SharePoint Reviews

What makes SharePoint special is that it applies to a wide range of company scenarios; document management, knowledge management, project management, and records management.

When you want to save information, collaborate, or discover information, SharePoint is the first point-of-contact. You can search, use metadata, or access content via business intelligence created as Excel reports or dashboards. You can also access data from PowerPoint presentations, PowerBI, JavaScript. or jQuery.

Since the core structure is based on ASP.NET technology, you can manage simple development projects using standard .NET developers who have no specialization. You are also able to brand the product using HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

SharePoint has benefitted us a lot regarding optimization. We can automate document management, project management, and basic service desk functions.

The biggest value is that you are able to integrate systems using workflow management middleware. You can also use business intelligence to integrate data and display output on a SharePoint page with predefined restrictions applied for separate security groups.

There is occasionally a problem when an organization has several in-house developed systems without any integration connectors, etc. But this is only an issue in some really specific cases.

The allowed size of document libraries and lists, i.e., the number of items allowed, needs to be increased. This was already improved in the latest 2016 version of SharePoint.

Also, there need to be more options to brand solutions without needing developers. This would be good for end users.

I specialized in the implementation, configuration, and branding of SharePoint for about 7+years. I’ve implemented solutions for many customers, large and small, in many architecture scenarios.

Stability is always a big issue, but not from the view of SharePoint itself. It’s more of an issue from the architecture and infrastructure point of view. Many customers implement SharePoint on virtual machines with dynamic memory allocation. VMs have slow disk access speeds that are below recommended specifications.

In these situations, there are always issues with stability, especially regarding search services, etc. For example, if you installed SharePoint on a virtual machine with dynamic memory, it could destroy the farm without any possibility of repairing it. You will then have to reinstall the whole farm. This would really be a big problem in the case of a farm with 10 virtual servers.

Scalability issue are related to the previous question regarding stability.

The main burden of technical support is on Microsoft partners, who implemented the particular solution. If customers want extra support from Microsoft, it is possible I think, but only if they have Software Assurance or an Enterprise Agreement. Even if a customer has one of these, they still mostly use Microsoft Partners for consulting, maintenance, or new projects.

I previously used SharePoint Services 3, SharePoint Server 2007/2010/2013. Now, I am using SharePoint Online 2016 in a hybrid model that has new features and some new innovations. There are many reasons to switch.

The initial setup was really difficult, because we had no experience. But, together with my colleagues, we managed to solve the initial issues. Then, we used specialized consultants to help us. All subsequent implementations, even in our own environment, were successful. There is always some troubleshooting to do, but this is normal.

I advise to really plan carefully before implementing a solution. You need to allocate the correct number of licenses of various types (standard versus enterprise), including the required SQL licenses. Be careful with SQL licensing as many companies get this wrong. Licenses for other systems, for example, AD CALs or terminal server CALs, also need to be considered.

One of the most common mistakes is that a project plan will not take into account the use of features that require an enterprise license to run. For example, if the planners allocate only 50 enterprise licenses and the rest are standard licenses, there may not be enough enterprise licenses for all the components that need them.

My advice is to look around the Internet and find some justification to negotiate with your boss to buy this product. Alternatively, you could go to the cloud as well and create a hybrid model to reduce the cost of infrastructure (using Azure/Office 365).

Also, optimize your business using automation, forms, document management, etc.

Valuable features in this product are:

• Easy customization with MS .NET and related tools
• Stability
• Performance in a medium size environment (100-200 users)
• Full support by MS

We implemented custom approval workflows (for approving Opex items) using Windows Workflow Foundation which simplified and helped in speeding up the process of approving HW and SW licenses.

Performance: The web page was sometimes not as fast as we'd like to see.

Application of custom CSS/visual styles was cumbersome and usually required a complete re-write of out-of-the box SharePoint site pages.

I have used this product for three years.

Stability was usually good.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

It's standard MS-quality support. We got the help level we expected as an MS Gold partner.

Previously, we used custom ASP.NET application. We wanted to use SharePoint because it is easy to deploy in a new environment and has out-of-the box functionalities like AD authentication, file versioning, wiki pages, .NET extensible, etc.

The installation of SharePoint server was easy and had no issues.

I cannot make any specific recommendations.

SharePoint didn't have a direct competition at the time of our evaluation, mainly due to its deep integration with .NET Framework technologies like Windows Workflow Foundation. Thus, it was our only choice to try.

Consider what level of SharePoint Web customization you are looking for. If you would be okay with some basic color changes, adding your logo and other small visual changes, it would be easy for you to build what you want. However, if you are looking to build a custom look and feel website and consider using SharePoint, you will end up building a completely new product using some SharePoint components that may lead into technology/customization limitations.

The document library feature in this product is most valuable.

This product does a good job of maintaining an easy, searchable knowledge base, which is the key for supporting applications and business teams.

I personally don't use this product. However, my clients find it useful for locating documents in a format, that is easy to navigate.

Submitting document changes function needs to be improved.

It is hard to identify deltas in documents especially ones with drawings.

The process of updating a document on the fly takes a while to download and update.I am used to robust versions of management systems and hence end up using Apache Subversion (SVN) rather than SharePoint for version management.

I would also like to see who makes the changes inside the documents, that are managed.

I have used this product on and off for 10 years.

I have encountered stability issues when connecting to TFS 2013 for reporting.

I have not yet encountered any scalability issues.

I have not used any technical support.

Previously, I have used HP document solutions. I made the switch to SharePoint as it was what the client was using.

The initial setup for me was fairly simple.

I don't know since I did not source the production and used existing licenses.

I did not evaluate other options as I have not purchased this product.

It is best to ensure that all configuration options are explored when connecting
to other solutions.

Collaboration with other Microsoft products has made SharePoint a real tool for us. You can use a personal OneDrive storage to share your own documents with others, but also use SharePoint sites to manage projects with external users.

All attachments are put under SharePoint. So, no more of network sharing is required to store documents. Document versioning is also a useful feature for our organization.

No need to worry any more about emails with attachments and obsolete versions with those attachments. People can edit an online version at the same time. You don’t have to save and send anything anymore.

Though Office 365 Groups is only partly based on SharePoint Online, it gives a great option to share team information with inside and outside users.

SharePoint Online is excellent as is, but licensing for the on-premises version is expensive.

I have been using this product for eight years.

I have not encountered any stability issues. It is an excellent product if you don’t have to customize it too much.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

I would rate the technical support level 9/10.

I did not use any other solutions prior to SharePoint and I would not change to another product either.

Setup is very straightforward when you know the architecture.

I didn’t evaluate other products.

Keep it simple. Make use of this product without huge amounts of custom applications and scripting.

The key features in this product are:

• Use of list functionality
• The ability to easily modify the default screen on a new Web site
• The ability to quickly create and modify subsites
• The ability to create unique access rights to the subsites

We use the list functionality within SharePoint to create integrated test scripts. This has allowed us to have a Web solution for running integrated test scripts across multiple applications, along with multiple testing resources in numerous physical locations.

The product can be improved in the following aspects:

• In order to put certain customizations in place requires the downloading and installation of SharePoint Designer 2013. For large organizations where security has the majority of devices locked down, downloading and installing applications is not a simple process. It would be nice if some of the SharePoint Designer functionality could be baked in/part of the edit page functionality.
• The reporting functionality needs improvement, to combine multiple lists (for the most part) requires a solution outside of SharePoint. It would be great if there was an option to combine lists that have the exact same layout (fields and order of fields) so that the combined lists could be summarized and reported on.

I have used SharePoint for a total of 14 years; 11 years with my current employer.

Mostly, we have not encountered any stability issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

I cannot comment as I simply use Google to find answers for technical issues.

The initial setup process was fairly straightforward.

My advice is to not hesitate; just plunge in and implement SharePoint.

The most valuable features are the high number of ready-made snippets, easy basic process automation functionality, security model, and good integration with other Microsoft products.

Knowledge management has improved a lot.

Analytics and reporting is an area with room for improvement.

It should provide more complex-process automation out of the box.

We've been using it in production since early 2015 for both document management and as Project Server 2013.

We have spent some time reconfiguring the farm in order to overcome performance degradation.

We have not encountered any scalability issues.

We haven't issued any tickets to Microsoft support because we have dedicated SharePoint admins.

We have used no other tool prior to SharePoint.

Installation and configuration were somewhat complex.

You can always start off with the free SharePoint Foundation version in order to evaluate the platform.

Before choosing this product, we did not evaluate any other options.

Look at the spec list and try to find out if (almost) all of the features you request are covered by SharePoint.

The most valuable features of this product are: multiple site collections, list libraries, the content and document library, and custom development & integration.

Multiple site and subsites are created for around 10 subsidiaries of the main company which has a uniform portal along with subsidiary specific contents and documents.

Discussion forum, content library, document library, task calendar, job postings, integration with ticketing tool, etc. are features which are general as well as specific to each subsidiary and built by using SharePoint 2013.

We created a uniform portal for multiple subsidiaries of the company; a single place where employees can find all related documents, references and can raise requests to another application via this portal.

Areas with room for improvement:

• A more responsive UI: There is a set of user groups who want to use this application in their mobile devices. If SharePoint provides a responsive UI by default, then no extra efforts are needed to integrate the existing UI with a more responsive UI.
• The deployment process on multiple servers adds redundant work, mainly for configurations and creating site collections: Same-application deployment requires initial setup to be repeated for any new environment. For example, the very first time we need to set up each environment, we need to create the site collections and so on, and then deploy WSP packages.

No issues have been encountered in terms of stability.

I have not got a chance to make use of technical support for any issues.

Initial setup was complex for IT resources with a non-SharePoint background.

License cost is slightly higher so it is suggestible to derive license cost based on relevant features.

We did not evaluate any other options.

Using this product, one can benefit from OOB features in regards to content and document management. It provides a single platform where multiple applications can be integrated under one roof.

We are using metadata tags on documentation, indexed research, linked calendar to outlook, and controlled navigation.

We are not using libraries to classify information, but columns linked to metadata (customer, services, processes, and so on). We have generated a true document ID card, and metadata is easy to index in the research engine. We have a “Google-like” page dedicated to research, which includes refinement fields available to help in research.

We are only using it as a documentation storage system for around 500+ people, so we can find the right document at the right moment, as required. With metadata tags and acronyms, we were able to manage the company terms and create a common basis.

Various wikis are very limited; there is no integrated solution for communicators; master pages are too limited and require a developer; and libraries are sometimes useless.

Wikis are not simple enough and too hard to use. There could be auto links, for example, like you can implement in Confluence. A wiki should have an integrated table of contents and auto link to already available terms in the wiki, like Wikipedia works.

An integrated communicator would be an asset. You could use it to ask documentation owners when it will be available in the platform. It would work something like Facebook messenger.

Master pages are just too hard to manage because everything in SharePoint is linked. One level on one page might be a different level in another page; so you need time and failures before you succeed.

In general, it is a good product, but it has limited support and too much expertise required.

I have used it since 2010. The company I work for has been using it since 2003.

We never had any stability issues. In fact, our system is quite simple. We only experienced downtime three times in six years. This was only due to a VM management problem with human resources.

We did not have any issues with scalability.

Microsoft’s support is much too expensive and too complicated. We are not using their support at all. We are doing everything internally the best we can.

We tried ShareDrive and Confluence. We stay with SharePoint because of the indexed content and corporate licenses.

The initial setup was complex. We hired an external consultant to implement the Content Type Hub.

I’ll strongly recommend to adopt metadata solutions, but with a SharePoint expert. This is expensive, but you save a lot of time.

We did not evaluate any other options because of corporate requirements.

I recommend hiring experts and architects and preparing detailed business requirements for them.