Microsoft can do better
Updated November 30, 2021
Microsoft can do better
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with MS SharePoint
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.
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.
- Positive impact: Coming from our classic network file system, SharePoint (or any cloud-based tool) is a significant improvement. No more local files that are saved with extended filenames, manually versioned, manually dated. No more files which are emailed and manual management of multiple contributors or editors.
- Negative impact: Overall, opening/editing/saving files seem slower than working from the network. Hence, many people are still saving locally & moving things to SharePoint later.
- Negative impact: Since SharePoint is not the best tool for everything, we are still using multiple tools for any given project endeavor. We have a tool for project planning, another tool for activity tracking (kanban board system), another tool for project time tracking, SharePoint for document collaboration and storage, etc.
SharePoint was selected primarily because of its inherent integration with MS Office. The other tools were easier to use and easier to set up, but not selected because they were a third-party integration with Office.