What is our primary use case?
In SharePoint, you have two functionalities from my perspective. One is from a newsletter perspective and the other is from a team perspective For example; you have the SharePoint Teams and then you have the SharePoint Newsletter.
SharePoint Teams allows you to create a concept as a team, whereas SharePoint you create a workspace in Power BI and also you create a channel in Microsoft Teams. That's the beauty of the full component of Office 365. When you create things, you also can expand the same functionality for the additional applications that are out of there. The SharePoint News is used when you want to create newsletter updates on SharePoint.
On the point of the design is a design capability. They're there for you to put hyperlinks to other pages if it was your HyperText Markup Language or web page, so the idea or the service is to do a little bit in that direction. A good advantage is that you can create lists in SharePoint.
Basically, you have a full list and the beauty of that is that you can have a Power app that works with it. For example; you could develop a Power app that could be connected to that same SharePoint list. Your Power app will be your front end, where you input your data. Then your SharePoint will get that data into that SharePoint list. It means that you could use the Power BI connected to that SharePoint list to develop your front end, including the visualization of your reports.
Then, you could embed that Power BI report inside of the SharePoint for the end-users to consume. Inside of that SharePoint, they could see the report and they could see the information. Essentially, it is the full suite of Office 365 with the advantage of using the SharePoint database as your list. This is an example of one way that you could use it.
What is most valuable?
One of the strongest points for Microsoft applications is that they have a very big community.
What needs improvement?
I would like to see the integration with Teams reinforced. If you could have some SharePoint pages inside of teams, I think it could be useful. If you want to use data as a repository then you can have it there. That is one way, but also it depends on what Microsoft is trying to do. If they are planning to disaggregate SharePoint and just use Teams as the mainframe or they still want to keep it. I think that if they can bring some of the key components of what useful in both products then I think that can help the users.
More and more, people are starting to try to find one unique channel where they can have everything in one place. You can still have a lot of applications that you can use, but you still have one interface. That's what I think Microsoft Teams is trying to do, which is to give you one interface where you can use it for communication, control, to check how is your team behaving, and to have web meetings.
There is more usability from an end-user perspective to continue to use the full scope of Microsoft products. This included integrating products as much as possible.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working with Microsoft products for between 25 and 30 years.
Since I started working with Microsoft, one of the tools that we began with was Excel. Then we started with Word and have always been using these tools. Then, I jumped for BI, and after that, we started to use SharePoint for other things.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
This is a stable product.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
SharePoint Server is scalable.
The company has a presence in 60 countries and all of the members of the organization can use it. I don't know how many people are in each country, but I would say it's all of the organization. Whenever we hire somebody, SharePoint is available for them to use.
How are customer service and support?
Microsoft has a huge community that provides support and tips to go through the components and how to supply them.
I think that the technical support is good. I've never had issues with SharePoint or raised any tickets related to SharePoint, but I have had contact with Microsoft support for other products such as Power BI.
The support from Microsoft is very quick and they are very proactive. If they cannot solve the problem within your timezone, they will escalate it to another timezone. They are completely flexible in that way.
Another really good point is that even if I open a ticket in Europe, but it's related to someone in Latin America, they will call that person in the Latin American timezone from the Latin American team. It is flexible and promotes collaboration.
How was the initial setup?
I am not a Microsoft Office 365 administrator but I think it's not complex. I think that for certain companies, it may be a little bit complex or difficult for them to understand what the Office 365 package contains.
It is based on the licensing perspective. You can have an E3 license where you have both components and then you can have an E5 license and then you have additional components there. But in some cases, I think it should be more.
I think for the administrators, it will be good for them to have visibility to say, what will be the cost to have Power apps? Or, what will be the cost to have just only Power BI? Or, what is the cost of the full breakdown of all the components? What do the components offer you and give you?
If you are not an IT person and looking at opening your own company and you want to set up some components or Microsoft, you want to make sure that you have all the suites that you need to drive your business. From the perspective of someone that is not an IT person, I think will be useful to have some documentation that could help them in good guidance to, make the best selection and the best choices, because that they will have a better understanding. They would know things like Power Automate would help them to create their own process flow and have their own reports. They would know that they don't need to buy separate applications. It is possible to have everything in one package but sometimes, it's the lack of visibility or lack of communication that prevents this.
On the topic of on-premises versus cloud deployment, we have both because it's not only about a global company. We also have regional countries. On a global aspect, it's on the cloud, whereas on the regional aspect, it's on-premises. In these cases, they are still planning to move to the cloud.
When you look at Office 365, it's on the cloud, fully and independently of the country. However, there are other components that are not Microsoft and those that are on-premises, we are planning to also move to Azure.
What other advice do I have?
This is a product that I can recommend, although I will recommend it depending on what purpose they want it for. SharePoint has two ways it can be used. One is if you want to use it with the full suite of Office 365 with the purpose to create a small database or a small input of data, but also to create some pages, or if you need to store some information, and so on. I think it offers the advantages you need, if you are a small company, or even if you are a big company, but it depends on what you want to use it for. For example, you might want to use it as a communication channel. This works well.
However, it is important to remember that the suite of Microsoft is growing, so it means that more and more, I think that that component is not going to be used. I think it's still going to be used, but I don't think he's going to be fully used. Instead, I think people will focus more on the Power Automate components, such as Power Apps, Power Flow, Power BI, the Robotics component, and then Microsoft Teams.
The reason why Microsoft Teams is so well used at the moment is because of all of this situation with COVID. People had to find a platform where they could connect with others without having to break down. What is really funny about it is that if try to you use Skype, and you try to use My Teams, you will find that My Teams is more stable than Skype. They are still two components, part of the Microsoft suite. But, the way that they built My Teams, I think they got whatever they needed from Skype and then incorporated it into teams. Then they expanded the functionality of Teams to be more secure to be more stable.
I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Hybrid Cloud
*Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
