Application #2

Let's call this: slide deck managment system

The business analyst asks the user: What is the requirement?

We have the slide deck of about 300 Powerpoint slides that we need to manage every 3 months or so. Each team leader has about 25-30 slides for which they make sure the content is correct.

We have to keep these separate so no one destroys anyone else's content. Then at the end of the quarter, we need to consolidate them all into one deck. When the consolidation comes, we need to lock out the changes and let everyone know where the final version is.

The business analyst writes down:

This is just like a group of editors who are each managing a bunch of chapters of a book. Let's use Sharepoint facilities to provide:

• check-in/check-out
• alerts
• permissions

Then I need the tech guys to make a script that will consolidate all of the slide decks. The business analyst finds a script that will [almost] do it here:

Together the busines analyst and the tech guys come up with the solution by following these steps:

• create a site with unique permissions
• create a document library
• name the slide decks so that the script can read them in the proper order
• upload the various slide decks
• set the alerts on each slide deck to point to the team leader for that deck
• set the alerts so that when the consolidated deck is stored, the correct people will be notified
• get each team leader to initially check-out their deck so no one else can modify it

Then modify the script to:

• read the slide decks from the SharePoint site using the UNC name
• store the consolidated file back into the site
• be run every 3 months or at the behest of the business user consolidator

This stripped-down implementation will work [I implmented it for one of my clients] and is in-lieu of a custom system that would cost big-dollars to develop/deploy/support/operate.