Case Study: Tailspin Toys
Background
Tailspin Toys manufactures and sells toys and games. The company also resells board games. The new chief executive officer (CEO) recently launched an effort to update the company’s information technology (IT) infrastructure. The CEO wants a blog site to provide updates in plain text about the progress of company projects and the overall health of the company to employees. Content from this site will be used to populate some content on the internet-facing site.
You hire a consultant to design and deploy a SharePoint farm. The company plans to use the farm to create internal collaboration sites, and e-commerce site, and a place to display public announcements.
The following diagram shows the topology of the SharePoint farm:
General
You must create a separate site collection for each department. You must base each site collection on the Team site template. The direct URL for each site collection must use the following format:
http://departmentname.tailspin.com.
You must place the site collections for all departments in the same web application, if possible. You must place the site collection for departments that have unique requirements in separate web applications.
Business continuity
You identify the following requirements related to continuity of the business:
• All SharePoint services must be highly available.
• The SharePoint environment must be able to withstand the failure of a single system without affecting accessibiIity.
You must monitor the SharePoint environment to ensure that systems are available and that response times meet service level agreements (SLAs). In the event the times are not within the required thresholds, the system must alert SharePoint administrators. You must create a site that allows department managers to view the performance data that has been collected. The use of additional monitoring software will be performed where it can be justified.
Governance and security
Governance requirements
• Marketing department employees may create team sites. All other sites must be created by members of the information technology (IT) administration staff.
• You must handle requests for new sites by using a Help Desk site on SharePoint
• The corporate taxonomy must be managed by the SharePoint administrative staff. Users must not be allowed to create their own information architecture. Exceptions to this requirement will be handled on a case by case basis.
• All information in SharePoint must be consistently identified and readily accessible by using searches. Search components must be configured to provide the best search results while minimizing administrative overhead.
Security requirements
Anonymous access is only permitted for Internet-facing sites. Authentication is required for all sites. Authentication must occur through the Active Directory Domain Services environment. All customapps must be installed and managed by the SharePoint administrative staff. Any requests for new apps must be submitted through the Help Desk site.
Hardware and storage
Hardware requirements
You must minimize the number of servers and applications whenever possible. You must only deploy additional servers and applications if the requesting department manager provides the appropriatedocumentation to support the need.
File storage requirements
Content must not be stored in the perimeter network. All access to SharePoint content from the Internet must be handled through servers in the perimeter network. Human resources (HR) data must be kept separate from all other data.
HR department
The HR manager needs a website to implement time management and leave requests. The HR manager has found an app that will provide this functionality on a SharePoint independent software vendor website, and would prefer to use this app as opposed to creating a custom in-house app. This app will only need to access to data in the HR site collection.
You must create a site for the HR department that allows new employees to read required documents regarding policies and procedures. The site must also provide all employees access to other HRdocumentation such as the employee handbook, employee leave procedures, and acceptable use guides.
IT department
You must implement a Help Desk website and associated workflows. To create the site, you must access data from a Microsoft Excel workbook into a SQL Server database by using an SQL Server Integration
Services (SSIS) package. You must access data from other data sources.
Employees must be able to fill out a help request on the site and then check the status of the request. The IT department staff must be able to respond to the requests, update the status of requests, and close requests. IT department managers must be able to track the status of requests, and generate reports on the progress of requests.
Marketing department
Collaboration sites
Marketing department employees must be able to create their own collaboration sites in SharePoint The collaboration sites will be used for new product release discussions and marketing plans related to those new products. The URL for the collaboration sites must use the format: /products/product name. Custom terms
The marketing department must be able to use custom terms when identifying marketing strategies.
Other departments must not be able to use custom terms. This requirement has been approved by management.
Public-facing sites
You must create a site for the marketing department that provides information to potential customers about the current product line and any products in development. The marketing team must be able to access this site by using their mobile devices.
Sales department
The sales manager needs a site to display sales progress data. The site must include KPIs and metrics that are generated by using information from a database stored on a SQL Server. Salesdepartment employees are often away from the office. They must be able to access SharePoint data from external locations and when they are offline. Sales department employees need a site thatcustomers can access to purchase products and check on the status of orders
HOTSPOT
You need to deploy the HR app.
Which options should you recommend? To answer, select the appropriate setting from each list in the answer area.
Answer: 