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Microsoft SharePoint 2013
December 06, 2013

Microsoft SharePoint 2013

Dwight Taylor | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

2013

Modules Used

  • Enterprise Document Management
  • Enterprise Content Management
  • Electronic Records Management
  • Enterprise Team Collaboration

Overall Satisfaction

  • 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.
  • Single Version of the Truth - By far, the most significant impact is the ability to store and retrieve multiple content types using a common interface. When an executive needs the most recent version of a proposal for the board and there's only one place to get the content, it makes life so much simpler and productive.
Rating driven solely by total cost of ownership.
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?

Product Usage

20 - Vice President of Media, Directors of Media, Marketing and Video Editing, Director of Community Programs
2 - Windows Server Engineer, SQL Server Database Administrator, SharePoint Administration, Active Directory Administrator
  • Official Document Repositories - Centralized document management
  • Broadcast Workflow Management - Multi-phase, multi-approval broadcast management business process.
  • Enterprise Application Portal - Central launching page for various applications
  • Business Process Management
  • Full team collaboration

Implementation

Windows server and active directory preparation is critical to a successful implementation. A pre-installation checklist goes a long way and saves a bundle of rework.
  • Implemented in-house
Yes - Active Directory Preparation, SQL Server setup, Windows server storage configuration, SharePoint Service Account creation, SharePoint installation, SharePoint configuration, Post production eval, SharePoint designer deployment
Change management was minimal - Partnering early with the intended user community goes along way with adoption after production role out.
  • SharePoint Service Account Configuration
  • SharePoint Search Configuration
  • Third Party SharePoint Warm Up

Support

Microsoft has gotten better in it's ability to support SharePoint over the years. In addition, Microsoft and third party support offerings are abundant.
ProsCons
Quick Resolution
Good followup
Problems get solved
Kept well informed
Support cares about my success
Quick Initial Response
Escalation required
No - Internal support team are SharePoint Experts
SharePoint Team Services 1.0 and the absence of folders within Document Libraries and Lists. After engaging Microsoft on this issue, the SharePoint team began to include this feature in subsequent releases.

Usability

If SharePoint really focused on non-technical user experience design, it's usefulness to the broader user community would increase dramatically.
ProsCons
Like to use
Well integrated
Consistent
Feel confident using
Familiar
Difficult to use
Slow to learn
  • Navigating Quick Link Menu Items
  • Search
  • Installation or Setup
  • Service Account Management
  • Exporting Documents
Yes - The mobile interface is in it's infancy phase even though it's been available for a number of versions. The mobile interface significantly reduces built-in functionality. In addition, the HTML and Javascript payload is robust for mobile devices.