O355 - Getting started with SharePoint

[Patrick]

Hi all,

 

Just looking for some advice. School (small primary) have expressed interest in setting up and moving to Sharepoint for staff instead of using the traditional staff share on the server. As this is only for staff presently, I'm looking at creating one for teaching staff and one for SLT. So would it be best to create two Teams sites, one for teaching staff and one for SLT? I'd imagine the main usage of it for small schools will be the document library where everything can be stored? I've seen a few posts on here about Cloud Drive Mapper for the so I'll also look into using that.

 

What other benefits other than online file storage can staff gain? Trying to think how best to set this up for the staff.

 

Thanks!

[Aprice]

We generally create one team site 'XYZ School Team Site' then a load of document libraries under that site. Permissions to each site are done by group membership, users only see the libraries they have rights to.

 

Would really recommend something like Cloud Connect, the Microsoft sync client mostly works OK but does drive staff up the wall now and again.

 

For us it's allowed the retirement of RDS which is a major bonus and allowed the retirement of some old file servers at some of our sites.

 

Backups are important to think about, most of the time restores can be done in 365 when someone messes something up, but I'd certainly recommend a Synology box with Active Backup for 365. It's sorted us out enough times now to have been worth the investment and covers the rest of the 365 suite.

 

We use the SharePoint migration tool to get it off the legacy shares and into SharePoint, this mostly works ok but does struggle sometimes with deep folder structures.

[djm968]

What other benefits other than online file storage can staff gain? Trying to think how best to set this up for the staff.

 

Collaboration: Staff can work on the same document live and they are always working on the same version of the document.

Security: M$ invest millions to secure your data.

Cost Savings: Cloud storage reduces upfront costs of purchasing or upgrading on-prem servers.

Edited April 28, 2023 by djm968

[E_G_R2]

Rather than Teams we created a Sharepoint Hub Site to act as our Intranet with sites hanging off for faculties/departments. That way we can take advantage of web parts for things like news and events plus recent files. All of the staff drive was migrated to a document library that has a link to it on the navigation bar. Faculty's also have a link direct to their resources.

 

Faculties have their own page and can edit things like web parts for links to web resources etc..

 

We have also done this for pupils where faculties have a pupil page with links, news, events and resources.

 

Advantages of Hub sites are branding and navigation.

[Bankesy]

Was looking at this thread over the last couple of days which I think is a kind of similar topic

 

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/cloud-services/232460-migration-sharepoint-hints.html

[Rob_D]

Collaboration: Staff can work on the same document live and they are always working on the same version of the document.

 

This one's been a bit tricky for us. Most staff either don't see it as a bonus or just don't get it. And then it becomes a problem when someone starts decides they like this PowerPoint but only need the first 3 slides. And the poor teacher who's using the original to teach gets to watch their lesson be deleted in real time.

 

The Check out feature seems to work well, but it's another step that most people will forget about.

[djm968]

This one's been a bit tricky for us. Most staff either don't see it as a bonus or just don't get it.

Agreed and training is the key to success. Staff need to be "trained" to work differently which can be a bit of a challenge. Edited April 28, 2023 by djm968

[Patrick]

Thanks for the tips guys. I've created a "XYZ School SharePoint" when I created this I created it as a team site. I've created a teachers and SLT page within this site. in O365 admin i've created some groups such as SLT, Teachers etc but I don't have access to security groups so I'll have to call my LA to see if they can assign me the relevant permissions. Sounds like I'm on the right track I think.

[KK20]

one disadvantage is if you work with large media files (gigabyte videos). We do for our PE, Art, Drama and DT departments. We needed to retain a local NAS drive (+ backup) for this. Other than that, as others said, just create document libraries - one for staff and one for pupils.

 

We use cloud drive mapper to map traditional drive letters to document libraries. This can help die hards who need a drive letter to function, sure it isnt perfect but it has worked for us. Plus if there are any issues we simply show them the "proper" way of using sharepoint, gradually weaning people off things....

[psydii]

one disadvantage is if you work with large media files (gigabyte videos). We do for our PE, Art, Drama and DT departments. We needed to retain a local NAS drive (+ backup) for this. Other than that, as others said, just create document libraries - one for staff and one for pupils.

 

OneDrive files on Demand in conjunction with Seating Plans is another way to solve this. As is a 1:1 programme.

[DrCheese]

We use Cloud Drive mapper as this stops files being saved to the local machine & not having enough time to sync up.

[psydii]

Agreed and training is the key to success. Staff need to be "trained" to work differently which can be a bit of a challenge.

 

We used the pandemic to force the issue. Selected half a dozen teachers who 'got it', workshopped some common scenarios, then delivered training: "tomorrow you'll all be teaching from home, like this. Any questions talk to one of these colleagues, if is is a technical problem, they will escalate to me."

 

Done and done. We haven't looked back.

 

I'd spent years trying to get people to move over, it was agreed that we would, but time and inclination from SLT was never there ("Its too hard/time consuming/confusing etc etc").

 

The pandemic proved that you can just rip the plaster off and make the change.

 

It was a very similar story 15 years ago when we moved to Kaliedos VLE... the consultant wanted to go in baby steps (because apparently teachers can take change), The DH and myself said, no... all or nothing from day 1. And so it happened and it was good (shame Kaliedos was killed a couple of years later).

 

SharePoint / 365 is very robust. Just make sure you are very familiar with it, bring over some open minded people who are willing to take the ride with you in becoming experts... then go big - everything goes over, the old way is retired - no looking back.

Edited May 4, 2023 by psydii

[Patrick]

Well I've created the shell (site and pages) with a basic document library but I suppose it's over it selected staff now to start using it/ fill it with content before launching it to all staff. I can only assist with that really I've only worked at the school for a few months on an ad hoc basis.

[mrstrong]

just looking into this (i.e. moving the main server share to Teams/Sharepoint).

 

does anybody have any thoughts on folder structure and file naming conventions best practice?

 

It would be great to start with a clean slate rather than just uploading everything from the current share

with the sharepoint migration tool

 

Just had a quick look and found these 3 current "examples" from our share :

 

year3/planning22-23/summer1/maths/fractions/partioning
planning/subjects/history/2023/year3
resources/subjects/maths/2022-23/whiterose planning/Year6/Summer 

(note the actual folder names where a [b]lot [/b]longer / more verbose!

 

Many recommend a flat structure, but our Teachers seem to love deeply nested folders

 

Has anyone gone the metadata / tag route rather than sub-folders, i.e. via Add column and selecting Choice" ?

[E_G_R2]

I'm not sure of the top of my head the allowed file name length but avoid to many sub folders and long file names as these cannot be read.

 

Had this with those stupid DVD's that have PDF's for subjects where the folders and file names are full descriptions.