SharePoint Reviews

Collaboration & DMS are the most valuable features of the product, to me.

It is also easy to use and provides valuable integration options.

We are a service provider of SharePoint and SCOM to our clients. And we can see the change, how efficiently they are able to carry out their regular productivity works through SP, while the IT team is able to have control and adapt quickly with SCOM.

There are multiple areas with room for improvement:

1. Scanning engine driver
2. Mobile integration (just launched by MS, yet to be seen)
3. Stability

We recommend this product with the following two main points:

1. Cost of investment is quite low, while the ROI is quite high.
2. Plan a proper approach, and look for a capable team for implementation

For SharePoint 2013:

• My Sites
• News-feed
• Discussions
• Communities

The Office 365 version shows real promise, although the mobile use of Discussions does not work as expected. Newsfeed does though. Not sure about Communities.

It's providing a social collaboration experience to a culture of heavy email users. They are not used to interacting on our intranet or other internal environments, having a profile to provide others more info about themselves, or searching for experts, information, etc. This is a helpful step to evolve the culture to be more digitally collaborative.

• The linkage between items, such as the blog. It does not integrate into communities or team sites, it's totally separate in its own environment. Tags and @mentions are not connected to them either. They feel very disconnected. Our leaders would like to use blogs but since they aren't connected to anything else they aren't a great solution.
• We are on premise so the mobile experience is also very lacking since users need to use a VPN on their device in order to utilize things.
• There aren't any metrics provided out of the box. I have to ask for just the number of new users each month and it takes days. There should be more data that we can use available to us as admins.

I've used for six to nine months.

We migrated from another company and moved from SP2010 to 2013 during the same time. There were a lot of hurdles, and people have profile problems (most of those issues have not fully migrated).

Stability, even after deployment three months ago, still seems to be an issue. Tagging does not always show up in trending hashtags immediately. When tagging and @mentions work is not consistent from place to place.

We are on two farms so it is not a truly global solution which is frustrating when trying to communicate about global programs and events. Those in the Europe farm cannot follow the majority of our content in the North American farm.

Customer Service:

Our SharePoint 2013 platform is hosted at HP and they manage services for us. HP support is getting better just as of the past few weeks. They do not seem to have a great handle on SP2013 social however.

Technical Support:

HP has not been great but we've really brought the issues to light over the past few weeks so they are stepping up their game.

This is the first time using it at this company.

IT was not very transparent about providing what the tools can and cannot do. As a user, I had to figure it all out, ask a lot of questions then get them to explain why or why not we could or could not do certain things.

HP does not seem very knowledgeable about SP2013 social.

I believe IT looked at Yammer but felt our culture could just use SP2013 for free first to get our feet wet before investing in another tool. There are no business requirements for an Enterprise Social Network yet so with the pitfalls of using SP2013 out of the box, we are seeing what we actually need vs. what we have.

Perform a controlled pilot first with social advocates in the company first. Nail down the business requirements with management before rolling anything out. Get their buy-in and support. Once that is decided, pilot several other tools to see what else is out there. Yammer isn't the only other solution for SharePoint. Compare costs, etc, select a solution, create a social governance team, train them well, provide guidance templates if needed and create regular training or webinars for people to get on board. Have leaders use the tool to communicate and move away from email.

• We can access SharePoint from a DMZ.
• Vendors and other outside parties can work with it easily.

Prior to implementing SharePoint, we accessed our network just via the internet. However in 2013, we implemented it. With accessibility from a DMZ, SharePoint is a good solution for outside access.

It tends to be unstable and slow when accessing different features.

I've used it since 2013.

N/A

N/A

N/A

• Office integration
• Collaboration
• Discussions
• Shared documents
• MS Dynamics integration
• Tasks
• Schedule project integration
• Subscriptions

It's allowed automatic distribution of technical updates to shop floor technicians in the FABs.

• Cloud and Office 365 integration with Outlook could be more stable, and an external company collaborator’s connections can be iffy.
• Custom site provisioning and management
• Migration from On-Premise to the Cloud has no automation tools to help in migrating the enterprise content, and so this requires throttling the bandwidth to guard against attack.
• New application models are too complex - in Office365 you are sharing the whole SP farm with all Microsoft customers in a region so fixes take too long.
• Deploying apps in some cases have limitations because you have no access to the admin console.

I've been using SharePoint since its initial release, including Office365, On-Line 2013, and On-Premise 2013. In total, it's been 15 years, and I was involved in the initial SharePoint Pilot test.

Getting customers to see it as the de facto repository for collaboration data takes serious investment in training and executive backing. Upgrades and migration are challenging.

Occasional Office365 SharePoint outages have been noted.

No issues encountered.

Customer Service:

It's poor, and if you want Microsoft support on SharePoint you have to hire Microsoft Consulting Services.

Technical Support:

It's poor, and if you want Microsoft support on SharePoint you have to hire Microsoft Consulting Services.

We used various methods to achieve the same results shared folders and third party document management solutions, e.g. Documentum.

It's complex because you must spend significant time determining roles and train accordingly, or else it becomes an unstructured dumping ground for everyone’s files.

I've done it both ways, and Microsoft Consulting Services is well equipped to properly implement SharePoint.

It's very high, I can't disclose exact figures, but it's a seven-figure number.

Use enterprise pricing as a part of Office 365.

No other options were evaluated.

Budget enough design and training dollars to seed your enterprise with certified electronic workers that can provide thought leadership, mentoring and set standards for use.

The best feature that I found for SharePoint was having a main point of contact for everyone involved. Whether it be for the entire company or it for a specific department, this has made it easy to create a common place.

When I took over SharePoint 2007, it was fairly basic in its execution. It had sections for the various departments, but it wasn't common for users to actually use it. I ended up creating various lists and libraries to begin pulling processes into the system. It was fairly shoe horned, but it did the job.

In addition to this, without the use of an extension, I began using SharePoint to do more collaborative tasks and projects. There are extensions for SharePoint to increase its functionality, but using task management, was able to create sites and manage projects in that way.

SharePoint is extremely bare bones when purchased. To really bring it into a functional state, it will require decent configuration and extensions for what you need. It comes with the basics like site creation, lists, libraries, and things of this nature. However, if you need more functionality, you will need to either go to Microsoft for those additional functionalities or to a 3rd party that provides it. This is where the cost for SharePoint balloons.

Depending on the version, there are server requirements so if you're not up-to-date on software, this will also increase the price of the service. For the functionality you get at this price point, it leaves a lot to be desired.

3 years

Sharepoint was deployed prior to me coming on-board so I'm not familiar with it.

For the most part, SharePoint was stable based upon the set up that we have. When installing the R2 update, it did end up creating issues with the .NET code and eliminated some of the extensions. For example, the Excel extension that is used to view Excel spreadsheets within SharePoint was either damaged or deleted. This has caused issues with exporting to and from SharePoint and hasn't been corrected.

SharePoint is tied to Microsoft's CAL pricing model so depending on your agreement, can be in line or balloon the cost. This is primarily for an on-site solution. If you're using the cloud solution, then it's still on a per user basis, but may/may not be a better fit. Our company didn't have any issues with scaling within the existing software version, however, if we were to upgrade to newer version, it would require a sizable investment.

Customer Service:

Microsoft doesn't offer support for SharePoint unless you purchase the option. There are also 3rd party solutions for this. Support for SharePoint is minimal at best on its own. You will need support so your best bet is to purchase some type of support package through the vendor you purchase it from.

Technical Support:

See the customer service section above.

N/A. SharePoint was the original solution.

I wasn't with the company during the procurement and deployment phases.

Our solution was done in-house.

Unknown.

This will vary greatly depending on your CAL agreement with Microsoft and what vendor you purchase options from.

SharePoint is a good solution and is very flexible if you're willing to invest the time and money into it. It requires full buy-in from various departments within a company and will require heavy configuration to get it to where it typically needs to be for your needs. I personally wouldn't go with SharePoint again as it doesn't fit my needs and is currently being used, but in very limited fashion.

The features which are most valuable to us are its powerful search, edit in browser, social features.

It’s a single entry point to all internal systems with integrated security: no password management issues as with disparate products. All functionality is available from anywhere in the world with a web browser, so everyone is always connected.

I have been using the solution for 2 years.

No

No

No

Customer Service: Customer service is very good.Technical Support: Technical support is very good.

Straightforward but user profiles take some time to set up.

We implemented in-house.

Being able to drop all the cloud service subscriptions saves a lot: the amount depends on how many of those services can be replaced.

If you’re on corporate Active Directory then there are no real competitors.

Read the planning documentation: running the installer without planning has some disadvantages for auditing, for example.

The feature that it works on any device, any place and anywhere for everyone.

Microsoft Office 365 has provided us many ways to share documents across a diversity of platforms with a diversity of people (both inside and outside our company).

Synchronization of files in OneDrive can take some time which can ‘annoy’ some users.

At my current company we are using it one year, personally I’ve been using Microsoft Office 365 around 3 years

Since we came from a Small Business Server the Exchange migration is a minor point of attention. There is no mailbox by mailbox migration, but only a cut-over migration. Furthermore we had some issues with MacBook users and their Office settings. Also we encountered some issues with mail not arriving correctly. This was NOT caused by Microsoft Office 365. A support partner had hardcoded settings which were not communicated. Once we deleted these hardcoded settings, the problems were solved within one hour.

There are no issues with stability.

There are no issues with scalability.

Customer Service: The level of customer service could be better, but it all depends on the person in the other side.Technical Support: The level of technical support could be better, but it all depends on the person in the other side.

We had a Small Business Server environment which has a cap in the user environment. Since we grew out of the number of users, we had to change. Microsoft Office 365 was the fastest and most powerful way for both short and long term vision.

It was straightforward, since the migration wizard provided by Microsoft is a good wizard for the environment we have.

We did an in-house implementation.

No

Take a good look at what your customers wants and needs are before choosing any other product than what you’re currently using. This will make implementation and migration easier and also makes it easier for people to change to a new platform. With Microsoft Office 365 things changed radically in our environment, which had its effect on the day-to-day business, although none which couldn’t be resolved, but a good discovery and inventory before making choices is the better option.