Sharepoint Overview

Jan 09, 2013

Hi --

I'm looking for a resource/link that provides a brief Overview of Sharepoint:  what it is, what its features are, etc., it's benefits and weaknesses.

I'm part of a small department (less than 30 people) that's part of a large organization, and we are considering adopting the Sharepoint platform, but want to make sure it will work for us.

Any suggestions are very welcome.

Greg

7 Replies
Natalia Mueller

Hi Greg! I know there are a lot of people in this community who work with SharePoint. It's a pretty broad topic so can you be a little more specific with how you want to use it? I've been places that use it only as a project collaboration tool and I've been at companies that use it as the entire internal platform/portal. The benefits and weaknesses will vary greatly based on how you want to use it. 

These are general but I don't just want to answer with a question and not give you anything

Top 5 Absolutely Amazing SharePoint Features

SharePoint 2010: Experts Dish on the Good and Not So Good

Graham North

Hi

For a comprehnsive list of features use the following:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj819267.aspx

There are lots of resources at Microsoft which highlight the wonders of this system but the one thing you need to pay attention too is that most of the really clever features only become available with an Enterprise licence.

Obvious link you should have already.

http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/en-us/Pages/default.aspx

Try to balance your research with non Microsoft reviews like the ones above.

Jesse Racké

Hi Greg,

I just finished aproject where we developed  thesharepoint environment for the company I work for and can share some of mypersonal experiences.

Thereason I wanted to be in the lead in this project, a project that wouldnormally have been placed at a different department, was the opportunity todesign an environment with a large focus on performance support. And for this goalSharepoint serves its purpose pretty good.  But having to sit down with IT a lot, as they didthe actual developing for me, we also encountered a few of limitations withinSharepoint.

In a nutshell, design wise you have limitations, not every row and column turnsout as you would like it to and the standard lay-out looks a bit 1.0 for mytaste. As I understand it is possible to make the design of your Sharepointenvironment sexier but it will cost money (in this case money the company Iwork for did not want to spend).  Benefitsare; a well protected environment to share content within the company, thepossibility to create a performance support environment (in my case one where Iused a lot of courses made with Articulate) and  everybody on the network is automaticallylogged on.

Hope this helps.

Jesse

Natalia Mueller

I'm looking forward to migrating to the 2010 version this year. It looks like it has some great features. My biggest complaint now is just that it is difficult to get the sleek look I like to go for. The layout and design tools are not very flexible. I have seen some beautiful SharePoint pages I would never have known were SharePoint though. The right skill set can obviously do a lot more with it. My favorite features are the collaborative elements and the ability to provide easy access to a full media library.

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