SharePoint 2010: Template for Information Gathering or SMTD

An assignment is currently running in KAP phase. You all know KAP phase is very important and needs to be run thoroughly with better care because it builds a base of operation support.

Let's regard “KAP without proper attention is a big GAP”.

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As seen in these articles Phases of SharePoint Transition Plan: SharePoint 2010 (Knowledge Acquisition Plan) and What does it take to become Transition Manager: SharePoint 2010?, we discussed the phases of KAP and touched a little on SMTD, i.e.  System Maintenance Technical Document. While understanding the client's different environment and having multiple sessions with the SharePoint SMEs, we tend to miss some of the important points to note down regarding SharePoint environments.

Below are some points for reference to capture most information related to SharePoint environments. It is always important to gather below information.

Ø Version of O.S

Ø Versions of SharePoint Server

Ø Versions of SQL Server O.S and SQL

Ø SharePoint Server Setup Architecture (With Diagram)

o   No Of App Server:

o   No of Web Servers:

o   No of Index and Query Servers:

o   CA is hosted on:

o   SQL Servers:

Ø Which Servers holding index and query server roles

Ø No, Dev, Staging, Pre-Production and Production environments.

Ø Load Balancer info.

Ø Excel Cal. Service, InfoPath Services etc.

Ø Outgoing and Incoming Email services

Ø Special Service Accounts information and rights

Ø Back-up and Restore Policy (If any third Party S/W is used)

Ø Site Creation, Administration Change, Site Deletion Process

Ø DR Process and Policies

Ø SQL Server set-up for the DR Process (DB Mirroring)

o   DB Structure

o   Content DBs

o   Search Config

o   Search Content

Ø Any Scheduled jobs running of the SharePoint Servers and Warm scripts

Ø Health Check Process and Monitoring of the services

Ø How the change and Problem management process

Ø Any current issues for SharePoint or on O.S Side.

Ø SharePoint and O.S Patching Process

Ø Service Applications List.

Ø Web Application List

Ø Maintenance Window

Ø BI features i.e. BDC and BCS.

Ø SQL Reporting and other reporting tool used.

Ø Any other reporting done.

Ø Any other additional Information

To gather information on Search:

Ø Search usage – for Content search or itemized search features (like directory)

Ø How many users perform the queries per day?

Ø List of search pages.

Ø Does users use Advance search and if any customizations.

Ø How many content sources and their names. How many totals are in use?

o   Content Sources:

1.     How many items we have per content source.

2.     Schedule of the incremental and full crawls of the content sources.

Ø Search Infrastructure:

o   No. of Query Server:

o   No. of Index server:

o   Index size in GB:

o   No. of total items indexed:

o   Search Database size:

Ø Reports:

o   Daily search hits:

o   If OOB 30 days reports:

o   Most used Keywords:

Ø Best Bets:

o   No of best bets already in place, including the best bets from all the content sources.

Ø Additional Notes:

o   If any

Ø Current Issue:

o   If any

Hope this piece of information is helpful and useful.

If you have any queries/questions regarding the above mentioned information then please let us know. We would be more than happy to help you resolve your issues. Thank you.

Applies to:

·        SharePoint 2010

·        SharePoint 2013