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Plan to Share(Point)
February 21, 2014

Plan to Share(Point)

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction

SharePoint is used throughout my former company as a collaboration tool and to manage document versioning. My team (professional services) used SharePoint to develop document libraries for consulting projects that could be accessed both internally by staff and externally by clients. I developed and administered an internal SharePoint site to manage regulatory compliance and process improvement projects.
  • Team collaboration
  • Document versioning
  • Workflow management
  • Integration with other MS products
  • SharePoint sites and libraries can be easily configured to limit access to materials on a need-to-know basis.
  • Checking documents in and out does not always work as expected.
  • Access privileges can be difficult to manage for a typical employee serving as a site administrator.
  • Interface for developing site content takes some effort to learn.
  • Document versioning is critical in requirements analysis and design to ensure all reviewers are looking at the most recent information. SharePoint saves document drafts so that users are directed to the most recent copy but are still able to access past versions as needed. The cost of reviewing incorrect versions of documents is often $100+ per person hour, excluding the frustration factor.
  • SharePoint sites are easy to set up with little training, therefore users can get started organizing their own content without having to wait for a corporate IT project to be prioritized.
  • User access privileges and advanced features require IT support.
Overall my company could get a lot more out of the product but SharePoint covers the primary usage needs of my group (collaboration, document versioning) with relatively little effort. Starting over with a new tool at this point would require a significant effort compared to the benefit received.
SharePoint is one of those products where the more you put into it, the more you get out of it. At my former company, SharePoint was used by individual departments with little support from Corporate IT. This product handled our primary use case which was to share documents between employees and with clients. However, it was difficult to find documents maintained by other departments and access privileges for individual users were not always set up correctly. With a solid Knowledge Management plan and more technical support/training, we could have done more with it.