Drawing a Target on Your Users with SharePoint

One of the challenges with most portals, including intranets, is maintaining the relevance of the information that the user sees and interacts with. You will hear a ton about the relevance of search, but relatively little is said about what is shown on the main page. Some organizations focus on the home pages as simple landing pages, a place for links to other sites. Others seek to serve relevant content, but too often there are substantial parts of a corporate intranet home page that simply are not relevant. If you are in Indianapolis, the important thing is the company picnic that takes place in New York?

In our culture of information overload that we have supporters to block advertising and other items unrelated to the content of a page and still ad blocking
is widely used. We can filter information ourselves, but we can filter information for users they love. The more focused we can make our content better user experience. Fortunately, SharePoint has several ways that we can deliver customized content to users and groups.

One Size Fits All

Perhaps in some things one size fits all. The golf balls are regulation size and in that sense one size fits all. However, in most things we want to be unique, expressive and interesting. If you do not believe me walk in the mall and the wide range of mobile phones covers that are available. It is not enough compared to the plaques that can have any color you want. That's not all. The mobile phone must be unique as you what is holographic screen savers, and other "bling bling" to make it unique.

Although I can not advocate putting "bling bling" on the homepage of its website, it is evident that individuals are just that - individual. They need different information at different times and for different reasons. Part of the development of a portal is focused on developing a solution that adapts to the main user groups and try to meet their specific needs.
In SharePoint there are three basic ways to solve this problem as explained in the following sections.

In-Part Personalization

Perhaps the easiest way to manage the customization is to have the elements to include in its Web page to manage their own customization. Whether a Web Part to the time it asks for your zip code and remember the visit to visit or web element that remembers your search preferences, SharePoint Web Parts can have personalized information that enables users to customize their unique preferences - - if the parties supporting it anywhere.