SharePoint: It does, so you don't have to!
June 23, 2019
SharePoint: It does, so you don't have to!
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with MS SharePoint
SharePoint is used by my entire organization. Its tools and scalability allow all our sites across the world to communicate and increase efficiency, which is hard given our sizable footprint. A team in Oregon needs to be using the same processes and information as the team in New York, and SharePoint allows us to do this. From easily making personalized websites for each team to use, to making wikis with information that all teams can access, SharePoint has been a time and lifesaver.
- User interface. I went from knowing nothing about SharePoint, to being a site leader managing 12 different sites and multiple subsites. It's really intuitive, easy to work out, and there are tons of materials and how-to's out there if you want to go deeper
- Speed. A website is no good if it takes a year and a day to load. I'm able to speed through both the web part building process and general use as fast as my mouse can click, regardless of where the servers are located
- Stability. SharePoint is very stable, not crashing under my experience. Of course, it's important to ensure updates are installed but other than that, I was able to guess and check many aspects of how to operate SharePoint without crashing anything.
- Sometimes it's a little hard to know where to go if you want to do a particular action, and SharePoint has its own "language." It's not computer language like C++ or anything, but you do have to learn what SharePoint calls a site, a subsite, a web part, etc. Without that vernacular, it's a much steeper learning curve.
- It can be a little hard to figure out the lists' functionality. We've run into situations where a list will max out on how much info it can hold, and the process for increasing that limit or moving the data to a different kind of list is not straightforward.
- There are currently several design choices, but they're somewhat limited. Yes, it's supposed to be a work program, so you don't want to get too "artsy," but having the option to be a little more creative would be nice and expand the user base.
- We've been able to use SharePoint to standardize the processes of over 12 different offices and multiple continents, just by making a team website template and linking the same information between them. That's invaluable.
- The automation functions have been great, allowing us to check a box, and SharePoint generates multiple emails to multiple people, automatically pulled from outlook, without us doing more than a single click of the mouse. It saves us tons of time on repetitive tasks.
- One negative is very minor. Sometimes, as people who managed the databases leave or get promoted, the knowledge of what they had in place goes with them. We might have to create some "how-to's" on what we've built to ensure we don't have to keep reinventing the wheel.