Sidney returned from a week visiting his Auntie Ethel in Sidmouth and was amazed at how much work had been done on the new Pottersgate Paint’s SharePoint. The Action SharePoint Consultant had been working remotely on the system with the help of Colin Cousins and it was really starting to take shape. Colin was taking great pleasure in showing Sidney the Pilot Site for the IT Department and how it had a full inventory of all the IT equipment including support contracts. It was however quite worrying that the two main servers were both saying ‘Support Expired’. Luckily this was only because Colin had the regional setting for the site set to English (United States) and had entered the date in the UK format. Sidney was also excited about testing out the new IT Helpdesk.
“I’m bored”, came a small voice from behind Colin. Sidney then got to meet Work Experience Penelope Pottersgate who Colin had been entertaining last week. Apparently it had not been easy as Percy Pottersgate’s granddaughter seemed reluctant to do anything computer related. According to Colin she had said on the very first morning that she didn’t use keyboards and wouldn’t touch the mouse as it might have germs on it. Colin had then given her a brand new mouse, but Penelope Pottersgate said she only used pink mice. At least Sidney had missed the first half of Penelope’s work experience. Sidney asked Penelope if she would like to photocopy some invoices, but she replied that she was too busy updating her Facebook status on her iPhone.
Sidney waded through the three hundred plus emails he had received while he had been away. He was delighted that one had just arrived from Hannah Harper saying she had missed him. Hannah also was asking if Sidney wanted to help her look after Sam tonight at her sister Harriet’s house. Sidney was quite keen on the idea of spending time with Hannah tonight even if it meant him missing ‘Top Gear’. He also remembered that she had mentioned the family dog before. So Sidney typed an email back to Hannah saying he would love to join her, also telling her about the slightly mad behaviour of his Auntie Ethel and asking if they could watch ‘Top Gear’ together. The other emails included over twenty about the temporary closing of the staff car park, several messages from Gwen Gardner reminding people that the Disabled Toilets were only to be used by visitors who could prove they were disabled, several suggestions for names for the SharePoint project and lots of automated SharePoint Alerts. The Alerts were because Colin had added the IT Group to be alerted every time a new document was created in the IT Document Library. Colin had then uploaded over forty documents. At least it proved the alerts worked. The competition to choose a name for the new SharePoint system was proving very popular. Maybe the prize Gwen Gardner was offering of being immune from redundancy for the next two years was quite appealing. The ideas for names included; the familiar ‘PottersPoint’, the abstract ‘SIMON’ which apparently stood for ‘Sharing Information Manageably Online Now’, ‘SharePaint’ and the one Sidney quite liked ‘JIM’ which was ‘Just Information Manager’.
“I’m bored”, the short freckled girl tapped Sidney on the shoulder. So Sidney gave her a pound and sent her to the vending machine to buy herself a chocolate bar.
The afternoon saw the next meeting of the SharePoint Project Team. Sidney was very pleased to see that the team seemed to be really excited about the project. Even Gwen Gardner said that she had been working on creating an electronic system for requests for sheets of photocopier paper. Everybody seemed to have been playing with their test SharePoint sites and the Action SharePoint man had to pull them in a bit and explain the importance of giving the sites a standard look. He suggested they worked on designing a site template that would be the starting point for each site. By giving all the sites a standard layout it would help the users when they come to navigate the different sites. Action SharePoint also suggested creating a template for Document Libraries so they all contained the same basic columns and would meet Pottersgate Paints document needs. The Project Team members looked blank when they were asked if there was a corporate document management policy. By the end of the session the team had designed a template for Controlled Documents that included version control, approval, check-in/check-out, Document Owner and a calculated Document Review date field. The department site template would now have this ‘Controlled documents’ document library template on it as well as ‘General Documents’ on it. The ‘General Documents’ library would be for documents that weren’t critical and didn’t need all the tight controls and didn’t need to store old versions.
As Sidney drove to Hannah Harper’ sister’s house that night, in his Skoda, he reflected on what had been a very productive SharePoint meeting. He was confident that he would have something to impress Percy Pottersgate with when the MD returned from sailing his yacht around the Isle of Wight next Monday. Sidney was ready for his second real date with Hannah and had splashed on the Old Spice. He had also thought about Sam and visited ‘Pets at Home’ on his way and bought a big chewy bone.
Hannah greeted Sidney with a big hug at the door and Sidney said he had brought a present for Sam.
“Sam, Sidney is here and has brought you a present”, Hannah shouted into the lounge. Sidney was rather surprised when a small boy walked in with a big smile on his face with his hands out ready for his present.
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