If you are observing the way people work with SharePoint, do you think there are typical SharePoint Users? Is it possible to categorize them and what are their typical behaviours?
I found an interesting article about six possible typical SharePoint Users and will give you a short briefing about them. Maybe you find yourself in one of them? If you would like to read the article, click here (German).
The six typical SharePoint Users are described in the article as followed:
The Adventurer: He/She knows to handle the system and likes to try things out. It would be good if he has some teamsites or a mysite with special rights to check things out. There should be a contact person for feedback.
The Pragmatist: This user just uses the things in SharePoint he can handle very simple and fast, like the document library. But he/she would use it like a file system. The user is interested to get his/her work done. There is a need for a userfriendly system for which you don’t need a training. It is always good to prepare a special teamsite for these users and make their lifes easier.
The Communicator: The communicative user wants to use profiles, searching and commenting functionalities. They like to get useful official company news and do not want to concentrate on the technical functions. They want to know what is going on and use SharePoint as information channel.
The Naysayer: Naysayers don’t like to change their way of work and are sceptic of the data privacy and security. These people should take part at the implementation process of SharePoint. It is important to be communicative with the Naysayer and offer policies and security advices.
The Outrider: This user is normally one of the IT-department. The outrider likes new technologies and has a positive attitude towards new ways of working. They like to give feedback and like the flexibility of the system and are fine with fitting their way of work to the system.
The Worry-Wart: These users are not familiar with technologies. They need more training and are afraid of doing something wrong. They need a really userfriendly user interface and instructions on how to use and there should be someone to contact.
Can you think of some different kinds of user?
In my opinion, it is not easy to categorize people, often it is just inbetween or a mix of several types of users. But these typical users for SharePoint can help to get everybody better involved into a your SharePoint System.
I miss one typical SharePoint User. The Mandatory: The mandatory user only uses SharePoint because he has to do so. His boss told him, the company uses policies for this or he needs information which is stored in a SharePoint Site. This user knows the standards of the system and knows how to work with it, but is not positive about SharePoint. Help this user by providing a different access to documents which are stored in SharePoint, e.g. the windows explorer integration or Outlook Integration. Show him slowly the advantages of SharePoint.
Oh, i forgot to mention: You can use these kind of users also for every other application.
..:: I LIKE SHAREPOINT ::..
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