SharePoint Reviews

• Visual web parts
• Document libraries
• FBA
• Document templates

It simplifies development of portal and document management. Also, by using Office 365, we got good integration with office tools.

When we develop portals, we need to develop a lot of web parts that eventually go to a number of pages. These pages must be created manually. There should be some easy way to develop pages automatically via programing.

I am working on SharePoint since 2011. I have worked (with my team) on Microsoft SharePoint 2010 and 2013. We have developed enterprise web portals of government entities and large private organizations.

We have not had any stability issues.

Actually, the scaling is very simple. One of my customers needs their portal in three languages (English, Arabic and Urdu). SharePoint doesn’t have the Urdu language package, hence we had to work hard for it.

Most of time we got support from forum and that is good enough.

We did not use a previous solution.

Setup was simple.

I recommend using Office 365.

We did not look at other solutions.

if you have a .NET team, the SharePoint is right solution for you.

Some valuable features are:

• The SharePoint document management is second to none. This was one of our main reasons to upgrade from SharePoint 2010 to 2013.
• SharePoint 2013 had a better and cleaner user interface that has appealed to more users.
• The improved out-of-the-box Search functionality, was also a driving factor in migrating to SharePoint 2013.

With the cleaner and friendlier user interface, we have managed to assign access requests back to the users. While our support desk dealt with these requests previously, we have now managed to easily train managers in each team/department to provide access requests easily, thus reducing the load on our support desk.

The areas in which this product can improve are:

• The user experience can be simplified a bit more.
• The performance and customizability can also be improved.

I have used this product for 12 months.

There were no major stability issues as such, but the user profile service stopped unexpectedly on a few occasions.

No issues were experienced in regards to the scalability.

Being a Microsoft product that is widely used around the world, the technical support is easily available.

The only problem is when there is any customization done to the default SharePoint tool.

We used the older version, Microsoft SharePoint 2010.

Our reason to upgrade was Microsoft decided to stop its support for SharePoint 2010 aand also because our license was soon going to expire.

For someone who had not set up SharePoint previously, the initial setup was somewhat complicating. However, it became very straightforward thereafter.

The pricing and licensing is one of the most crucial parts of using Microsoft SharePoint.

Confluence by Atlassian was the only other option that was considered.

In the end, we chose the Microsoft SharePoint solution because we have a Microsoft Gold membership; so the pricing and licensing was greatly reduced for us.

Try and stick to a vanilla installation/setup as much as possible. When branding your instance of SharePoint, also try not to implement too much of custom codes. The more custom codes you implement, the less maintainable and less migratable SharePoint becomes.

The collaborative features, the central repository for project documents and the know-how for standard/best practices are valuable.

It has:

• Improved the exchange of knowledge from team to team.
• Provided better product support through the centralized documentation of procedures.
• Assisted in how-to to fix production issues.

The integration of Office document editing and publishing with the wiki component that we use for creating our how-to section needs to improve. At the very least there should be an easy way to integrate images into the wiki through the drag and drop option.

We also have many other tools that create their documentation in the form of HTML pages, sometimes with hundreds of pages. We should be able to directly integrate those into our site, not just through a link but to truly integrate this content as if it was native.

I have used this solution for four years.

The only issue that we have is when we are creating a new site from templates. During such a situation, many of the sub-components do not work or have to be completely reconfigured once created. This makes the creation of a new project based on our project site template very painful.

There were no scalability issues but then again, we are only about 30 people who are using it constantly.

The technical support level is practically nil.

We did not have anything before.

The initial setup was not so complex but our attempt to migrate was plagued with some issue and it was ultimately abandoned. It was not worth redoing everything what was there .

For us, in terms of the project development and support tools and for a collaborative repository of live documents, there is nothing like this solution.

We did evaluate a few other options. I know we looked at Jostle which we did adopt for the social-side of our intranet and for the publishing of static articles.

What is costly with SharePoint is the customization and maintenance of these custom components.

Unless you are a .NET development shop or are thinking about hiring a SharePoint person on staff full-time, you need to stay close to the out-of-the-box config.

SharePoint is the ideal platform in the collaboration scenario where is quite easy to set up document repositories with appropriate permissions with just few mouse clicks.

In a publishing/internet scenario, it has a powerful publishing infrastructure that allows editors to publish contents with predefined layouts in a quick and easy way, with features like scheduled publish and unpublish, caching for page load performance and multilingual site support.

The search capabilities empower the company to create new kinds of applications that in the past used to be implemented with a web/database application and now can be realized using SharePoint lists and libraries as a backend.

It helped us particularly with document digitalization, both from a repository standpoint and from a project documentation sharing and co-authoring perspective, with great integration with the MS Office suite.

It also helped us manage simple processes that used to be carried out through email and now are centralized in a single spot.

It would be nice if the platform made it easier to implement a complete document management process (digitalization, OCR, protocols, etc.) without the need to integrate software from different vendors.

I’ve been using SharePoint for six years, including previous versions.

We have not really had stability issues, particularly in the 2013 version.

Once the guidelines and the hardware requirements are fulfilled, the performance result is in line with expectations. Beyond that, SharePoint 2013 has been created with scalability in mind, with all services deployable on an on-demand basis, independently, even on a dedicated machine. In addition, is pretty easy to scale services when you require more performance.

Fortunately, we did not encounter major issues, but support has been generally good.

I did not use a previous solution.

We used a consultancy company to set up the environment and everything has been deployed within the estimated time frame. The seamless integration with Active Directory made it easy to provide access to all company users.

Pricing is in line with other enterprise products. For a small company, the cloud version might be more suitable from a licensing cost standpoint. Bigger companies should take a decision based on the size of the IT department and the number of users involved, which can make an on-premises solution more convenient.

We thought about an open source solution, but the features and the support provided wasn’t sufficient to satisfy our organization’s needs.

Like other products similar to this, it is very important to pay attention to employee’s training regarding the use of the platform. They should be prepared for the change. Otherwise, they would be tempted to reject it without evaluating properly the advantages.

SharePoint Search. The combination of a central search portal and search-based navigation (search based on predefined metadata) returns faster search results.

SharePoint business intelligence. The data portability between SharePoint Excel reporting and Power BI allows power users to quickly create beautiful company reports.

Hybrid in SharePoint 2016

SharePoint Search improved document searchability from different sources like file systems and Office 365.

SharePoint Reporting and PowerPivot make it much easier to create a company report portal.

The SharePoint 2016 on-premises version, Office 365 and ADFS integration allow a good intranet/extranet architecture scenario.

The workflow engine. MS Workflow Manager is still in Version 1.0 and the future Microsoft strategy for this product is unclear.

Requirement dependencies of the initial setup and support could be very complex.

Companies often decide to buy workflow products such as K2 or Nintex because of larger features set and better stability.

I have been using SharePoint for five months.

There were issues with a cumulative update for SharePoint.

The new MinRole feature does not support a small environment. It will be solved with new Feature Pack 1 this year.

I rate technical support 3.5/5.

Our intranet portal was based on in-house development. We moved from legacy to a standard product.

Initial setup using the graphical wizard is very easy, but the recommendation is to use PowerShell scripts. Ready to use scripts like AutoSPInstaller make it much easier.

In SharePoint Hybrid Mode, Office 365 User SLs can be used to access your licensed servers deployed on third party shared servers/datacenters via License Mobility using Software Assurance. Check this possibility for saving money.

We evaluated Alfresco and Liferay Portal.

Take time to plan your portal information architecture before installation and train your users and create a content editorial group.

• Libraries
• Lists
• The workflow module

It improved communication, collaboration and content/record sharing in the organizations I worked for. It helped us manage our documents and records effectively and at a reasonable cost. The TAT for process/document review, approval and publication cycles have significantly improved from maximum of three months for each document down to two weeks.

Everyone, from the board level down to the most junior staff, was able to utilize SharePoint for their own needs. I even used it to build a simple tactical solution to fulfill the needs of various units within the organization. Eventually, these solutions became instrumental in building strong business cases that convinced management to adopt fully fledged comprehensive solutions. Examples:

• - Routing of documents to be checked within Trade Finance.
• - Document control management system for the Policy and Procedure Department.
• - Case tracker for Legal Counsel.
• - Specialized workspaces for minutes of executive committees and business cases presented there.
• - Online approval workflow for executive committee.
• - Project tracker workspace.
• - ISO surveillance tracker.
• - Knowledge management center.
• - Etc.

• Workflow management module
• The web page editor
• The reporting tools

I used SharePoint 2007/2013 for six years as the super administrator from the business side.

I definitely encounter stability issues, like all other Microsoft-related solutions.

I have not encountered any scalability issues. It’s highly robust, and can be scaled further as the organization’s requirements increase.

Technical support is bad, as the support is for all other Microsoft products.

I did not previously use a different solution.

Initial setup was complex, but it was due to our experience and knowledge as an organization. Data deployment was a nightmare as the vendor (a Microsoft business partner) was not well prepared.

Don’t really know what to say here. I’d rather not answer. In general, we didn’t have any issues with SharePoint licensing.

We did evaluate other products, but I don’t remember the names at this stage.

Go through the vendor-selection process thoroughly. Dig all the information you can about them and try to meet other organizations who utilized them for implementing the solution.

I would give Microsoft SharePoint 2007 a lower rating. SharePoint is an excellent solution that is highly scalable. However, like all other Microsoft products, it has some frustrating bugs and other issues relating to customer experience. However, version 2013 showed significant improvement. The level of empowerment for the business administrator significantly improved as well. The solution is cost effective and licensing is highly flexible and straightforward.

The two-way synchronization is very valuable.

Automatic synchronization with our file server library: Once all the data is uploaded to SharePoint, changes made by any user (regardless the access location) who has access to given files are automatically downloaded to our file server.

There is a limitation on the number of files that can be uploaded.

I have used it for six months.

There is a limitation on the number of files that can be uploaded.

As per Microsoft support, the issue should be fixed in the next releases. But until now, the same problem is occurring.

The technical support related to Office 365 in general was good, but we have faced some issues related to the SharePoint support. We have received different opinions (some were contradictory) from different support agents.

I did not previously use a different solution.

The setup is not complex; we just create the libraries and the sync will start. (We have downloaded and used various tools including Microsoft’s own tools.)

SharePoint is embedded in our Office 365 license. The price is very competitive. (I believe it is one of the best.)

Before choosing this product, I did not evaluate other options.

Office 365 SharePoint is a powerful and great tool, as long as your libraries’ content is limited in terms of the number of files. For huge data uploads, limitation problems will start popping up.

The most valuable features are:

• MS Office Web Apps allow anywhere/anytime access to the apps used, most often for documents.
• The collaboration feature allows multiple people to read and edit documents simultaneously.

• The list feature makes it easy to integrate database information into the same place as documents. It allows exposing of that data to create reports and views within the site for real-time reporting as well as point-in-time views. This is extremely useful.

We created a hang management system with a simple list including views and reports, instead of purchasing a bloated application. We created inventory tracking in the same way.

Instead of switching, this has kept all the information in one place and within one application. It allows easy data exports into other applications.

Latest versions of this product have addressed the functionality issue on non-Windows devices.

I have used this solution for five years.

Occasionally, the SQL database backend would have issues to address regarding maintenance.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

Microsoft provided excellent support.

Prior to this product, I have not used any other solution.

The initial setup was somewhat complex. To get the best results, a farm configuration was needed and many additional components are required to have all the features fully functional.

If possible, consider using what Microsoft offers in Office 365 as it includes all those features plus email. For a smaller organization, it makes a lot of sense and Microsoft will still manage the environment.

We have not evaluated other options.

Try the Microsoft Cloud Services first and implement on-premise only if you really need to.