ITS 200: Managing a SharePoint Intranet Site

In December 2022, we migrated our New River intranet from Joomla to Microsoft SharePoint (see project details).

A) Overview of SharePoint and Web Site Management

What is a Content Management System? Well, this video provides a brief overview of Content Management Systems. And what is a Content Manager really expected to do? Well, this sample position description provides some of that information.

SharePoint is a Microsoft application that provides a reasonably intuitive web interface for managing online information. SharePoint provides three levels of user access so that access can be restricted and managed.

SITE OWNERS (IT staff) have full control of the content and are responsible for assigning roles to other users.

SITE MEMBERS have limited control, meaning they can read and write to only the content assigned to them (typically, this is department heads and administrative assistants who need to modify and manage information on behalf of their department). Department heads must request the Site Member role for the employees who need it. Please send this request to our Help Desk.

SITE VISITORS have read-only access to all the intranet content. All New River employees should have this level of access (unless a higher level of access has been assigned).

If you haven't been assigned one of these three roles, you don't have access to the intranet content. This means that general Internet users (including our students) do not have access to the intranet content.

There are a number of tasks that Site Members should be able to perform with very little or no assistance (after completing our workshop). But first you'll need some background information.

1. Common Internet file types (TXT, RTF, HTM, HTML, PDF, JPG, GIF, TIF, PNG) and Non-Internet file types (DOC, DOCX, XLS, XLSX, PPT, PPTX)
2. Naming conventions (no_spaces, lowercase, descriptive names, including file suffixes)
3. Areas of Content Manager Responsibility (see SharePoint Site Map) (see outdated site map from Joomla as a comparison - see diagram)
4. Understanding Styles, Formats, and Basic HTML

Each of the following tasks are considered part of the Site Member's responsibility:

How to...

1. Login to the INTRAnet
2. Upload Files
   1. Create Links
      1. To Content
      2. To Media Files
      3. Mailto Links
   2. Insert Images
   3. Paste Content from a DOCX File
   4. Edit information
      1. Update text and other information as needed.
      2. Apply styles and formatting (H2, H3, ordered lists, unordered lists, and Undo).
      3. Create a Table.
      4. Use Metadata (Meta Description and Meta Keywords).
3. Create and publish PDF files by converting M365 and other sources to PDF.

Exercises and Frequently Asked Questions

(1) What are the steps for getting my information from a Microsoft Word file to the College's web site as a PDF file?

1. Open the document in Microsoft Word, click the File menu and choose Save As PDF. Be sure to name the file without spaces so that it will comply with web naming conventions and it should have a .pdf file suffix.
2. Login to the back-end of Joomla then choose Media Manager. Click into YOUR folder then click the Browse Files button to locate the PDF file you want to upload.
3. Click the Start Upload button.
4. Navigate back to the Control Panel using the Site menu.
5. Click the Article Manager button and locate the article where you want to create a link to your PDF file. You can locate YOUR article by (a) searching for it by name or (b) using the author filter to select YOUR name.
6. Create your link to the PDF file and Save your changes.

(2) I see some information on a College web page that is not accurate. The page is not my responsibility but I think the information should be fixed. What should I do?

Pages on the WWW server (www.newriver.edu) are managed by the Communications staff and Cucumber and Company.

Pages on HELP (help.newriver.edu), WEB (web.newriver.edu) and PORTAL (portal.newriver.edu) are managed by the IT staff.

Pages on NRCTCF (nrctcf.org) are managed by the Foundations staff.

If you find a page or information on any of these sites that needs updated or deleted, please contact the appropriate staff member and provide them the URL of the information with your recommendations for improving it.

Pages on the SharePoint intranet site (https://newrivertech.sharepoint.com/sites/Intranet) are not indexed by Google search engines, since the information is only available to New River employee account holders after they authenticate. If you find a page or information that needs updated, please contact the appropriate Content Manager identified on the home page of that site.

(3) How do I login to the College's SharePoint Intranet Site?

Employees should login to the college portal and then click on the Inranet link to access SharePoint (https://newrivertech.sharepoint.com/sites/Intranet).

(4) I need to create an entirely new SharePoint site page?

Employees can create personal SharePoint sites, but IT staff can assist with designating the Site Members for shared management of the information. Please contact our Help Desk with your request and identify the people who should have Site Member access.