Collaborative networking in SharePoint

By Erika  |  August 4, 2009 Posted in Johnson & Johnson  |  Comments (0)

I continued work research on SharePoint capabilities and research for various project.s

SharePoint research for the week involved searching for a way to “calculate” a link to a person’s MySite webpage. There is a list of people profiles for the department on the department website, which was manually entered by each person in the department and by other people in departments around the world. There is a also a parallel feature on SharePoint called a MySite which is akin to a Facebook profile page that stores a person’s contact information and any other work related information about a person (skills, projects, documents, etc.). Mark wanted me to figure out a way to combine both the people profile list entries with the MySite pages. He suggested putting a MySite link into a column to associate the page with their entry on the SharePoint list. In order to automatically generate the link to a person’s MySite page, the SharePoint list first have to find a person’s account name (if it is not manually entered by the individual at time of data entry). I discovered that there is no function that will generate a person’s account name in a calculated field,  but figured out a separate way to achieve this goal. Since the people profile list already contained everyone’s email address (the first part of the email address before the “@” symbol being their account name), I created a calculated field that would acquire the first part of the email address (using Excel functions) and then concatenate this account name to the beginning of the MySite web address. This method automatically generates a MySite link for each of the profile entries in the SharePoint list, saving me time from having to manually enter each address. (This method only works if the user has already entered either their email address or account name.)

MySite pages are similar to Facebook pages and allow people to connect with other employees who share similar duties, skills, employer location, etc. By integrating (adding a link for each person on a Sharepoint list), people won’t have to manually enter information already stored in SharePoint. Much of this information is already automatically generated on a MySite page, like phone number and position. MySite pages act as a central repository with information that can be used through out SharePoint sites, saving people who manage SharePoint sites time and effort.

I spent most of my time this week continuing research for various projects. Like last week, I am still finding information for the postoperative care of women who undergo bariatric or orthopedic surgery. The team has already come together and discussed our findings with the team leader. This week we are researching topics for which the team discovered we need more information. On Wednesday we’ll come together again via conference call to discuss our findings, after which we’ll either divvy up the topics again to fine tune our research or develop further questions to answer.

Doing research for various projects is a great opportunity to fine tune my research skills in a team setting. The other two team members generally use different information sources from myself. After we share our findings I go to the sources and try to figure out the thought process they went then when searching for information to answer the questions for a given topic.

Online university and even more research

By Erika  |  July 27, 2009 Posted in Johnson & Johnson  |  Comments (1)

I worked on several different assignments this week. I continued working on the migration of online university pages from the old online university site to the new SharePoint site. Mark and I discussed how the pages that let you login to the online university server should be differentially branded versus pages that are specific to the  department. I also received feedback from other members of the team to fix various links, etc. I wrapped up the online university migration this week and will be meeting with others in the department to speak with a representative from online university to discuss the site and whether it meets online university’s standards. Working on this type of project, one where I migrated an old web site to a new location in an existing site was a good learning experience. I had to understand the dynamics of the existing site and develop a plan for integrating into the current department site. The existing online university site contains information specific to department courses and links to a server called “SyncTotal” which handles course registration and the taking of courses. The department course information had to be moved to a new SharePoint site that still references the SyncTotal server. I had to discuss with John the different ways the new site could look and how it should convey the information nestled within SharePoint. I also spoke with Mark all through out the project on the ways that the SharePoint site for the courses should be linking to SyncTotal (something that took a while to understand). Moving online university course information to the department SharePoint site is a great way for the department to brand the courses with their own personal identity. This way, the courses will stand out from other department specific courses and others will know exactly where to look for department courses within J&J.

I also performed work this week for Deena by researching digital networks/connectivity efforts physicians use for communicating with other physicians within various organizations, such as the American Medical Association. This assignment took about 2 days and was extremely fun to complete. I’m finding that I really like doing research for projects. Once I completed the research, I then compiled my work with the consulting agency’s work (since they eventually finished) and found that I had only missed a few networking initiatives. It was a great opportunity to do the same research as someone else and then compare my work to theirs. I searched for the consulting firms information on the Internet that I hadn’t found. This allowed me to better understand where they were looking to find the information and the search terms they were using.

I was in a conference call with Sarah and Jerald, who works with consumer products in the U.S. (J&J). He works mostly with consumer products and knows a lot about professional education initiatives for consumer product companies at J&J. This was another great opportunity to listen in on the types of questions that are asked in business to get the right answers. Asking the right questions are especially crucial to any type of work.

The final project of the week was creating a new SharePoint site for other J&J business methodologies that don’t fit into the standard methodology categories already on the website, such as benchmarking and project management. The new site is a way for J&J team members to share their methodology examples (case studies) and toolkits with others. The site is very straightforward: people can upload their files and supply other information such as source (who to contact with questions), key insights (notes), and description.

This week I have a very intense project to complete for Deena’s team. The questions being asked related to the project objective are much harder to answer than previous research I’ve conducted. I’ll be working with two other team members who regularly work with Deena on projects as consultants. The first task involves each of us researching three topics and then converging our ideas on Thursday, after which we each take one topic to further investigate. By using this process we’ll discover any gaps or holes that could arise from individual search techniques.

Becoming a better researcher

By Erika  |  June 28, 2009 Posted in Johnson & Johnson  |  Comments (0)

I spent most of the week conducting research on various projects. I was able to use the research skills I learned from my Rutgers courses to search for key information.. Akin to writing a paper for Rutgers, I had to research my topic, but in this case, I couldn’t “change my topic” if I didn’t find the right information. An important aspect of doing research when information is unavailable is being able to find information that will lead someone in the right direction (on a project). For example, even though I wasn’t able to find specific answers to key research questions for particular topics, I was able to pinpoint information that will give J&J insight into business issues.

On Wednesday the air conditioning unit on my floor stopped working. On Thursday the air conditioning unit still was not fixed, and because I was still conducting research for various projects, Mark let me take my work home because of the heat. While it might seem like a minuscule feature of completing my work, I was ecstatic that I was trusted to finish my work at home.

I noticed that taking work on the road and completing work at home is a trend among people at J&J (and probably many other organizations as well). I like the idea of being able to complete work at another location when unexpected things occur like air conditioners breaking, but I also wonder about the implications of taking work off-site to complete elsewhere. How will this blurring of work and home life change the way we think about and compartmentalize life in our mind? (For example, how will we make distinctions between work tasks and home tasks? How will tasks be restructured to accommodate project deadlines around home life? What tasks will be given presidence and which ones will be forgotten?)

In the long run, the balance between work and home life will be a big issue, personally as I search for a career, and as I grapple with new technologies that bring me closer to my work and farther from other aspects of my life.