SharePoint Support Policy

Contained within this document is an outline for how the organization intends to support SharePoint on an ongoing basis.

Support Escalation Process for End Users

In our organization no one group is wholly responsible for SharePoint support.

When you have an issue or request follow the escalation process below to help ensure you get the fastest and best response possible.

  1. First take a look over our learning libraries and training material. Frequent questions, requests and issues are also outlined with their responses and resolutions here.
  1. If as a user you aren’t able to resolve the issue or deal with the request yourself the next step would be to see if anyone in your team or department might know how to resolve/deal with your request.
    In fact someone in your department or team might very well be a Site Owner or Site Administrator and may have taken part in SharePoint training that could help.
  1. Sometimes the issue is too difficult to deal with and it requires greater SharePoint expertise. If this is the case please submit your request to the Help Desk (or Service Desk) and make certain to include as much information as possible including screenshots, video captures of your screen, the date and time any issue was encountered, and the steps you took.
  2. The Help Desk (or service desk) will evaluate your request and determine the best way to resolve the issue. Often the Help Desk will categorize and determine whether your issue or request relates to security, the client/server environment or SharePoint ensuring you have the expertise necessary to get a prompt and effective resolution.
  3. For those rare situations when our internal teams cannot resolve an issue we will reach out to our external partners, vendors and consultants to get the appropriate resolution as fast as possible.

Simplified Support Diagram

What follows is a simplified diagram that outlines the levels of support in our organization.

Complex Support Flow Diagram (Example)

What follows a more advanced diagram outlining a possible flow for support.

While we have outlined a very general Support policy from an end user approach there is a bit more complexity at certain layers.

Help Desk/Service Desk Level

There are typically two approaches for this level depending on the size of the organization.

The first approach is one where the Help Desk acts as a categorization, validation, and coordination layer. This means that as requests come in Help Desk is trained to categorize the request so that the SharePoint teams are alerted and able to respond appropriately.

An alternative to the first approach might be where Help Desk staff also train in SharePoint issue resolution. Not only can they catalog and categorize requests but they are also able to resolve many of the simple or more common SharePoint end user requests.

What follows is a brief table outlining a possible breakdown for how you might map out the responsibilities, capabilities and metrics for this group (using the latter example).

Description / Responsibilities / Key Metrics
These individuals typically have SharePoint Products and Technology experience. Often they receive advanced training before they can assist end users.
It is important for them to have an in-depth understanding of site settings and list settings.
In order for this group to appropriately support the business they will require read access across the environment that they support. Often this is provided through Web application policies.
This group should not have access to Central Administration. / Increases site collection quotas.
Changes site collection ownership.
Takes all requests and escalations referred from the forums.
Creates and manages the FAQ/end-user knowledge base.
Maintains and supports end-user training materials.
Is aware and often involved in planned downtime activities.
Meets with the Tier 2 team to ask questions and share knowledge.
Facilitates site creation.
Resolves site lockout.
Access and permissions related troubleshooting.
Account management and password resets. / Average Time To Resolution
# of Tickets open
# of Tickets closed
% of Tickets closed within SLA (72 hrs service level agreement for example)
# of Tickets closed beyond SLA
% of Tickets closed - User Response Dissatisfied
% of Tickets closed - Satisfied
% of Tickets closed - Highly Satisfied
# and % of Tickets escalated

SharePoint Administrator Level

While the hardware and network are provided by other infrastructure teams, the Tactical Operations team ultimately owns the SharePoint environment. They are responsible for outages and isolating systemic issues. They take client escalations which relate to server issues including, but not limited to performance, site or service outages, restores, and server errors.

Description / Responsibilities / Key Metrics
Exclusive SharePoint Server access to production (not including Datacenter resources and backup operations).
Use Central Administration and PowerShell.
Resolve any issues that require access to the farm through Terminal Server or other means. / Installation
Upgrade
Maintenance: hotfixes, service packs
Backup/restore – using Recovery Manager to recover items, but another Tier 2 Operations Backup team does the Server backups (SQL Server team does the SQL Server backups)
Disaster recovery solutions - may be another farm or virtual solution
Optional - Cluster and Load Balancing Support
Security and Authorization (DC support/Firewalls)
SQL Server Support and Maintenance (This ultimately may be outsourced to SQL Server team)
Database Consistency and Maintenance
Database Backup
Database Index Maintenance
Defrag
Disk Growth management
Disk IO monitoring
Disk Management
Virtualization Support (may ultimately may be outsourced to another team)
Dev environment support
Test environment support
Staging or Pre-Production
Deployment of solutions and features (Requires a SharePoint solutions file with a file type of .WSP) / Uptime %
Planned downtime utilized
New Web Applications added
Number of Databases added
Backup SLA (# of failed backups)
Time to Restore
List of Operational Projects in Process

SharePoint Architect

SharePoint Architect/Engineering Team with extensive SharePoint Products and Technologies experience, including those involved in the design and architecture of the system, provide Tier 3 support. This level of support is expected to comprise approximately 1% of systemic support calls.

Description / Responsibilities / Key Metrics
Exclusive SharePoint Server access to production (not including Datacenter resources and backup operations).
Use Central Administration and Power Shell.
Resolve issues that require access to the farm, through Terminal Server or other means. / Planning for high availability
Upgrade validation and steps
Storage management
Performance management over time
Risk management
Oversight on change management
ITIL and MOF implementation (Change Management processes) with the PMO (Project Management Office) team
Database management plans and optimization techniques
Establishes Operations processes and best practices
Manages Cluster solutions
Virtualization and imaging solutions and testing (may be outsourced)
Reviewing usage reports and making recommendations for scale up / scale out
Firewall and security management reviews
Optimization plans and techniques
Meeting with the dev teams to ensure best practices
Investigating list scale, database scale, and site and site collection scale issues, and providing guidance and best practices / # of current systemic issues
# of Site Collections Managed
TB of Storage Managed
Numbers of Servers Managed
Growth per month
Departmental Applications Onboarded
Unique Users
Number of New Users Added

How is support categorized and cataloged?

There are a number of ways in which we categorize SharePoint support issues and requests as they come in to the Service Desk. The primary categories we use can be found below:

  • SharePoint Request
  • Permission Denied
  • Login Prompting
  • Page With Explanation
  • Could Not Find Information
  • SharePoint Server Error
  • How To/How Do I
  • Related Application Request
  • Word 2010 Error
  • Excel 2010 Error
  • InfoPath 2010 Error
  • Access 2010 Error
  • Project 2010 Error
  • Visio 2010 Error
  • PowerPoint 2010 Error
  • Outlook 2010 Error
  • SharePoint Workspace Error
  • SharePoint Designer 2010 Error
  • Internet Explorer Error

Available Support Resources

Within our organization there are quite a few support resources available to employees. What follows is an outline and listing of these support resources and where appropriate how to get access to them.

  • Books and Manuals
  • Web Based
  • MSDN
  • TechNet
  • Blogs
  • Forums
  • Microsoft Help and How To
  • Productivity Hub
  • I Use SharePoint
  • SharePoint Glossary
  • Cheat Sheets/Job Aids
  • One on One
  • Classroom Training