Abstract. The following are a
compilation of comments from librarians and other business professionals on
their Positive and Negative Experiences with Microsoft SharePoint. These comments are generalized individual
personal views and were disseminated in a
non-conclusive Asynchronous Conference.
The comments are based on the information submitted through “Your
Experiences with Microsoft SharePoint” questions on the Computer Savviness
blog (http://computersavviness.blogspot.com/2015/06/your-experiences-with-microsoft.html).
1 Introduction
Librarians
and other business professionals made comments on their positive and negative
experiences with Microsoft SharePoint. Their experiences were asked for through the Computer
Savviness blog. The following are
their business sectors and their experiences with Microsoft SharePoint.
2 Positive
Experiences with Microsoft SharePoint
Associations found that it was not hard to transfer records from
InMagic’s DB/Textworks database into SharePoint. They defined metadata that matched
association's subject concentration and requests.
Engineering Firms had good success with custom designing of SharePoint
sites in order to replace outdated intranet pages but this required an outside
consultant.
Government Agencies were able to do the following in SharePoint: edit the website; upload the constitutional
court judgments; delete old information on the website; uploading judges’
information on the website. They also used it to create local Program and Team
sites. Some of the commenting Government
Agencies used SharePoint in a test environment with only three users at a time.
They were evaluating and testing SharePoint with hopes of rolling it out to
more staff and eventually the entire agency for collaboration and document
management.
Corporations found SharePoint was great for sharing information
with other archives staff, and for quickly sending a link to information to
other employees. Some of the Corporate
Libraries redesigned their library site in SharePoint by their own linked
buttons. They also used wiki pages
because they were easier to customize.
Educational Institutions loved using workflows and tracking
information requests through their own internal department site. They are trying
to use SharePoint to streamline internal processes through the use of workflows
and rules.
Law Firms loved SharePoint and had made extensive use of it. They had found it easy to use without coding. Also, they had found it easy to keep updated. They found SharePoint adaptable when they
needed a tool. Staff could usually make
it in SharePoint. They had the following
through SharePoint: a library catalog;
a news and current awareness service; a knowledge repository; links to our
online subscription services and all the other usual library portal type items.
Each library had a main point in contact who was a librarian who could create
the needed web parts without coding.
3 Negative
Experiences with Microsoft SharePoint
Corporations found that when using SharePoint for sharing, it appeared to be very individual driven. This meant that for a team to use SharePoint, someone had to be the advocate and do a lot of work. This proved to be problematic if their team did not have a person who wanted to be an advocate. They found it hard to use SharePoint to its full potential.
Educational Institutions still had the same document in multiple places. They had hoped that SharePoint would have eliminated duplicate documents. They are still trying to get SharePoint to streamline internal processes through the use of workflows and rules. This is taking more time than they had planned.
Law Firms had extremely dated versions of SharePoint. The native search was found to be “dreadful”. They had partially overcome this with a search solution created in-house. Also, in their current dated version, made the end-users go back to the home page to complete SharePoint tasks. A lot of things would take many steps to do where they really should only take 2 - 3 steps. This might be partly a version problem and partly an architecture problem.
Government Agencies attempted to implement a Content Type category and Document/List sorting environment rather than using folders/subfolders/sub-subfolders to organize content. Attempts by local Web administrators, through the extranet, did not understanding that SharePoint was more than just the newest Web technology. The Web Administrators restricted/limited access for everyone so that they would only be 'Site Visitors' and not allow use of SharePoint’s document collaboration and custom content organization, even on limited access Team sites.
4 Thoughts
SharePoint could be used right out of the box without any problems. The training and learning how to manage and set up the system appropriately has been found to be daunting. All of the commenters from the above mentioned business sectors were interested in using SharePoint for document and records management, but they have a deep concern that they would not be able to do this in-house. They were looking at the possibility that to get SharePoint to meet their work needs, they may have to buy expensive add-on programs or end up having a clunky, ineffectual system.
