Microsoft's SharePoint is an Intranet solution that enables users to share and manage content, knowledge, and applications to empower teamwork, quickly find information, and collaborate across the organization.
BookStack is fantastic for having business users and not-so-technically-savvy IT users. It enables them to create a documentation they like in a visual way while still forcing them to adhere to logical structure of a document. It works fine even for more technical matters such as integration guidelines, especially when these concern some of the more obscure technologies. The exported docs are presentable but lack any interactivity. Where it lacks is generating heavily technical documentations. Heavier REST or GraphQL integrations should for example be documented through other means. As for developer documentations, there are definitely more suitable alternatives, also.
Very user friendly. If you're already using M365 products it offers great integration! If you're using Azure AD it offers SSO for IAM and integrates nicely with Azure AD Groups which can then be used for Access management. As our IT / Azure Administrator, I particularly like the "sharing link" options where you can send a link with an expiration date and not have to remember to remove the link / access after a project / business case scenario is over.
It's integral to our business. It's already included with most of the Office 365 licensing we buy, so the cost is effectively zero. It stores our files, it is the foundation for custom applications, and Microsoft only continues to enhance its functionality and its connections to other Microsoft tools. SharePoint just keeps getting better and better.
No usability issues reported. Individual teams also have allocated areas which replace legacy shared drives on local LANs. Access to Sharepoint resources is fully integrated with corporate Active Directory with additional two-factor authentication required for administrative users. Users have access to Microsoft Services Hub which allows you to create, manage, and track support requests while staying current on Microsoft technologies with access to select self-paced learning paths
The face to face training I received was on SharePoint Administration. It was rushed as there was a lot of information to cover and the application of the labs weren't that great either. I like to be able to relate what I am learning to what I am currently doing.
I like to learn at my own pace and online training allows for that. Additionally, you can skip through pieces of content that you already know or are already comfortable with. Microsoft actually offers great videos on their website for basic fundamental SharePoint Training. I have used these training videos in some of my own training sessions with end users.
Confluence, having only a slight advantage in terms of features compared to BookStack, really only makes sense to procure as a part of the Jira bundle. It requires much more maintenance from my experience and does not really deliver any extra value aside from the very strict certifications like HIPAA. DokuWiki and MediaWiki both provided way too much in terms of customizability, not really focusing on the business need. Of course, MediaWiki was conceived for a whole different purpose but is very often seen being used for both internal and public documentation delivery. DokuWiki did not provide the authors with the user-friendly environment that BookStack has and integrated most poorly with LDAP. As for OneNote, which was used for support docs prior to BookStack, it provided the authors with too much of a user-friendly environment, rendering the product of their work very inconsistent. Also, the sharing model was either peer-to-peer or within Teams, neither of which made it easy to audit and supervise.
The reasons for selecting MS SharePoint are: SharePoint provides ease of use and web design assistance and support SharePoint helps you schedule your content for publishing. enables users to share documents with external parties and offers a better internal structure of the content and better indexing and searching capabilities.
Spillover within Business IT staff up, nearly double substitutability. This is through the ability of a support technician servicing a different product to find a guide describing how to solve the more frequent issues the way a product lead would do it.
Time to draft and publish a documentation down some 20% compared to previous solution.
OpenSource that integrates fine with enterprise-grade software and somehow even passes security audit. 20 times cheaper to implement compared to Confluence, almost free to maintain.
Increased collaboration - MS Sharepoint has increased knowledge share and collaboration between departments. This saves time and energy because of its efficient and effective communication
Increased document security - MS Sharepoint has increased our document security so we're safer knowing that our documents are security and access controlled appropriately. We are less prone to get in trouble by our customers due to the security provided by MS Sharepoint
Negative Impact Compared to other software - Not sure if the MS Sharepoint's main functionalities could've been met with other tools we currently have
