Scotia Logic (formerly AG Research) was contracted by Public Works and Government Services Canada to build and host a Microsoft SharePoint website that would facilitate cooperation among various government agencies and private contractors working on the Giant Mine Remediation project in Yellowknife, NT.

The website provided authenticated users with a secure online repository for project documents, files, photos, lists, and schedules. Access to information on the site was restricted according to assigned user permissions and group membership(s).

In addition to hosting the site and storing project data, Scotia Logic also provided ongoing user account and permissions management, technical support services, and site customizations for the Giant Mine SharePoint.

Communications throughout the project were managed using:

• A SharePoint project site that provided documents and previous versions as well as the project calendar.
• Status meetings weekly to provide updates to the activities that had been completed and the activities that would be conducted next.
• Meeting with the larger team consisting of the project stakeholders at key milestones

Established Best Practices

Public Works and Government Services Canada had commissioned Scotia Logic for almost a dozen content management sites which has allowed us to establish Best Practices for this project prior to implementation.

As with all projects, there were challenges that evolved after launch that required revisions. As the amount of content and the size of the documents increased, revisions were required in order to:

• Accommodate large files beyond the original scope. This involved migration to Binary Large Object (BLOB) storage for files over a certain size. This allowed files to be stored as files and referenced in the database instead of storing the file itself in the database. This allowed the client to overcome the size limitations of the database as well as speed up access.
• Provide a more advanced search capability. As the number of files increased, the search functionality was augmented to provide features aiding in pinpointing content and documents.