03/05/2013
Figure 1: Easily view, select, and request services from an intuitive service catalog displaying all available options to end-users. 2. Empowering SharePoint content owners to easily manage their content when they need to move, copy, or restructure SharePoint sites, content, and topology within or across SharePoint environments. Governance Automation SP2 enables business users to submit content migration or restructuring service requests on demand through our newly redesigned management console or within SharePoint itself via a web part. In order to align with your predefined organizational governance policies, as well as data security and compliance initiatives, the request is then routed to all appropriate parties for approval and swiftly executed without direct IT involvement. This enables easy and quick response to organizational structure changes while maintaining all content configuration, security settings, and metadata. The new content move service provides intuitive, visual guidance to users on how to request content restructuring. 
Figure 2: Governance Automation SP2 allows business content owners to easily select their desired content source and map to their desired destination for site restructuring requests. 3. End-to-end site lifecycle management from provisioning through daily management to end-of-life. As organizational structures and roles change, users can manage their sites with the ability to change primary or secondary contact owner’s information and even modify metadata due to a change in functional purpose. Governance Automation SP2 also allows IT administrators to delegate the management of site ownership, classification, and archival or deletion directly to accountable business owners to complete the site lifecycle. The new Site Directory Web Part in Governance Automation SP2 offers users visibility to all sites managed by Governance Automation within a site collection along with relevant information, such as site owners, classification, and lease expiration. 
Figure 3: A new Site Collection Directory Web Part can be accessed directly within SharePoint for end-user ease of use and adoption. 
Figure 4: A new site collection policy was added to proactively enforce maximum site depth within a site collection, preventing users from requesting a new site beyond the site depth threshold. 4. Additional workflow extensibility that adapts to business processes. With Governance Automation SP1, we provided the ability to call an external program to execute custom activities at the end of the execution of the service request. This enables you to incorporate custom activities such as turning on specific site collection features at the end of site collection provisioning. With Governance Automation SP2, we added two more “hooks” in the workflow which allow the insertion of custom activities before the start of the approval process to perform any necessary pre-checks as well as checks after the completion of the approval process. The inserted custom action can be in the form of an executable file, such as a Windows PowerShell script file or an Assembly DLL file. This extensibility is available on all types of service requests in Governance Automation SP2. 
Figure 5: With Governance Automation SP2, you can now escalate and re-assign an approval task to an alternate user so that the task does not sit idle when an approver is not available for an extended period of time. 5. Client application programming interface (API) to enable integration with your existing infrastructure. Do you already have a system where all of your users request IT services? Would you like to use that same system to offer SharePoint services? If so, our new Governance Automation APIs enables you to do just that. With Governance Automation SP2, we provide APIs to submit site collection and site provisioning requests. You can place the new site collection or new site request form in an external system, and submitting the request via APIs will trigger the corresponding Governance Automation service workflow for approval and automated execution while enforcing your governance policies. We hope you enjoy Governance Automation SP2. To try it for yourself, download a free trial today!