also the place where new, smaller sub-communities of the larger SIF community can develop on an as-needed basis as we collectively address the growing need for quality data interoperability.

The SIF Community is built upon Microsoft´s SharePoint. If you are new to SharePoint, please take a moment to review browser support by operating system here. For a brief introduction to collaboration using SharePoint, you may also be interested in this. If this is your first time using the SIF Community, please read the registration instructions and other materials below, otherwise...

http://community.sifinfo.org

Unlike Yahoo! Groups, the SIF Community requires a username and password for all access--you will be prompted to login whenever you access the site. If you have not previously registered as a participant in the SIF Community, you must log in as a guest by using the following username and password:

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You may then register at your convenience by following the registration links. The SIF Association members and non-members alike can participate in the SIF Community, though public users are restricted from member-specific material and activity. To gain SIF Association membership rights in the SIF Community you must be prepared to provide your SIF Association membership username and password.

Forgot Username/Password?

Non-members with EdSTART usernames and passwords can also use their EdSTART logins to associate registered individuals with their organizations. If you are a SIF Association Board or Tech Board member, please take a moment after registration to send a note to community@sifinfo.org, so you may also be assigned special access privileges.

If you should happen to forget your SIF Community username and/or password once registered, please use the following link:

Forgot SIF Community Username/Password?

SharePoint Topics

Just a brief introduction to some of the terminology used in SharePoint with some parallels to Yahoo! Groups for users of SIFA´s collaboration suite to date:

Portal

A SharePoint "portal" is the set of top-level pages of general interest to the entire user community, as well as the place to discover, join and access sites targeted toward specific subsets of the user community. The equivalent in Yahoo! Groups would be the pages located at http://www.yahoogroups.com, as opposed to individual groups located below http://www.yahoogroups.com/group/. The SIF Community portal is located at

http://community.sifinfo.org and individual sites are organized below http://community.sifinfo.org/sites/.

Site

You guessed it--a SharePoint "site" is the equivalent of a Yahoo! Groups group. Sites are formed by portal users to collaborate on topics of interest to smaller sub-communities of the entire user community. Whereas groups in Yahoo! Groups consist of functional areas chosen from a limited set of pre-packaged areas like Messages, Files and so on, SharePoint sites are virtually unlimited in terms of their functionality. The creator of a site determines which functionality is most useful to site users, and end users of sites may also have the option to create personal views of that shared functionality. The owner of the site also determines who from the general user community is allowed to access his or her site. Owners and users may also be allowed to create sub-sites dedicated to topics, meetings, documents, etc. of interest to all or a subset of the site users.

To join or access a site, the place to start is the SharePoint "site directory," typically accessible through the Sites link at the top of the portal. Users can browse or search for sites of interest, access them directly if they have permission, or request access from owners of sites for those they don´t. Make sure to read the SIF Community-specific shortcuts to site access and membership below.

Web Parts

Individual areas of functionality on a SharePoint page are provided by "web parts." Creators of sites build their sites from pages containing web parts. Many different web parts are pre-packaged with SharePoint and can be added to shared views of pages by site creators. Site users may also have the ability to add web parts to or remove web parts from their personal views of sites. Web parts are usually configurable and may look and act differently by changing their settings. Web part menus may be accessible in their title bars or by making appropriate choices from the "Modify..." menu at the top of many site pages.

Lists

Yahoo! Groups organizes different types of group/user data in areas like Messages, Files, Polls and Photos. SharePoint organizes group/user data in "lists" like Discussion Boards, Document Libraries, Surveys and Picture Libraries. Almost every piece of data in SharePoint is stored in a list. Lists are displayed by web parts. Permissions for individual lists within portals and sites may be slightly more restricted than the permissions for the portal or sites in which they are presented. This can allow a subset of users to contribute to lists, while allowing a greater audience access to the data in lists.

Audiences

Speaking of audiences, content in the portal and in sites may be targeted to specific subsets of users, based on profile properties associated with users. One user may be presented with a link highlighting a list or item of particular interest to him/her, while another user is not. A list or item may also be hidden from users within certain audiences. Note that SharePoint compiles lists of audience members nightly, so if your profile changes in some way, audience-specific content may not become apparent until the following day.

Alerts

In Yahoo! Groups users have a username and each username has an e-mail address associated with it. Based on user preferences, users are notified by e-mail when activity of interest occurs, like a message being posted to the Messages area, a file being uploaded to the Files area, when a poll is created, etc. The e-mail preferences of users apply to all areas within a Yahoo! Groups group. While users have an associated e-mail address in SharePoint as well, SharePoint handles the topic of e-mail notifications--"alerts"--very differently. Portal/site users must configure each alert separately--if s/he wants to be notified when a messages is posted to a Discussion Board, s/he creates an alert on that Discussion Board; if s/he wants to be notified when a file is uploaded to a Document Library, s/he creates an alert on that Document Library--you get the picture. Furthermore, alerts are not only limited to the list level; they can also be configured item by item! Specific Discussion Board messages, specific Document Library files, etc. Alert types should be familiar to fans of SIF_Events--alerts can be configured for Add, Modify or Delete events, and the frequency of each alert can be set to immediate, daily or weekly.

SharePoint alert notification e-mails contain which user performed which action on a list item when, and presents a link to the item in SharePoint. Note also that SharePoint does not provide "listserv" capabilities for Discussion Boards or send posts via alerts, so users cannot carry out conversations by e-mail. Make sure to read about the SIF Community-specific listserv functionality below, as well as some shortcuts to configuring alerts.

Note also that there are two completely different alert mechanisms in SharePoint, Portal alerts and Site alerts. Portal alerts can be delivered not only by e-mail but also to an area within your "My Site." Portal-level alerts can also be centrally managed in your "My Site" area. Any references to alerts in the out-of-the-box SharePoint "My Site" functionality will not include your Site alerts, which will make up the bulk of your alerts. Site alerts are managed from within individual sites and are always delivered by e-mail. There is some SIF Community-specific functionality to provide one-click access to site alert management pages (see below).

My Site

One special SharePoint site is "My Site." Portal users can create a personal site featuring available web parts to their heart´s content, often serving as a centralized access point to portal ares and sites of interest. When other users visit your personal site, they are presented with a standardized public view of the site, usually displaying a subset of user profile properties of interest to portal users.

SIF Community Topics

Now to hightlight some of the features specific to the SIF Community portal, sites and usage, mainly provided in response to feedback on out-of-the-box SharePoint functionality:

Portal

Similar to the Yahoo! Groups "My Groups" functionality, the portal level of the SIF Community features a "My Sites" web part that provides links to your sites, with a brief summary of any recent activity. This web part also is available in your "My Site" with expanded functionality like one-click access to all site lists, alert management pages for each site, and a link to "unsubscribe" from a site.

One portal area to note is the Summary Calendar. Each night, all the Events lists in portal sites are crawled for events. These are collected and a complete record of SIFA event (mainly meeting) activity is displayed in one place. SIFA Staff made the decision to allow sites to each have their own Events lists rather than requiring everyone to enter things like conference calls in a central calendar. If you´re a group co-lead, when scheduling something like a conference call, just take a brief look at the summary calendar to make sure someone isn´t already using the same time as you for a resource like one of the conference call lines. If the separate calendar route doesn´t work for people and a lot of conflicts result, SIFA staff may create a separate conference call calendar where everyone wanting to use those lines would have to register their calls.

Sites

Note that the SharePoint site directory has a checkbox next to each site name. If you have access to the site based on the group rights assigned to you, you may join or subscribe to a site simply by checking the Member box. This adds you as an individual member to a site and adds the site to your "My Sites." Based on preferences in the "My Info" area of "My Site" (see below), alerts may also be automatically created for you for areas of interest within the site. Unsubscribing from a site using the checkbox automatically deletes your alerts associated with the site. If you do not have access to a site based on your group rights, you may request access through SharePoint--access the site and fail to provide appropriate credentials for the site--you´ll then be presented with the option of contacting the site owner. The checkbox mechanism was developed to minimize administrative overhead of getting users in sites for SIF Association staff and site owners alike. Please use it so we do indeed minimize administative overhead of getting users in sites for SIF Association staff and site owners alike.

One site to note is Association. If you´re a SIFA member, please consider joining this site, as its Discussion Board is currently envisioned as the equivalent of the SIF Association´s SIFAll mailing list.

Ignore if you´re not inclined to create your own sites or if your eyes glaze over at the thought of Windows accounts:

Individual sites that have been pre-configured by the SIF Association staff generally share the same look and structure. Feel free to explore on your own. This style of team site is available as a site template called "SIFA Team Site" when creating sites.

One other thing to note is that the replacement sites for existing Yahoo! Groups have a folder called Yahoo Groups Archives in the Shared Documents area. This folder contains all the Files and Messages that could be retrieved from Yahoo! Groups. When a group co-lead in the SIF Association determines it´s time to move Yahoo! group users to SharePoint, they notify SIF Association Staff to run a final transfer of Yahoo! Groups files and messages into this folder before deactivating the Yahoo! group.

Alerts

The SIF Community extends the built-in SharePoint alert functionality in the following ways:

Users that have configured alerts on Discussion Boards will receive the actual discussion post in their e-mail alert. They may also reply to the alert e-mail and have their response saved in the SharePoint Discussion Board and routed to other users with alerts configured for that particular discussion board. Note that attachments are saved in SharePoint, unlike in Yahoo! Groups. Note also that links to attachments are provided in alert e-mails rather than the attachments themselves.

SharePoint Discussion Boards are threaded. If your e-mail client supports the SHOULD wording of e-mail standards (and, no, they don´t include Outlook or Outlook Express), replying to a SIF Community Discussion Board alert will place your response in the correct place in the discussion thread. If your e-mail client includes the original message in the response (Outlook and Outlook Express can manage this), your response may also be placed in the appropriate discussion thread. All SharePoint alert e-mails are HTML-based. Note that SharePoint Discussion Board items support rich text, but not necessarily all of HTML (e.g. tables), so HTML e-mails that come into SharePoint may be subject to a bit of creative SharePoint reformatting. Hey, some people are fans of ASCII art.

Alert e-mail for other list types (e.g. Announcements, Events, etc.) may also contain more than the link to the SharePoint item, enough information where you may avoid logging in to SharePoint to read the content of the item that triggered the alert.

Users may also send e-mails to a limited subset of non-Discussion Board lists, like Document Libraries and Announcements. (Support for e-mailing documents into Document Libraries is still experimental.)

My Site

Again, just a brief reference to the expanded functionality of the My Sites functionality here. As opposed to the portal level, this web part here also provides links for one-click access to all site lists, alert management pages for each site, and a link to "unsubscribe" from a site.

The main thing to note in the SIF Community My Site is the My Info web part. The My Info web part replaces the organization/contact management functionality of the Members Only section of www.sifinfo.org. This web part also allows you to change your SIF Community password. You can also self-categorize yourself as a member of the target content audiences currently defined by SIFA staff. Finally it offers a shortcut to alert creation.

If you go to Automatic Alert Creation, you can set preferences that indicate which type of lists you would like to automatically have alerts configured for. For each of many list types, you can specify whether you like to receive alerts, which type (Add/Modify/Delete) and how often (Immediate/Daily/Weekly). These preferences are used when you join a site using the checkbox mechanism outlined above. By default, the preferences include automatic alerts for Discussion Board and Document Library lists. If you don´t like to receive e-mail alerts, you may want to uncheck these preferences before you join a lot of sites.

Policies/Procedures

Everyone´s favorite. SharePoint is envisioned as the tool to facilitate collaboration and formal workflows within SIFA working groups, task forces and committees. (If you create a SIF Community site outside that framework, be as informal as you like!) As the SIF Community moves forward, there may be policies and portal/site pages associated with things like the object approval and testing process. One immediate need is to centrally collect minutes from all SIFA group meetings. The SIF Association staff is looking for input how to automate this process, given how wide-ranging SharePoint usage might end up being. One group may have a full-blown SharePoint meeting workspace complete with agendas, attendees, decisions, etc., another might be persuaded to enter their minutes into a list so the association at least can associate some textual minutes with a specific meeting date, another might want to submit their minutes as a flat Word or text document. It will be up to the policy makers within SIFA to determine usage required of group co-leads. Once that´s done, the collection of, for example, meeting minutes can be automated.