SharePoint Reviews

Collaboration and document sharing are the primary reasons for using SharePoint. We have used the product in many government agencies for documents management, workflow, enterprise search, departmental solutions, Intranet, etc.

SharePoint is a big product with many features including customization flexibilities. We have deployed it in many government agencies which were in much need of process and automation improvements.

The product makes it easy to manage lists, forms, searching, and security. One of the most valuable features is its integration with Active Directory.

• Processing data from multiple site collections is not easy as they reside in different databases. 
• The management of the product/back-end is complex.

We have purchased add-ons to handle multiple site collections, form creation, and design. 

Most departments use SharePoint for their own organizational homepages and their document repositories

It is better than static repositories via shared drives, and better than having to use software that is not mainstream (i.e. Microsoft is very mainstream).

• Its configuration management ability is critical for document-based systems.
• It offers ease of use, which is crucial.
  

• During uptime under our network, it is hard to find info when content is hefty.
• It should have a Google-caliber search ability and a model-based GUI.

Easy management of content and portal and the document repository features are a distinguishing point compared to a file server.

We use a document library with custom attributes and simple approval workflow. Some program enhancements with .NET enables the Quality Control department to distribute files to an extranet portal after senior Quality Control staff approval. Thousands of documents have been distributed in this way in the past years. This approval flow replaces ordinary emails with much clearer tracking of the workflow process.

Notification templates should be editable without coding. Also, summary notifications should be customizable too.

I’ve been using SharePoint for nine years.

When the number of documents in a library grows too high, there will be performance issues. There is no easy way to archive files uploaded to SharePoint unless you have extra budget to get 3rd party solutions like AvePoint.

Scalability is not a problem as long as you can virtualize the SharePoint server farm. Hardware speed acceleration could overcome the software limitation. In my case, one front-end server served 700 users.

Technical support is done by our vendor, not directly from Microsoft. My vendor was good on supporting SharePoint.

We did not have a previous solution.

The setup wizard helps you with the install. It is straightforward and easy.

Pricing on the server itself is acceptable, but CAL licenses could be an issue if you are not an Enterprise Agreement subscriber, or you are opening SharePoint 2007 to external users. With the new license model on SharePoint online, the issue here is not applicable.

We evaluated Documentum.

I don't think anybody nowadays should deploy SharePoint 2007. However, the SharePoint online that comes with Office 365 is worth a look. But beware of sizing as the fee is charged by data size and processing resources that would affect your SharePoint online response time.

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.

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.

I especially value document sharing.

The product has made document sharing with customers easier instead of emailing.

I would like to see the following:

• More freedom given to a power user
• Feature development on a site collection level without the need for farm-level rights

I have used the product for three years.

I encountered no stability issues.

I don't think that this whole review is worth the effort as we are talking about a product (Sharepoint 2010) that is six years old, close to end of life, and not sold anymore. People who are new to this will certainly look for the latest version which I have no experience with.

We are mainly using the document sharing feature to share documents with customers in a secure way. 

Actual development depends on server-side tools (Visual Studio running on the Sharepoint server itself), administrator access rights, and activities that cannot be done from machines. I guess this is by design, and probably is not going to be changed.

I find that SharePoint when used for the right purpose, lends itself to be a fantastic collaboration and workflow service.

It is very easy to store documents, collaborate and archive documents with versioning and custom workflows.

SharePoint provides a simple way to store documents and we created lots of subsites to contain the courses and materials for our students.

We found that applying permissions were very easy, due to the integration with the Active Directory.

It was a shame to see the SharePoint Design being deprecated, as this was a great way to create very customizable workflows.

I have used SharePoint since the 2003 release, back in the year 2007. We initially used it as a Virtually Learning Environment and a business platform for our college.

We found it simple enough to manage and were able to integrate it with third parties.

There were very few stability issues. The issues are usually related to problems with the related Microsoft stack such as Windows Server/ SQL/ IIS.

When you set it up as a single server, you will quickly outgrow it. If deployed correctly SharePoint scales very well with the ability to provision multiple web front ends, dedicated reporting servers and SQL clusters. This all helps to remove a single point of failure.

As this is a Microsoft product, it can be difficult to obtain direct support. That being said, there is a thriving partner community around this product.

Before SharePoint, we used internally designed websites, WordPress and Drupal. We found that they did not provide the collaboration features and integration that we would have liked.

As we were new to SharePoint, we found that the initial process was complex. So, we hired a partner to perform the installation. Over the years, this experience has improved drastically.

As a an education institution, we had a very favourable pricing policy.

Read and research this subject area thoroughly. Reach out to the large community and visit others that have adopted this solution.

It has a lot of flexibility to store various document and lists. There are integrated workflows and it helps to improve the end user's ability to be more efficient.

Automating the basic approval processes is an easy win. You are no longer required to do the work in emails, but instead using the email as a conduit, you can facilitate the work in the work flow.

The rock solid central document storage makes it very easy for all business departments to have a standard location for their documents.

The user interface should improve. It is still a bit clunky for the new user to navigate around.

I have used this product for three years as an administrator and twelve years as an end user.

For the enterprise environment, I did not encounter any stability issues.

There were no scalability issues as such. However, the 500 items limit in views can be limiting in some instances.

I would rate the technical support a 7/10, i.e., by using the internal support teams with various level of knowledge.

We were not using any other solution previously.

For a medium to large scale business, it is excellent.

For a small business, there may be too much overhead costs and a steep learning curve for the solution to be adding any value.