When reports were getting harder and harder to find across regions in the Providence enterprise, leadership got behind the idea of developing this effective out-of-box SharePoint report gallery web application.
From the top
With 10,000+ reports filed away in numerous reporting platforms like InfoView, Hyperspace, SharePoint BI, and Tableau, the task of finding and viewing reports became a tedious ritual of scrolling and clicking, especially for those responsible for viewing several reports daily. This inertia caused avoidance.
Working the problem with Physician Services analysts and leaders we kicked off an initiative which identified and curated the "top" reports from each reporting platform. They chose SharePoint as the web platform for listing report metadata and displaying the reports, because it was handy for low cost development and content maintenance. Quick prototyping suggested a simple slice-and-dice interface design would result in the most value for the least risk and effort.
Taxonomy-wise, only a single column of categories was needed to filter a set of rectangular tiles with thumbnails representing the most frequently used reports. The color theme followed company graphic standards. A NEW! flag identified what reports had been updated in the last three days, and symbols on the tiles either flipped the tile for a description of the product or opened the report in a new web page when clicked.
The top reports concept caught on with leaders representing a number of data consumer groups, leading to six separate go-to pages - one each for Clinical Programs, Clinical Quality, Finance & Revenue, Hospital Operations, and Strategy & Business Development.
The navigation requirements for Clinical Quality deviated from the norm. Instead of tabs, their taxonomy depended on a choice box and expand/collapse categories.
One thumbnail served up live data directly from a SQL database just to prove this kind of real-time connectivity could be accomplished in SharePoint, but while technically cool, the feature was surprisingly not adopted widely.
As the report count grew users asked for more features, the design adapted to maintain clarity by fitting more reports on a page, improving sort options, and indicating report priority. Tile colors gave way to smaller, more functional thumbnails able to surface more metadata like access, report source, training, and data refresh date.
Results
Minimal maintenance allowed the single page app to survive organizational churn. Report analysts maintained the metadata and thumbnails on their own, and the code was so easy to update and test, changes could be made directly in production. Complaints were related to the limitations of SharePoint, rather than usability. Indeed, users became so attached to the design, they wore it out at the knees like a good pair of jeans, and they continued to use it until forced to move on to a newer solution.
Responsible for product design, out-of-the-box SharePoint functionalities, client side code development, categorization conventions, and customer engagement.
2013
The SharePoint 2010 production platform cached all CSS and JS files, so they ended up inside a single HTM file that made development fast and easy to tweak with a simple text editor like Notepad. The app was made up of six code-behind pages and six SharePoint lists, each with custom list display/edit forms. The HTM file resided in a "scripts" document library on the site along with images and jQuery Core, Tools and SharePoint Services library files. I built and maintained icons as a sprite using Photoshop.
2014
Platform constraints limited product feature development and scalability resulting in the investigative work leading to the Providence's Enterprise Insights Platform and myHIway search application.