PROS:
- Biggest strength: collaboration features and forcing compliance with information management policies.
OTHER STRENGTHS:
- Blogs are built into every My Site
- Wikis are out of the box
- Reports – the ability to display and work with data from an Xcel worksheet.
- Simple to use out-of-the-box
- Search is very fast
- Contributing content is simple
- Direct integration with Office (XP to 2007)
- Most functionality “exposed” through web services (e.g. all content can be subscribed to via RSS)
- Alerts and workflow (though limited to email notification)
- WSRP and
I would add that if you’re an enterprise Microsoft customer, you can get MOSS for very cheap if not free (but the licensing typically represents 10-30% of the total cost). As well, simple out-of-the-box SharePoint management needs little to no training.
CONS:
- Biggest weakness: Records management and digital asset management (non existent).
OTHER WEAKNESSES:
- The wiki piece is a little weak (“The rumor is that the wiki and blog components were very late additions… they work very well, but the functionality is considerably lower than what you would expect from an enterprise deployment.”)
- Sharepoint does not support
- Customization can be expensive and complex (and limited)
- Content management (“It’s very average content management… its not very fabulous.”)
- Analytics are very, very simple
- Non-Active Directory authentication capabilities
- Social networking built into MySites
- Search returns documents and people
- WSRP and
I would add the following weaknesses: immature technology, weak templates, and a reputation for weak service and training.
Shawn’s recommendations when considering or implementing SharePoint:
- Understand information quantities and needs
- Don’t just throw collaboration tools out there (he cited one client with “out-of-control” team sites and SharePoint sprawl)
- Establish & enforce standards for use
- Establish and closely monitor metrics for content creation
- Continually evaluate and adjust approach to match reality
- Enforce workspace use metrics
- Notify of non-use after 60 days
- Four notifications
- Delete after fourth notification
- Use workflow to suspend assets
- Re-map and migrate intranet sites into Sharepoint
- Use Search to Capture Outlying Sites
- Create a controlled vocabulary (taxonomy and meta data)
- Measure and measure again
- Track search requests against workgroup assets
Shawn’s advice of what not to do:
- Enforcing standards inappropriate for collaborative environment (ditch the Big Brother persona)
- Repeat monolithic hierarchy (reduce the red tape)
- Exclude active participants / authors
- Ignore advantages of “competing” tools (e.g. Lotus SameTime)
- Search results must be validated and in context
By the way… the next version of Sharepoint will be released in 2010 along with Office version 14 (MS is superstitiously skipping version 13).
1 comment:
As a learner I do find this article very helpful for me. I was not aware of all these uses and drawbacks of this platform. Now I am curious to learn more and more about this technology in detail.
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