Paris 2024’s new document management system in full swing
Around this time one year ago, two unprecedented major events – the postponement of the Olympic and Paralympic Games Tokyo 2020 and the first lockdown in France – would lead to one of the largest projects ever undertaken by the Paris 2024 IKL team: the roll-out of a document management system. Transitioning from a shared-folder-through-VPN approach to SharePoint has proven to be quite a challenge.
In the light of COVID-19, Paris 2024 had to adapt and re-prioritise their 2020 projects. Given the growing need for collaborative solutions and remote access to information, establishing a robust document management system became their main focus.
Strategy definition and proof of concepts: April – May
Based on SharePoint capabilities, the team designed a document management architecture where each FA would have a “collaboration space”, with limited access, to collaborate and produce content, and a “publication space” to showcase approved content to the rest of the OCOG.
Then Paris 2024 started running several proofs of concept (POCs) – not only to test the strategy and the repositories’ structure that they had envisaged, but also to ensure that the system was compatible with specific use cases. For example, during the PoCs, they had anticipated issues working with specific file types (VNI plans, media files, etc.).
Training and migration: June – July
To engage all other FAs, the Paris 2024 IKL team started the “SharePoint Champions” network, using SharePoint Champions to collect information from the FAs, communicate around the implementation project and push updates to the FAs. A specific training programme was designed to get them onboarded and up to date quickly.
Each champion was heavily involved in designing the SharePoint architecture for their FA. They were also responsible for making sure that content repositories on the old system were cleaned up before the migration, and for mapping the source files on the old system with the new architecture on SharePoint.
In parallel, Paris 2024 put together a training programme for the end-users, 94% of whom had never used SharePoint before. Ultimately, 24 FA-specific training sessions were delivered.
The migration was split into four batches over June and July, and the training sessions were held just before the migration so that the learnings were still fresh for each user.
Change management and extra-care: August – November
During the first few months following the SharePoint implementation, the Paris 2024 IKL team was almost fully dedicated to providing user support and resolving issues on the new system. Over time, as the number of issues and support requests decreased, they progressively handed over part of the support to their colleagues on the HelpDesk team.
Metadata deployment strategy: ongoing
Since then, the Paris 2024 IKL team has been focusing on the second part of the project: the metadata deployment. They are now using standard metadata only and are working on defining additional metadata categories to help users find documents more easily. There is already a defined set of common metadata across the entire OCOG, and the objective is now to work with groups of FAs to test these and identify more specific categories.