SharePoint Reviews

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.

The cross-site search is great for finding knowledge stored or used somewhere in the organization. Most documents are created in MS Office. Each MS Office Document can be stored directly on SharePoint. The threshold for people sharing their documents online has gone down. The cross-site search enables browsing all that knowledge with ease.

The ability to edit MS documents directly from SharePoint makes it easy to collaborate on documents with other people.

The strength of Microsoft has never been in its OS, but in its MS Office suite. MS Office 365 in combination with SharePoint, as a total collaboration tool, brings collaboration to another level.

There is much more collaboration and sharing across SharePoint.

Google Docs has two abilities that SharePoint should support as well:

• The ability to work in the same document at the same time would be a huge improvement. During my MBA studies, we used Google Docs for this. Unfortunately Google Docs doesn’t convert well to MS Word to add the finishing touches.
• Just like Google spreadsheets within Google Docs, I would like to be able to fill an Excel spreadsheet through a form posted on SharePoint. SharePoint has list views that can do something similar, but I want it to do more, tightly integrated with Excel. This would improve the document collaboration options for spreadsheets.

I have been using it for three years.

We had issues with stability when we implemented it at a previous company. We had issues where the system was down for a while.

We did have issues with scalability. Performance isn’t so good if too many people use it.

At a previous company, Sonepar, we were supported by VX company, and at my current organization, Canon Europe, by Capgemini.

Previously, we used enQuira to store questions.

Initial setup was straightforward.

It is affordable for what you get.

At Sonepar, we considered using open source CMS systems, like Drupal and DotNetNuke.

Ensure the search is quick enough. If not, look at the indexing configuration.

The features that I find most valuable are:

• Indexing
• Search
• BI
• Custom apps model
• Team sites
• My Site
• Integration with Yammer

SharePoint provides out-of-the-box data indexing and caching. BI is optional and driven by content population as well as external sources import. Custom App model is a platform allowing for a variety of home-grown or enterprise based solutions. We have a local team developing proprietary applications available via an in-house App store that is rolled out either globally across all pages, or individually per team site.

With the use of “My Site”, we were able to minimize our data center shared drive footprint and roll most user data into a searchable database. SharePoint provides file level,content security, and shifting data management to the customer.

With version management and recovery options, customers can easily restore files from the recycle bin. However, once files are removed, administrators are forced to turn to third-party tools. Administrative recovery and data management need more attention. File recovery is not made simple. Once files are discarded from within the SharePoint product, recovery turns into a long process of restoration from databases.

Alternatively we use a third party product by AvePoint called DocAve. It allows for an easy point and click recovery preserving original security permissions, which is not possible with direct database restoration. I would like to see a native Microsoft product do this.

We have used this product for two years.

With an on-premise, or even a hybrid model, local operations and platform teams are responsible for the uptime of the system. Most common issues are service halt, drive space management, and database corruption. All of this can be resolved easily with an Office 365 infrastructure migration.

Scalability was not an issue for us at the time of deployment. Capacity planning and resource management was done well. However, scalability issues with the current version is done much better than in previous versions

The quality of technical support depended on the support contract and severity of the issue. An enterprise level contract allows us to raise Priority 1 cases which are addressed on a 24/7 basis. Most issues were resolved promptly.

We upgraded from SharePoint 2007 and 2010. Data migration was the biggest culprit. The main reason for an upgrade was to provide easier platform management.

Deploying essential components was fairly straightforward. "MySite" page customization for multi-brand organization was a bit complicated due to the application of custom templates and role-based access control.

Do your homework and work closely with the vendor during capacity planning. Think a few years ahead.

We did not evaluate other products. However, also invested into WordPress and Kentico CMS under the MS Azure PaaS environment.

Make sure the product meets your business needs. Once you make that decision, rollout the proper internal marketing and adoption of the product. Workshops are available by Microsoft along with adoption recommendations.