Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 in "the Ust-Luzhsky project engineering company"

At first the IT system for document management in the company was not. But with increase in a flow of documents more and more time was required on processes of approval, consideration and joint work, and at the beginning of 2010 the management of ULPIK made the decision on workflow automation. Let's note that this company has geographically distributed structure because of what timely exchange and management of documents and also access to them considerably become complicated.

"Specialists of our company studied the offers which were available at that time, and as candidates all hosts of the solution in this area presented at the Russian market were considered. As a result we quickly enough came to a conclusion that it is necessary to use the serious industrial platform, and in general our choice fell on Microsoft SharePoint — the Head of Department on project management of ULPIK Andrey Krivchenko tells. — But nevertheless given software represents the platform, but not the application solution. Analyzing a situation in the market, we saw that many companies do similar projects on SharePoint implementation from scratch. However more and more organizations prefer to apply ready-made solutions based on SharePoint: it strongly reduces time of implementation and on money as a result it turns out cheaper. However, the choice of such solutions in the market is small, but the product of Electronic Office Systems company of EOS for SharePoint quite suited us".

As a result as the platform for the created document management system Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 allowing the enterprise to integrate key information resources, business processes and employee competences and also to provide uniform access point to key data, elements of document flow and Internet resources, including to external business applications was selected. And for implementation actually of document flow the application solution EOS for SharePoint which contains a basic set of the functionality necessary for automation of business, the organization of electronic document management and is the ready module which is completely built in the SharePoint platform and significantly expanding its opportunities was selected. The St. Petersburg company "Ofis-Dok" — the largest distributor of solutions of EOS Group in Russia with wide experience of maintaining similar projects became the contractor of the project.

Here it is necessary to make the important remark. The matter is that in May of last year the market was already entered by the new version of software of Microsoft — SharePoint 2010. But for project implementation it was decided to use version 2007 which already passed a serious running in in the market and showed reliability and stability of a product. Besides ready-made application solutions for option 2010 in the Russian market were not yet, and the offer of EOS Group quite met requirements of the customer.

In August of last year works with creation of the IT system for which the task of workflow automation taking into account project activity of the company, including creation of uniform space of documents (knowledge base) with a possibility of joint work of employees, planning of meetings, planning meetings and other actions was set started. All this project was finished in November of the 2010th, and a system was put into commercial operation. From the equipment for it only one server specially was purchased. Specialists "Office Dock" in parallel with implementation provided user training. Trainings were generally conducted on functional groups of personnel of the customer (registrars, contractors); for heads and key staff (administrators, technologists) individual occupations were organized.

Functions between the customer and the contractor of the project were distributed as follows: ULPIK — problem definition, practical lessons with users after training; "Office Dock" — works on system implementation (information analysis of the customer, development of rules of setup, installation, setup, training, completion based on operation). Technical maintenance of a system is assigned to the contractor and includes consultations of customer representatives on technical and subject issues, delivery of new versions and introduction of corrections on notes of the customer.

Because activity of customer company means maintaining different projects, right after the beginning of works on implementation it became obvious that project activity needs also to be automated on an equal basis with office-work. As a result on the main portal several websites for work with such information as a project team (the list of the employees involved in the project), electronic document revisions (normative, standardizing, etc.) and also cross-references to document flow were created.

At the same time the complex structure of the portal was implemented at the expense of the following means:

• a large number of content types — unique cards of elements is created;
• the additional reference books simplifying filling of cards are created;
• for convenience of tracking of passing of documents the different representations displaying information on documents in real time are created;
• workflows of the notification of users and their joint work are configured.

"As a result of project implementation we except automation of classical functions of document flow received the corporate portal supporting joint work of project teams (teams in the company are formed on each project) with documents — Andrey Krivchenko continues. — But also, we could automate processes of approval of documents, control and monitoring of execution of instructions. At the same time the website became the tool for planning of actions and automatic and timely informing participants. As of today fifty jobs are involved in a system".

However, as it usually happens in practice, especially when the customer implements the first difficult project, on the course of operation of a system a set of wishes arriving from different categories of users on its improvement and development began to form. All these responses were collected and analyzed according to the results of operation (taking into account an implementation stage) in seven months. It became clear that for expansion and development of a system it is necessary to select one of two ways: remain within the version of SharePoint 2007 with a considerable volume of completion "hands" or pass to the new Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 option in combination with the solution EOS for SharePoint 2010 which appeared by then. In the second case many requirements of the customer could be met by regular means of software, but at the same time there were problems of translation of data from version 2007 for 2010.

Here what told with respect thereto Andrey Krivchenko: "We analyzed both options, and the Ofis-Dok company showed the second way almost in a type, ready for us, and our management quite unambiguously selected transition to the new version of software. At the same time a role was played not only by a question of perspectives of development of a system in the future, but also higher guarantee of success of project implementation. One case — already ready-made solution, and absolutely another — things which need just to be done. Though, of course, converting of documents is serious work (by the beginning of year we in a system already had about 30 thousand documents) too, but nevertheless much more more predicted. Not to mention that we received qualitatively new Microsoft platform which allows us to move forward in improvement of the project".

A certain problem was that in the market there were no ready means of converting of data upon transition from version 2007 to 2010, them specialists had to develop EOS Group and "Office Dock" taking into account features of this project and the customer's wishes which additional analysis was carried out some more months. Then necessary completions of software were made and transfer process of data with SharePoint 2007 on SharePoint 2010 which now (as of the beginning of September) is close to end is begun. For deployment of a new system the customer purchased also the additional server hardware. The module allowing to convert data from the SharePoint 2007 format into the SharePoint 2010 format was specially developed for implementation of transfer.

"In general we are completely satisfied with process of creation, operation and development of a document management system. Actually less than for half a year we at first passed from paper document flow to electronic, having solved at the same time actually a business challenge of the company: increase in efficiency of our project work — Andrey Krivchenko summed up the current results of the project. — Having created the first option of a system, we understood, чтó we need to do next, and could move forward quickly. In many respects it is result of a right choice of a reference platform, the application solution and the contractor. According to the plan we should pass completely to Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 already in the nearest future. And our further plans provide increase in number of users up to hundred and also expansion of functionality taking into account the new platform, in particular in the field of control automation by business processes".