Single Points of Contact (SPOCs) for Oregon.gov Website Site Collections

SharePoint site collection SPOCs have a variety of responsibilities.

• The SPOC is where the 'buck' stops
• The SPOC makes decisions
• The SPOC manages Users for the site collection
• The SPOC lends expertise to authors who need assistance
• The SPOC manages service desk requests for assistance

Where the 'Buck' stops

From the perspective of the Oregon E-Government Service Desk, the SPOC is where the buck stops.  The SPOC has the highest level of authority If a request comes to the desk that seems strange, beyond the scope of a 'normal' ticket or by it's nature requires approval, the SPOC for the site will be CC'd on the ticket and any motion or fulfillment will wait for the SPOC's approval.  Such requests include things like creation of new websites or sub sites, establishment of new users and navigational changes.  

Decision Making

Hand in hand with being a major approver for the site, the SPOC, often in cooperation with a website governance group, makes decisions about site organization, content management strategies and navigation changes and the like.  Once decisions are made, the SPOC informs their web team and enforces the rules, best practices or policies made for the site.  

User Management

Website SPOCs are in charge of deciding which users and to what extent they have permission to work in the website authoring environment.  The SPOC is an 'owner' of the site collection and has the access to set these permissions.  See the article on 'Granting and Removing Local Site Permissions'.

First Tier Assistance

Website SPOCs should be the go to person for the authoring team when assistance is needed in typical authoring tasks.  For this reason, the SPOC should be knowledgeable about working in the website authoring environment and comfortable teaching their team basic skills for using the SharePoint authoring environment.  Articles have been written and are being written that describe various tasks and processes.  Those articles are available for any SPOC or author to use for assistance.

 - Version 4 index of articles

 - Version 4.x index of articles

When assistance is needed that is beyond the scope or ability of the Single Point of Contact, the SPOC may submit a request for assistance to the Oregon E-Government Service Desk.  

Manages service desk requests from their team

In some cases, the SPOC may want to be the only person on the web team that submits tickets to the Oregon E-Government Service Desk.  While that is perfectly acceptable, it is the SPOC's responsibility to enforce that on their web team.  The Oregon E-Government Service Desk will not refuse to help a web author asking for assistance.  If the SPOC is to approve or be included in ALL service desk requests, then it is the duty of the SPOC to make that policy known to their team and to enforce it.  

On the other hand, if the SPOC is comfortable with their team members coming to the service desk independently for assistance, they should make that clear to the team as well.  The service desk will still always inform and wait for SPOC approval for certain types of requests as described previously.

Updated 1/12/2023 - Shawn Amsberry, Service Desk Manager