SharePoint Server 2010 includes customizable features and capabilities that span multiple product areas, such as business intelligence, forms, workflow, and content management. Customization introduces risks to the stability, maintenance, and security of the SharePoint Server 2010 environment.
Most of the customizations made by using SharePoint Designer affect only the site being customized. However, there are some customizations that can affect and potentially break sites and even impact a whole Farm. It is also possible to customize pages in a way that affect the maintenance and performance of the server running SharePoint 2010. This document intend to sensitize you with the risk related to an unmanageg usage of this powerful tool.
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Risk |
Impact |
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When SharePoint designer is enabled, users with designer, site owner, or site administrator have the ability to make changes to SharePoint sites.
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Changes made to SharePoint can be made at any time without approval and/or testing. While the time frame to produce solutions is fast, the probability that issues may arise can be high. Data may not be well structured or time frames to render data may be slow due to slow connection or poorly formed designs. |
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When a site is opened using SharePoint Designer, you may have the ability to perform advanced customization that can detach it from the site definition. |
Once this is done, pages are no longer ghosted. This means that all site content is retrieved from SharePoint content databases instead of the ghosted page that is loaded in RAM. This over rides the existing content that is stored in the site definition. When an upgrade is performed that includes new content for the site definition, it will not be included with an un-ghosted site, which may cause undetermined issues. Un-ghosted site way also increase SQL Server resources. |
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Users may have the ability to customize pages and page layouts. |
Organizational branding or designs may not match the company look and feel or present data in the manner intended. Required content rendering that has been enforced by the agency or objects that allow the page to render properly can also be deleted. |
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From the navigation pane authorized users will see all of the files in your site hierarchy or web site URL structure giving a complete view of everything. |
A user may change or delete a file or delete a name space that is required by the site, which may create issue with the site rendering or loss of content. |
Considerations
- Consider responsibility of end-users and impact on SLA’s
- Managing an uncontrolled infrastructure can higher you costs.
- Consider leaving the customizations up to the development group.
Developing an application on the SharePoint platform requires development and coding skills as well as an understanding of the SharePoint Framework. A common pitfall to be aware of are the problems custom code can cause later down the line when you come to upgrade. Working with experienced SharePoint developers will help to ensure that any that future changes won’t be problematic and that migration and scalability factors are taken into consideration.
- Leverage the governance model in determining whether SharePoint designer should be used. In general, top level sites or publishing sites have tight governance policies in place; whereas, collaboration sites have little governance.
- Consider the qualifications of the users.
- Introduce the concept of publishing Farm with validation by your development team.
- The business should define the scope of the customization thay would like to be able to do. Pages? Sites? Workflow?
- Evaluate your costs. Most of ad-hoc customization won’t be upgreadable, meaning, that this will have to be redevelop completely for the next Sharepoint version (or Service Pack). It implies redundant costs.
- Unmanaged development can cause potential security issues and jeoparidize the quality of your information platform.
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