Sharepoint

AHarvey

AHarvey

AHarvey

Soldato
Joined
6 Mar 2008
Posts
10,080
Location
Stoke area
Hi all,

Our company has suddenly decided that they don't want any of out personal info stored on 3rd party external servers, which means that the 400+ hours I've spent building our wiki and forums and populating it all has been for nothing :(

The issue we have is that we have remote workers who can't access our network any more, another great idea :(

So, they've decided to use Sharepoint. Now we've tried this before but I wasn't working on it. The lad who was put in 100 hours and now, even at the mention of it, cries like a baby.

So, just how bad is it? What is it capable of doing? Are there sharepoint forums/wiki equivalents?
 
The company I work for uses SharePoint as an intranet platform and as a developer / application technician supporting it, I find it to be a complete bag of *****.

In all fairness, I think it depends heavily on what people expect from it. If people try and make it do something that it wasn't fully intended to be used for, things go funky fairly quickly..
 
I've worked with SharePoint, and as above, it's a bag of *****.

To the none IT literate person SharePoint is wonderful, but this is not the case.

Doing even the most simple customisations are a ballache.

Keep in mind SharePoint only supports IE. If people are accessing it from home and are using anything but IE.. be prepared for a world of pain, last I checked even IE9 was a little temperamental with it.
 
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so it looks like I am in for a hell of time then :(

What are the limitations would you say?

and more importantly, any alternatives?

Trying to get a webserver set up in the office but no joy yet
 
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I will paint a different picture:

I <3 SharePoint, I have used it (as a user, as an admin and a developer) for 5+ years.
It is a document and knowledge management system and this I find is where the majority of the problems lie for most users. It is different to the old traditional bung it in a folder way of doing things.



  1. Plan ahead, decide what will go where and what meta data you will attach to each library BEFORE you populate it
  2. Do not store documents hierarchically Especially in folders (as in, within projects within teams within departments within directorates within organisations)
  3. Do not store data in folders (use meta tags)
  4. Against all your thoughts start with MySites and Project sites and then let it develop from there, don't just populate your team sites and then sit back else prepare for problems


Things to note:
  • You are going to need training, you wont become an expert user over night and you will miss out on a serious amount of features by just trailing the admin guides!
  • Either devote time and effort into its development or don't use it, so find out who your stakeholders are and get there continued support in blood else you will find yourself troubleshooting rather than developing
  • It is NOT for large files (40+ meg)
  • It is only as good as the content and work you put into it
  • It is not a traditional out of the box MS product and so you are going to have to spend time developing it
  • It is a ROYAL PAIN IN THE ARSE to migrate from
  • Files are limited by the 255 character limit, so as I stated, avoid folders within folders
 
Thanks for the info PoD.

I'll be putting a lot of time in to it as I did with the other methods, however I won't be able to get training!

This whole thing is stupid really. We're an internet based company that look over several sites, over 1 million online customers and their bank details etc and they get snotty over hosting some shift rota's and how-to guides online on a password protected server :( Silly for a company that's going to of made £65 mil + this year :(
 
What version of SharePoint are we talking here? MOSS2007 wasn't great but SP2010 is a vast improvement.

It is not IE dependent as stated above.

Like PoD says this is a huge beast that requires an awful lot of work upfront. Getting an idea of expectations is key. It is probably a good idea to start with a minimal set of end users and run a pilot/proof of concept to see what the general opinion is.

There is no much planning that needs to happen. Usually we would start out with an envisioning strategy to see where the company wants to go with it. It is a good way of working out the reasons why they want it in the first place, and then confirming if SharePoint is really the tool to use.

Once the requirements are understood then you can look at logical architecture which includes things like the number of web applications, site collections, sites, content databases, authentication providers, zones, external access, service applications etc.

The stages that follow include things like capacity planning, high availability, disaster recovery plans. Only at this point do you really know what the physical architecture will look like in terms of front end servers, app servers, SQL DB configuration.

If you are migrating from fileshares then this involves more steps. I'd recommend checking out a tool from Metalogix which is meant to be good for helping out with migrations.

Fire ahead with the questions and I'll try and help you if I can.
 
Not sure on the version yet, got to wait for the IT team to sort it out.

But thanks, no doubt there will be a lot of questions.

It shouldn't be too complicated as it's only for a small team of office and remote chat hosts, so it'll cover daily shift reports, yearly rota's. How to's on site promotions, site games and chat games. Will need to come up with some way of the hosts to report chat infractions.

Small team, small aims!
 
If you do go for the free version, make sure you install SharePoint Search Server Express 2010 and not Foundation 2010.

Search Server gives you Enterprise search on top of Foundation for free.
 
We use sharepoint here, its a bag of **** for our needs :)
A fortune 500 client of ours uses it and its a invaluable asset to there company.

As others have said, its not a simple tool to get right and if your not proficient in the setting up of it and nor will your company offer training then your gonna end up in a world of pain
 
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