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SharePoint

SharePoint

Overview

What is SharePoint?

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.

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Recent Reviews

Microsoft can do better

8 out of 10
November 30, 2021
Incentivized
We are using SharePoint as a replacement for our corporate network file server. Primarily we are using SharePoint for document sharing and …
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Awards

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Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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Plan 1

$5.00

Cloud
Per User Per Month

Plan 2

$10.00

Cloud
Per User Per Month

Office 365 E3

$20.00

Cloud
Per User Per Month

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Product Details

What is SharePoint?

MS SharePoint / SQL refers to Microsoft Sharepoint, a web-based collaborative platform, being used in tandem with Microsoft SQL Server to provide business intelligence analytics and reporting. They can provide BI content such as data connections, reports, scorecards, dashboards, and more.

With Sharepoint, users can share files, data, news, and resources. Sites can be customized to streamline teams’ work. Team members can collaborate inside and outside the organization, across PCs, Macs, and mobile devices.

Sharepoint also supports the ability to discover data, expertise, and insights to inform decisions and guide action. SharePoint’s content management features, along with connections and conversations surfaced in Yammer, enable organizations to maximize their velocity of knowledge.

Users can also accelerate productivity by transforming processes—from tasks like notifications and approvals to operational workflows. With SharePoint lists and libraries, Microsoft Flow, and PowerApps, they can create digital experiences with forms, workflows, and custom apps for every device.

SharePoint Videos

What is Microsoft SharePoint and How Can I Use It?
SharePoint is a great tool for sharing files and delivering information to employees. Some businesses even use SharePoint to build their company website. Whether you use SharePoint for your internet, intranet, or both, though, it can be tricky to get started with.

SharePoint Integrations

SharePoint Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

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.

OpenText Documentum, Jive, and OpenText WEM are common alternatives for SharePoint.

Reviewers rate Support Rating highest, with a score of 8.6.

The most common users of SharePoint are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(2414)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-25 of 25)
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Helmi Tatanaki | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have multiple uses for Sharepoint. We use it for For storing information securely for organizing and sharing with others for creating internal websites for project collaboration.
  • Access management.
  • easily customizable
  • Mutli-purpose functionalities
  • User interface.
  • Its integration with non Microsoft tools.
  • although it is highly customizable, it is not easy to do so.
I would recommend SharePoint for the following scenarios; You want secure cloud-based storage you want enhanced access management and security. You want to easily share and collaborate with other projects; You want to enhance productivity.
Thushitha A. Chandrasiri | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Microsoft SharePoint for storing, managing, sharing, and controlling access to different types of documents among ourselves within the company. It addresses the controlling of document access at different levels and types. Microsoft SharePoint has the requirement of creating different sites and site pages for different departments within the organization and also can be used for different content.
  • Provides the ability to store any large size file of any type
  • Having ability to sharing at different levels to different teams of the organization
  • Provides the ability for external sharing securely
  • Merging of two or more SharePoint sites from different companies together if they are working together with the same employees
  • Advanced folder and file actions within the SharePoint like unzipping zipped files, compressing normal files
  • More rich user interfaces such as colorful folders. Different colors for different folders and file types to identify easily
Microsoft SharePoint is well suited for the secure internal and external sharing of the documents with others, since it has different levels of access like Read-Only, and Edit, and also the access can be defined in different forms when sharing the document. It includes sharing to anyone who is having the link, and only to specific email addresses, etc.
November 30, 2021

Microsoft can do better

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using SharePoint as a replacement for our corporate network file server. Primarily we are using SharePoint for document sharing and collaboration, before releasing the document to our formal document control system (electronic quality management system).

R&D is the largest user group, but the whole organization is using SharePoint. Most of the collaboration is being done in project teams. We've set up SharePoint so that each project team has their allocated SharePoint site.
  • Document Library collaboration - ability for multiple users to simultaneously collaborate a common file at the same time.
  • Document Library autosave - a document I'm working on locally is automatically saved to the SharePoint cloud location
  • Document Library Revision Control - Document revision is automatically generated and I can see or revert back to previous revisions.
  • Follow - Ability to follow a site, a library, or a document. I can set up alerts to notify me when something is changed or whatever the criteria I customize for the alert.
  • Cloud-based - all files, apps are on the cloud, so everyone has access, regardless of where they are.
  • Performance - It takes some time to open a file from SharePoint. There's general 'lethargy' with opening, saving, and editing from SharePoint.
  • Site layout - SharePoint provides the ability to customize each site or page. However, the customization options are limited. There are only 8 text layout options to choose from and the layouts are very 'tabular'.
  • Document collaboration is great up to a point. When there are more than 3 or 4 people editing a document at the same time, the document may freeze and you lose the ability to update the cloud file. In these cases, we save the file locally and have to manually merge changes back to the cloud file.
  • Permission - if I set up a group (for permissions), I cannot embed a group within another group. For example, the group "all employees" cannot contain the groups "all US employees" and "all EU employees".
  • Syncing - Syncing sites, libraries or documents to my local computer is a hit or miss. For some people, it has worked flawlessly. For others, files don't get synced, sometimes the syncing ability temporarily goes away, sometimes it's locked for a certain user. It's inconsistent and fails more often than not.
The biggest (& only) reason I would recommend SharePoint is because it is integrated with MS Office. The simultaneous-editing, auto-versioning, alerts, messaging and other team collaboration capabilities are found in other tools which have a more 'modern' interface. SharePoint's features feel dated and not that advanced compared to other cloud-based tools which are also cheaper.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
MS SharePoint is being used by the whole organization. It is a great way to store and organize documents across departments and have permission-based access. This allows fewer emails to be sent as everything is being stored in the cloud. Now we don't have to use file servers or third-party companies to send and receive large files.
  • Organization
  • Access from any device with an internet connection
  • Permissions
  • Advanced features seem to be lacking
  • More integration with non-microsoft products
  • Easier access via file explorer
Again, this is where you will likely store 90% of your company files. We have found that larger files like photoshop and AutoCAD are just too big and the upload/download time is too long or will fail out and makes it not very friendly for larger files. It is nice that IT also does not have to be the one granting permissions as you have site owners who grant access to their specific areas.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use SharePoint for our local intranet site. Its been set as everyone's home page with a blog set up as the landing page. We primarily use it for sharing files, wikis and calendars. The search functions work well enough when files are uploaded with appropriate metadata. For the most part we run an out of the box, basic configuration to ensure future versions of SharePoint won't break anything we currently have set up.
  • Wikis
  • File Sharing
  • Searching
  • Could be more user friendly, large learning curve since it is such a complex tool.
  • Built in reporting features could be more robust.
  • Built in permissions vs. domain permissions are confusing.
Works great for working as a document repository, built in versioning makes it easy to see who has modified files and when.
October 07, 2019

SharePoint Review

Adam Litvack | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
MS SharePoint is used across our entire company as file storage and sharing. It's used on all devices and across multiple office locations.
  • Storage.
  • Sharing and rights access. Using it correctly, an organization can create a proper hierarchy of rights and access for folders. Also, sharing allows the ability to share access to files without the need to attach the actual file to an email. This helps when a document is later updated - you do not have to resend an email, as the document updates will be reflected to all shared users.
  • Backup and security.
  • Ease of use. Some things are just too complicated.
  • Setting up rights and shared folders. The setup process is not clear and very difficult to control. It's very hard to see who has access to what and if there's an error or a user should or not being seeing a folder they may not have permissions for.
  • Sharing and version control.
It's perfect for sharing large files without having to email attachments. However, if sending to external parties, sometimes a user doesn't have rights or cannot get access in time.
Stephen Wittmaak | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We used SharePoint interdepartmentally to share internal files safely and securely within our Office 365 framework.
  • Integrates well with Windows and Mac machines.
  • Works independently and with other Microsoft applications well.
  • Safe and secure cloud storage for files.
  • There is a bit of a learning curve to onboard new users.
  • Slow workflow.
  • Not a lot of support for apps outside of the Microsoft cosmos.
As a creative, I find SharePoint a bit restrictive, that said from an organizational standpoint, companies already subscribing to the Microsoft Suite can easily adopt it for important document storage and sharing.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
Sharepoint is currently being used across our entire organization for an internal Intranet. We use sharepoint extensively. It helps our business to stay organized and streamlines projects.
  • Enables teams to collaborate more closely
  • Great for organizing shared files and folders
  • Creating team sites with specific documents and information for the particular team
  • Better UI improvements
  • More wizard driven so end users have have less of a learning curve
  • Better API support for 3rd party software vendors
Great for team folders and organizing files. Creating team and department sites for collaboration.
Sharepoint is not meant to be a front facing website. It's great at a internal company site.
João Almeida | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SharePoint is utilized across the organization and team. We use it for simple document storage, obviously, but there is so much more it can do. Tagging your documentation with metadata is incredibly useful. It makes finding these documents later much easier and allows for better ways to present documents to the users.
  • Good search capabilities.
  • Sharing documents with external users.
  • Document storage, hands down. Online access and storing a synced copy on a hard drive as well.
  • The user interface could be improved and made more attractive.
  • The public website creation documentation is not that clear.
  • There is the potential for save-conflicts if multiple people edit a document while offline.
Very robust, so not much maintenance is needed if used with built in functionality. Some third party solutions add much more capabilities to out of the box SharePoint for not much of an increase of the price. Very good security, if a little complicated with later editions. Security is handled for you, online access is obviously easy. But even offline syncing of documents to a local machine is possible. And adding metadata tagging on top of this will really make things hum.
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We utilized Sharepoint as our company intranet for a number of years and recently migrated some of that onto the cloud version that comes with office365. This has proved relatively successful and the feature set it offers is useful for us to be able to easily manage version control on our documents.
  • Simple setup
  • Lots of online resources for getting started
  • Support is offered both by Microsoft and 3rd parties
  • Skinning/rebranding it to not look like SharePoint is nigh on impossible,
  • The cloud version is good but becomes costly if you have large numbers of documents to host, so we've not done that with this solution.
  • Finding a suitable backup solution was troublesome for some time.
It is a great "out of the box" document management system and formed an easy to search intranet for us. The trouble came with trying to re-brand it or tack on more features/integrate it with the other tools we have. This all seemed to lead down a route of requiring consultants and experts help. In the world of SAAS, it's a shame that the online tools and help are still not sufficient to enable novice/not guru level people to be able to integrate this product more easily.
Jane Updegraff | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SharePoint is used across the entire organization. It provides centrally-located, always available and easily-accessible document libraries, collaboration spaces, private, internal websites for all of our corporate divisions and their departments and a way to quickly share documents with other users.
  • Document sharing - it works really well for this. documents can be included in libraries and organized in folders. Documents can be uploaded as files or links to files stored anywhere that is accessible by URL.
  • Team discussion boards - It does discussion format very well and presents discussion sin a familiar format that all users will recognize. it can also do Wikis.
  • Managing access permissions is still clunky - not a whole lot better in newer versions than it was way back when it was first launched.
  • Re-organization of the site hierarchy isn't very easy. You need a third-party tool to do anything meaningful when you want to rearrange your site pages and move site libraries.
  • It doesn't provide for any kind of backup, so you have to either have it on=prem where you can backup the entire server or you have to buy a third-party tool if you are using the online hosted version (SPO).
It's very well suited to act as an intranet, where it's only going to be used internally by employees of a company. It works well to share documents, provide lists of reference materials to users, provide a place for departments to have their own discussions and calendars and other collaboration purposes. It includes "workflows" unlike its predecessors, and those can define the flow of a process or task and walk the user through that flow very effectively. In fact, an employee's entire job could hypothetically be scripted using SharePoint workflows. It can scale OK in small scale terms, as I have experience of using it in networks with under a few thousand users. I don't know how it would behave if there were tens of thousands of hundreds of thousands of users, but provided the infrastructure is scaled proportionately, I don't see why it wouldn't work well at that scale as well.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SharePoint is our main document collaboration suite and file storage location. We used to have on-premises versions (since version 2003) and they were ok, but since moving to SharePoint Online we are really doing real collaboration. Microsoft has very much improved SharePoint towards an easy to use platform that integrates with other MS offerings (like Teams) and even external tools.
  • Everyone knows SharePoint. It is easy to use and does need a steep learning curve.
  • Integration in other 365 tools improves productivity. Automation even more so (ie using Flow).
  • There is no real backup available out of the box. We need a backup, so there were extra costs to buy a third party offering.
  • The only editing tools are basic. We still need full client tools for a little more advanced stuff.
It's very usable for your main collaboration and file storage needs. We replaced 95% of our fileservers. It's less suited for big files that are edited regularly (like graphics files from your graphics design department).
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SharePoint is used across the organization. We use it for simple document storage, obviously, but there is so much more it can do. Tagging your documentation with metadata is incredibly useful. It makes finding these documents later much easier and allows for better ways to present documents to the users. And we use SharePoint for various ad-hoc line-of-business applications. Security is solid and also allows sharing with external users outside of our company.
  • Document storage, hands down. Online access and storing a synced copy on a hard drive as well. And this is much improved from years ago.
  • Ad-hoc, line of business applications. Automation via workflow. Mobile access via PowerApps. All easy to get started with.
  • Sharing news to a team or across an organization.
  • Sharing documents with external users.
  • Document version control is also incredibly useful.
  • If you're already paying for Office 365, many of their licensing levels already include SharePoint. So you might as well use it!
  • I've found external users occasionally need assistance walking through the process of getting access. But this is much rarer now than even a couple years ago. But it still happens once in a while.
  • There is the potential for save-conflicts if multiple people edit a document while offline. Again, rare, but could happen. But that's the price you have to pay for the online availability, the local storage, etc.
  • To get the full benefit of SharePoint, you really want someone how is an expert. You can quickly get started using some of the functionality, but it's such a powerful tool, you should have someone dedicated to learning it and managing it internally or use an outside consultant. Again, you can get simple usage on your own, but for full usage of what's there, an expert is recommended. But learning it on your own, internally, is certainly possible. I just recommend making that the person's job, and not just an added responsibility along with a hundred other things.
Again, document storage. I can't say this enough. Online storage for an individual (technically OneDrive, but SharePoint under the covers). But also very useful for a team. Microsoft Teams uses SharePoint under the covers for file storage as well. And so does Office 365 Groups. It just makes that old fashioned file share obsolete in so many instances. Security is handled for you, online access is obviously easy. But even off-line syncing of documents to a local machine is possible. And adding metadata tagging on top of this will really make things hum. And also specific, in-house, ad-hoc, line-of-business applications. SharePoint can handle so many different scenarios. And its built-in connections with Flow and PowerApps makes this process even more powerful.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
MS SharePoint is being used across the entire organization and across all functional teams on all levels. It solves tons of business problems for us, mainly things related to project collaboration, scope and schedule, sharing documents and information (both public information and private/confidential). We lock down secure sites if needed and most recently we have created public SharePoint portals for different teams that need a place to store their work, projects, etc.
  • We are able to upload information and documents from secure sites to SharePoint. It's a strength because some things need to be behind lock and key related to personally identifiable information, employee relations, executives, etc.
  • It allows for the sharing and collaboration on projects that involve multiple teams and functional groups. This a strength because it can eliminate meetings (virtual or in-person), massive email attachments, etc.
  • It gives different teams a dedicated space for their work, documents, and project schedules.
  • The user interface and methods on how to customize access and layout are rather cumbersome and complicated. We had to hire a dedicated SharePoint technology specialist to do just the most basic things in SharePoint.
  • Certain commands and tasks that should be easy are pretty complicated. I feel like it could be more user-friendly.
  • Some of the security measures and audits seem like they could be stronger and more locked down.
It's suited for larger organizations that have the resources and infrastructure to support a system like this. It's also good for companies that have many functional teams that constantly work together and collaborate. As a one-off, it seems like it's good for a marketing firm or creative type agency. Some of the tasks and commands go hand in hand with how the system functions.
Jared Hansen | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
MS Sharepoint replaced our team's Google Drive/Drop Box. It became the web-based app to manage and host our collective work on our documents and to help us to work in collaboration. Since it is part of the Microsoft suite, it worked with other Office products for productivity, which as a team we all already used.
  • Collaboration
  • Team work
  • Document sharing
  • Hosting
  • Microsoft Office
  • Needs to be easier to find/install
  • Not marketed, like at all
Well suited: Teamwork, collaboration in the cloud, especially if you are already using Office apps. Perfect for Windows users, but still manageable with other platforms. Perfect for content creation (writing especially).

Less suited: MacOS or Linux would be better suited with other productivity teamwork apps (even if you have an Office 360 subscription).
Trent Kenelly, DTM | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use SharePoint for the repository of legal, admin and operations data, files, processes, graphs and charts. It is a system of record for our business and is vital to the running of a data center. We run in a cluster environment, vmed in our corporate web cluster. We have specific groups, sites and calendars based upon the business unit.
  • Document storage
  • PTO Calendars
  • Sites with sub sites with specific requirements
  • Multi user edits
  • Check in and out process
  • Versioning of documents
  • User integration with Hybrid 365 environments
  • If your organization needs a document repository, SharePoint is a good fit.
  • If your organization needs integrated calendar functionality with active directory, SharePoint is a good fit.
  • If your organization needs active sites and subsites with specific security roles, SharePoint is a good fit.
  • If your organization needs multi user edits, there are much better applications.
  • If your organization does a lot of versioning and dynamic applications, I would not suggest SharePoint.
Андрей Жеребцов | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We used it across the whole organization. Sharepoint is used mainly for sharing files with teammates, as well as simultaneously editing them. We just tell each other that we have posted it on Sharepoint and that's all. Sharepoint allowed us to be efficient and saved us tons of time versus emailing the files around to each other all the time.
  • SharePoint is great for file sharing.
  • The ability to create and fill out online forms for business purposes is my favorite feature.
  • I enjoy having the ability to grant different levels of access to different members of the team.
  • Files saved can be easily tracked using your Office 365 applications.
  • Uploading documents, you can simply drag a document onto a site page in any browser.
  • It is hard to integrate sharing documents and uploading documents through my Mac.
  • Finding a specific file without a proper link can be very challenging.
  • Some of the sortings can be confusing when you are first learning the product.
  • Some of the set up is not obvious. I watched a lot of youtube to help me connect the dots.
I'm using Sharepoint to share the data across multiple entities across the organization. It is helping to share the data securely with maintaining data integrity. I don't like the quirks in the review process of a document. Sometimes, I might edit a document and can't save or delete documents because it is locked by me when it is in fact not locked.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized

Microsoft SharePoint is being used across our Americas Division by a number of departments including Engineering, HR, Payroll, Finance, Customer Service, and Technical Support. The scope of how we used varies from department to department, but we mainly use SharePoint for document management and workflow approvals via the use of out of the box workflows and a 3rd party add-on called NINTEX Workflow.

SharePoint helped us digitize our approvals that were done via pen and paper or by email; with the use of SharePoint we were able to cut down the amount of time it takes our approvals to be completed.

  • SharePoint Workflows are one of the most useful features that can be used; setting up approval workflows is relatively easy for any user.
  • Another example of what SharePoint does well is the ability for admins and power users easily architecture the security structure of the SharePoint Site Collections. The access permissions can be setup in a way where there can be several sub sites and even document libraries that only specific users have access to.
  • Creating document libraries is another aspect that SharePoint does very well; users can use the "Open with Explorer" feature to start creating the document libraries which resembles how folders are created in Windows.
  • One improvement we would recommend is to make SharePoint work in all browsers; at the moment it only works well in a browser that has ActiveX.
  • Implementing a Visio like user interface for creating out of the box workflows would be a great feature.
  • Removing the needed local client configurations such as having the site URL in "Trusted Sites" and the need to run WebClient Service would improve the ease of use of SharePoint.
One specific scenario where SharePoint would work really well is if there's a need to digitize an approval process; SharePoint does a good job of creating approval workflows. Another scenario would be where there's a need for a central location to store a document where several users need access to work on it; that way there's only one version.
Nicola Lindesay Larsen | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized

SharePoint is being used as a repository for all commercials throughout all divisions at our organisation. It governs compliance, risk and records management within the SharePoint farm. Records Management has also alleviated the manual task of having to manage this process manually and do the time consuming shredding of documents.

Through workflow process, we now have automated processes in place that has eliminated the risk associated to paper and the actual printing cost. Tasks are scheduled and can be tracked by user. Audit trails and versioning keeps our business compliant and transparent.

With POPI, SharePoint has allowed us to put restrictions on certain documents within the SharePoint farm, allowing us to navigate what rights each user should have right down to a read only right.

SharePoint has provided us with a company Intranet and it has been a value add in terms of a collaboration tool, when sharing and working on documents between the various departments.

I highly recommend this product. I have worked with many similar products and this for me is by far the best when it comes to license cost and customization. There is also a lot of support and IP readily available online and at various service providers. Many other products are only marketed by a few companies and restricts the after sales support to minimal options within the various regions or countries....with a Microsoft product you will always have a span of companies that can assist you, which equals less downtime and frustration at the end of the day.

With the right service provider, your repository will not land up like a glorified file share, like I have seen in so many instances with other products - like Laserfiche etc.

If you are a Microsoft client and have software assurance, you can also request deployment day vouchers and with the right accredited service provider you can get services and scoping resources for free - Microsoft pay the service provider to do it on their behalf - costing the client nothing...show me another product that allows for this!

  • Records Management
  • Business Process Automation
  • Audit Trail
  • Versioning
  • Customized
  • Collaboration
  • Intranet
  • Website Deployment
  • Excel documents can sometimes be problematic with some users to open from SharePoint.
  • Adding an OCR engine for multifunctional printers, as opposed to using third party products. Especially now that devices can scan directly to SharePoint these days.
SharePoint is well suited in all environments and you can tailor it to your needs. Office 365 E4 will give [you] this platform at no cost and would be more suitable for an enterprise client. I recommend Office 365, as it means less infrastructure costs, go cloud! I honestly cannot think of an inappropriate situation for SharePoint.
July 29, 2016

MS SharePoint 2016

Bridget Mullally | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use MS SharePoint specifically in our department to share various spreadsheets and documents regarding new hires and candidates. It's a great tool for cross-checking. We have multiple people working on different projects and its a great way for all of us to communicate and stay on top of various projects.
  • Allows for seamless team communication across many departments
  • We are able to get answers from each other thru a real-time document instead of waiting on an email/phone call response
  • Extremely user friendly -- little to no training needed
  • Occasional freezing or glitches can cause delays in communication
MS Sharepoint is extremely useful for cross-department or cross-employee communication purposes. I would not suggest using it over the original Microsoft Suite when trying to track information.
Renae Clary | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use MS SharePoint across several departments and by the whole organization in some cases. We use Nintex Workflow along with MS SharePoint to help us with workflows and document sharing. We also have created several forms and team sites that we use to collaborate on special projects. When we started using SharePoint a couple of years ago people were not even aware that they were using a SharePoint site. Today we have weekly requests for new sites to be created. Site are quickly and easily created and handed over to the users, that are then able to customize the site to fit business needs. Document storage, workflow, forms, calendars and team collaboration are just a few of the ways we use SharePoint.
  • SharePoint allows us to store and share documents easily, it also has great security settings that allows us to secure documents at a document level without having to create a new drive location for secured documents.
  • Forms, Forms, Forms we love the ability to create a standardize form using InfoPath. This allows us to collect and store needed data that does not always have a document to attach. Forms can be accessed both internally and externally when needed.
  • Workflow what more can I say its a wonderful thing. We are able to send notifications when action is needed, route documents for approval processes and archived documents in accordance with government regulations. This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to workflow.
  • Reporting and views are easy to use and create allowing users to create there own reports on the fly when needed.
  • The out of the box SharePoint Workflow is not a robust as it could be, we purchased add on software called Nintex to help us with all of our workflow needs.
  • We currently use another MS product called InfoPath form for all our form needs. The future of InfoPath forms has been uncertain at times. Now there are plenty of other form software available that work with SharePoint but it would be even better if it was part of the SharePoint package.
  • Search is sometimes an issue and there are lots of search settings you can change and define but it gets murky and sometimes really slows down sites depending on how search is set up. To simplify the search settings would be amazing.
Great for document sharing and tracking, forms are a thing of beauty and what can possibly be bad about workflow? The integration with other MS products is simple and easy to use. If I would say one thing the calendar integration with Outlook could be improved more. When you integrate your calendars and use Outlook you are limited to the Outlook options. For example if you create a calendar event in Outlook you are limited to fields Outlook provides, however if you create the calendar event in SharePoint you can create new fields that are not available in Outlook. This make the integration nice but limited.
hrvoje katusic | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SharePoint is used as a document management portal, as an intranet and extranet platform, as a collaboration platform across the organisation and inside divisions. We use workflows built in SharePoint and we use SharePoint developer for implementing workflows. The problems it addresses are announcements, phone book, master database for bidding and contract management, BDM management platform, extranet site for collaboration with partners outside our company and for document management within divisions.
  • Very robust, never crashes
  • With minimum investment apart from licensing it can address most business processes
  • Good search capabilities (SharePoint 2010)
  • Same ergonomics as late office editions
  • Referential integrity between lists
  • Better no programming application development capabilities
  • Simple solution to keep big data outside the database
Less appropriate as a web application against database data. It doesn't have built in referential integrity within lists. Well suited for publishing and approval of documents. Very robust, so not much maintenance is needed if used with built in functionality. Some third party solutions add much more capabilities to out of the box SharePoint for not much of an increase of the price. Very good security, if a little complicated with later editions.

Can authorize both against active directory and LDAP for outside partners. Very well developed community.

However, if migrating, if doing some more in depth customization, a professional is very much needed since it's a very complex environment and easy to lose a lot of time on tweaking, debugging and navigating through numerous options.
Chris John | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SharePoint is currently being used by our entire organization in different ways. First we have a custom application that some outside developers set up for us. Second, we in IT use it to collaborate on some documents that we create and manage. Thirdly, our HR uses a custom application that is currently in the final stages of setting up. SharePoint is quite flexible!
  • Great search feature.
  • Flexible.
  • Integrates with Office pretty well.
  • Lots of out of the box features.
  • Search query webparts are really cool once you figure out how to use it.
  • Tons of features can sometimes make things overwhelming.
  • With other services that are coming out, you start to see some of the flaws of SharePoint such as how sometimes the simplest thing can take quite some time to configure.
  • As good as the integration is with Office, it could be better.
SharePoint is really great if you're a Microsoft heavy shop. It allows you to really leverage some neat features like version control, checkin/checkout, document sets, metadata navigation, etc. SharePoint 2013 is better than the previous iterations of the product in that it's a little less reliant on Internet Explorer. But you still have some functionality that's tied to IE. So wouldn't recommend to anyone that's an Apple shop.
Adam Weller | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Sharepoint is being used by our small interactive marketing department to support upwards of 60 web sites for different business units in the insurance industry. We started with Sharepoint 2007 and have recently been migrating sites over to the 2010 platform. Sharepoint gives our interactive team an easily scalable tool for adding new templates, expanding or redesigning current sites, managing changes in a test environment, and tracking all of our changes and progress across our multi-user account.
  • Easily build out template pages using WSYWIG editors instead of HTML programming, though both are allowed
  • It has a strong version tracking infrastructure which allows for easily reverting back to previously checked-in or past-published pages, which can help save a lot of time and energy if something incorrect or harmful is accidentally pushed live.
  • The "View All Content" interface is easy to manage and sort, giving the Site Admin the right tools to easily update Content or Navigation Mapping, or change the properties of any number of pages, or upload or overwrite resources such as images and PDFs, etc.
  • Straightforward User Control - it's simple to add users to different access groups, giving some stakeholders "read only" access or full site editing controls, allow for easy transfer of editing duties.
  • Forms, forms, forms. We have been forced to use a third party system for data collection, as the form scripts in both 2007 and 2010 versions have been unusable.
  • Browser incompatibility is still a major problem. Get used to using Internet Explorer if you want the most out of Sharepoint, as Chrome and Firefox all present editing snafus, especially when attempting to edit content areas.
  • Fickle navigation errors. Writing and deploying a multi-level navigation menu has caused many headaches. Although Javascript and other languages are largely compatible, it isn't always easy to "plug and play" your working scripts into content areas or navigation panes and expect it to work so smoothly.
  • Site optimization. Sharepoint tends to add a whole mess of unnecessary code with each press of a WYSIWYG button, or even if you simply check in after hand-writing a large chunk of content code. Extraneous code is dropped into content areas whether you want it there or not, which greatly reduces how optimal the page is read by search engine spiders, so if optimization and site validation is important to your site, you might want to use a different tool than Sharepoint.
I think Sharepoint is well-suited for organizations that need to manage multiple web sites with one tool that takes advantages of templated site design, but you are limited in its design strategies and "box-building" layouts. The content management system works for most applications, but some scripts such as forms as well as installing a [tap to call] on top of every phone number has hardly ever worked out. There's a lot to like, but if your organization only needs to concentrate on a client-facing site or two, then I'd recommend using a different tool entirely.
December 06, 2013

Microsoft SharePoint 2013

Dwight Taylor | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Web Based Team Collaboration Applications - From web based team calendars and issue tracking to social media collaborative apps like Wiki's, SharePoint is a great content management framework for creating content repositories.
  • Designing Intranet Portal Landing Pages - For organizations with a variety of different web based tools are used by the business, SharePoint is good at enabling moderately technical user to create portal type pages that centralize important content.
  • Personalization - The personalization feature of SharePoint is a powerful plus in a world where custom social media profiles dominate. Empowering end users to design landing pages that contain the content important to them is compelling. Think of Personalization in the same manner you would your custom MSN, Yahoo or Google Home Pages.
  • User Experience - I have trained, provided technical support and deployed SharePoint environments since SharePoint Team Services 1.0. From then until the time of this writing, SharePoint's out-of-the-box user experience has tremendous room for improvement. As a long-time developer, it's clear SharePoint's user experience was designed by technical oriented designers, such as myself (clean lines and square boxes). In my opinion, SharePoint would benefit greatly from a total UX redesign with a goal of delivering an intuitive and pleasurable user experience. Positive user experiences translate directly into increased user adoption rates which translate directly into increased market share.
  • Document storage - With the dramatic decrease in the cost of storage, SharePoint has an opportunity to improvement it's offering by leveraging existing corporate File Shares as document libraries as opposed to the current paradigm of storing all SharePoint content in SQL Server.
  • Social Framework Integration - SharePoint is a best-of-breed Enterprise Content Management platform. However, as the nexus of forces (Social, Mobile, Cloud & Information) continues to converge, it will become increasingly important for content management platforms to intrinsically enable social framework integration. Third party tools offer capabilities in this space, but the total cost of ownership tends to grow as well.
I would only recommend SharePoint to Enterprises with Microsoft ActiveDirectory and Exchange computer networks. Selection process: Will SharePoint be On-Premise or Off-Premise? If On-Premise, how many SharePoint Administrators will be employed. Which Collaborative features are critical to the organization? Will SharePoint be used for Electronic Records Management? Will SharePoint be used as the only Enterprise Content Management solution?
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