SharePoint

Opmerkingen: We use SharePoint primarily as version control for documentation and also for request tracking via a SharePoint list. It is an adequate solution for these needs but leaves some things to be desired.

Pluspunten: Convenient way to share files in and outside of your organization. It is truly loaded with good features; whether or not your instance will be capable of utilizing them all is another question (see cons).

Minpunten: Occasional integration issues with Microsoft's other apps such as OneNote. I had the hardest time moving a OneNote from one SharePoint to another and wound up having to do so one page at a time. SharePoint lists are our only recourse within my company for external user request tracking, and they are clunky at best. Users do not like the front-end form no matter how much tinkering we do in the provided form design tools SharePoint Design and Infopath. Poor visibility of who has access to what. The permissions hierarchy and inheritance is just not clear, and clean-up of any SharePoint you take ownership of will be a hassle. Many useful and seemingly rudimentary tasks are made difficult by integration issues with our corporate network, however this could have as much to do with our excessive security protocols than SharePoint. As such, I have not considered it in this review's score but gone ahead and included this complaint as a point of reference for anyone considering adopting SharePoint at their company. If your company's infrastructure and security model is already difficult to navigate, then it is unlikely you'll be able to take full advantage of what SharePoint has to offer without a very talented implementation team.

Opmerkingen: As mentioned briefly above, my most recent experience with SharePoint is using lists. This particular list (with a workflow to assign tasks) replaces an Excel spreadsheet of the same information. Using a SharePoint list instead, complete with different views and user alerts, allows relevant people access to the information they need in the right format, without having to duplicate work, send email updates, etc. While SharePoint can be frustrating, it seems evident from the updates that there is a move towards more intuitive use.

Pluspunten: The recent updates to SharePoint have come a long way in making it more intuitive to use, and providing a better looking user interface. The management of the 'apps' (e.g. document libraries, lists, promoted links) has become much easier of late. It would be useful to see more information added to the apps descriptions, to help users determine which best suits their needs, without having to navigate to the Office help pages and/or third party sites. The best feature for my current use is the ability to create different views of a list, and initiate workflows to assign list items as Tasks for certain users, thereby automating the sharing of the distribution of workload.

Minpunten: Some parts of SharePoint's functionality can be baffling - without formal training, it can be very difficult to work out how best to utilise SharePoint's features. When SharePoint is used across a large institution, without consistent training differing practices across different teams can make collaboration hard, as Sites/Pages/Libraries have been set up to function so differently. Inheriting a SharePoint site set up by someone else is tricky, as the logic they used to manage the site can be hard to decipher. Permissions can be hard to manage, particularly as its rarely clear to the requester to whom their requests for access are being sent. This can be frustrating, as it can contradict the 'Share' aspect of SharePoint.