1. Rewriting General Mills’ R&D Lab Notebook Application in SharePoint 2010 Michael Tenlen Benjamin Bach
2. Who are we? Michael TenlenGeneral Mills Information SystemsSharePoint Center of Excellence Benjamin BachGeneral Mills Information SystemsR&D/ITQ Shared Services
3. Session Content Electronic Lab Notebook 90% We will share our experience in Using SharePoint 2010 as the development platform to rewrite and replace a custom written .NET application 90% CustomCode SharePoint CustomCode SharePoint Current Version A project goal is to use 2010 SharePoint features to replace a delicate custom written application and greatly reduce support requirements SharePoint 2010 Rewrite
4. Session Roadmap Quick overview of General Mills Level-set – how we use SharePoint Evolution of our lab notebook application Deep dive Rewrite project SharePoint 2010 features Summary - Q&A
5. General MillsCompany Overview World’s 6th largest food company $15.9 billion in FY09 net sales* 30,000 employees Market in morethan 100 countries * Includes proportionate share of JV sales
6. General MillsA strong portfolio for growth FY09 Worldwide Net Sales: $15.9 billion $2 Billion $3.8 Billion Bakeries &Foodservice International $10.1 Billion U.S. Retail *Includes proportionate share of unconsolidated JVs
7. General MillsCategory-leading brands General Mills Brand Rank Refrigerated Yogurt 1 Dry Dinner Mixes 1 Refrigerated Dough 1 Fruit Snacks 1 Dessert Mixes 1 Grain Snacks 1 Frozen Hot Snacks 1 Mexican Aisle Products 1 RTS Soup 2 RTE Cereal 2 Frozen Vegetables 2 U.S. Retail Brands Source: ACNielsen, 52 weeks ending May 30, 2009
8. General MillsBrands on the Go FY09 sales: $2 billion Focusing on growth channels Schools, businesses, c-stores Focusing on branded items(65% of portfolio)
9. General MillsInternational: A Growth Engine Fastest growing sector of the company Key platforms Cereal Super-premium ice cream Convenience meals Healthy snacks
11. General Mills – SharePoint AdoptionHistory – 2001 events drove adoption October 31, 2001 General Mills acquires The Pillsbury Company to create one of the world’s largest food companies. Image place holder Big G + Barrelhead = Combo-Logo
12. General Mills – SharePoint AdoptionHistory - SharePoint 2001 SharePoint 2001 was implemented as the merged-company document management solution Customized to assign unique document IDs Migrated data from two legacy document management systems Developed Electronic Lab Notebook (ELN) system for 800+ R&D workers
13. General Mills – SharePoint AdoptionHistory - SharePoint 2003 Missing document functionality forced corporate to stay with SPS 2001 and not migrate documents Widely used as a collaboration tool by Supply Chain and Technical Communities (Engineers) 1,500-2,000 sites Tightly controlled use by corporate areas with only 35-50 sites deployed Central deployment at headquarters 12 standalone installations at larger plants
14. General Mills – SharePoint AdoptionHistory - SharePoint 2007 2007 TAP participant - early adopters Developed custom migration program to move SPS 2001 docs directly into SPS 2007 Updated Electronic Lab Notebook to use 2007 document libraries but kept existing code base Migrated 500+ SPS 2003 sites to SPS 2007 628 1,926 2,128,288
16. General Mills – SharePoint AdoptionSharePoint 2010 - TAP October 2008 Previewed SharePoint 2010 features at 2008 Microsoft Business Division Advisory Council (MBDAC) November 2008 Informed and engaged R&D/ITQ Team January 2009 Microsoft TAP Team visits General Mills Established ELN Rewrite as official 2010 TAP project Ongoing Weekly meetings to keep things moving
17. General Mills – ELN HistoryEvolution of ELN – Scope ELN is the repository for all research documentation Experimental data Invention records Plant trial requests and results Sensory results Storage test results Technical product preparation summaries Technical reports
18. General Mills – ELN HistoryWhat is a lab notebook? scientist experiments documentation
19. General Mills – ELN HistoryEvolution of ELN – Documentation Musts Legally Binding Authentic and unchangeable records Signed, dated and witnessed experimental documents Validates “First to Invent” claims” (Patents) Audit trail of document history Regulatory Compliant Federal Code (21 CFR**) ** Electronic Signature & Witnessing
20. General Mills – ELN HistoryEvolution of ELN – Physical Notebooks… Developer signs & dates documents R&D developer creates & prints experimental work documents (Word, Excel, Loose Leaf Paper) Cuts & tapes documents into lab notebook Compare research findings/notes with project team Developer takes lab notebook to Tech Records (TR) Developer creates a summary page & enters into lab notebook Developer creates a table of contents page & enters into lab notebook Developer finds a witness & witness signs and dates documents TR manages Lab notebook microfilming
21. General Mills – ELN HistoryEvolution of ELN – Version 1 concepts Sensory Storage Experiments Create a Project Notebook Create New Documents Project Results & Conclusions Close Project Notebook Plant Trials Technical Reports Document Management Features Define and organize as unique projects Automatic data field population to minimize re-keying Automatic signing and dating Automatic alerts for witnessing step Close process to set permissions to READ ONLY
22. General Mills – ELNWhat users are saying “With enough brute force, you can make it work.” “I try to search, but it’s a guessing game.” “Make it easier to organize and find items in ELN. I have never found anything!!!” “All the files just get dumped into the project folder. There is no way to organize within the project folder.” “My ELN works only about 50% of the time and even when it works a lot of errors come up, so it would be good if that didn't happen.” “ELN is slow - drives me nuts.”
26. General Mills – ELNSystem layout Client side scripting Browser Office scripting ASP .NET SQL Server Custom workflow SharePoint 2007 File shares
27. General Mills – ELNWhat does it need to do? Store, Find, Retrieve Documents Improved organization Provide for project needs Witnessing Closing Templates Flexible search and filtering Easily used by a wide variety of skill levels Personalized views International friendly
28. General Mills – ELNWhat does it need to do? (Continued) Extensible Provide interface for 3rd party system document input Handle multiple security layers and user types Search and store multiple file types Scale Users Storage Administration (auditing, reporting)
29. General Mills – ELNDevelopment options ASP .NET application Hybrid solution SharePoint 2010
30. General Mills – ELNASP .NET application Benefits Utilize developer experience Complete control over environment Use company standard development and deployment strategies Challenges Rework (storage, UI, workflow, search) Security Auditing
31. General Mills – ELNHybrid ASP .NET/ SharePoint Benefits Similar to current environment Improved .NET and SharePoint APIs enable new possibilities Potential integration with Microsoft Office Web Applications Challenges Similar to current environment Multiple failure points Rework
32. General Mills – ELNSharePoint 2010 Benefits Out of box functionality satisfies requirements Updated and improved interface Standardized and familiar feel Robust storage API accessibility where needed Single point of development Office Web Applications Challenges New platform Inexperienced developer team
33. General Mills – ELNSharePoint 2010 - TAP Why Potential to influence feature set Leverage newest Microsoft technology Positions company better for corporate wide adoption Process Onsite requirements evaluation Proof of concepts (POC) Access to Microsoft SharePoint team and POC resources
34. General Mills – ELNLeveraging SharePoint 2010 features Document Sets Projects are Document Sets
35. General Mills – ELNLeveraging SharePoint 2010 features Structured taxonomy
36. General Mills – ELNLeveraging SharePoint 2010 features Content types Document information panel & templates
37. General Mills – ELNLeveraging SharePoint 2010 features Extensive use of workflows Easy creation with SharePoint Designer
38. General Mills – ELNLeveraging SharePoint 2010 features Search & Filtering
39. General Mills – ELNLeveraging SharePoint 2010 features Office Web Applications View and edit documents
40. General Mills – ELNLeveraging SharePoint 2010 features APIs (Silverlight, JavaScript) Personalization
42. General Mills – ELN 2010Infrastructure overview Development QA - Farm ELN will run on a temporary VM farm until the full production environment is configured Development and QA farms support ongoing maintenance
43. Thank YouELN TAP participants (in no particular order) General Mills Team Jenny Hon Mike Roberts Eric Johnson Jason Latzka Joe Sauer Michelle Check Mark Widner Microsoft TAP team Rob Lefferts Bill Griffin Maxim Lukiyanov Quentin Christensen Luca Bandinelli Sean Gabriel And many others…
45. Remember to fill out your evaluations onMySPCfor your chance to win two HD web cams and a designer mouse (3 prizes awarded daily)
46. Learn More about SharePoint 2010 Information forIT Prosat TechNet http://MSSharePointITPro.com Information forDevelopersat MSDN http://MSSharePointDeveloper.com Information forEveryone http://SharePoint.Microsoft.com
