Item: Microsoft SharePoint
Rating: 6
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

MS Sharepoint is the platform that we use for our employee intranet site. It's a great document repository and content management system that can house a multitude of information from all departments in one location. Access is based on active directory settings connected to Office 365. We also use file sharing features to restrict document/content access.

Pros and Cons

Content Storage - Gives great features that allow you to house content, images, documentation, spreadsheets, and other assets in a well organized manner
Privacy Settings - Does a great job of ensuring that you can customize very specifically how you want your content accessed, read, by whom, and takes into consideration how sensitive your data is
Ease of Access - Because MS Sharepoint is part of the Office 365 suite, it's very easy for users accross the entire organization to access Sharepoint direction from their web browser

Customizable UI - Although it can be customizable, it's not very intuitive and needs an more experienced web designer/developer to make it look and feel the way you want
Permissions can be confusing - Even though document security can be a positive, it can also be a negative in the sense that if you don't set it up right or are not familiar with it, then it can be very confusing to figure out which access level to give
Integration Challenges - Sharepoint is notoriously known to be hard to integrate into other platforms or to bring in data

Return on Investment

Increased collaboration - MS Sharepoint has increased knowledge share and collaboration between departments. This saves time and energy because of its efficient and effective communication
Increased document security - MS Sharepoint has increased our document security so we're safer knowing that our documents are security and access controlled appropriately. We are less prone to get in trouble by our customers due to the security provided by MS Sharepoint
Negative Impact Compared to other software - Not sure if the MS Sharepoint's main functionalities could've been met with other tools we currently have

Alternatives Considered

Atlassian Confluence, Google Drive and MindTouch

We still have Confluence and Google Drive, but we wanted a product that could provide document security and a single point of access that easily integrated into our active directory. Since we use this for our intranet site, we found the features easier to stand up and the UI easier to deal with when it comes to surfacing relevant documentation for cross departmental collaboration.

Key Insights

Do you think Microsoft SharePoint delivers good value for the price?

Not sure

Are you happy with Microsoft SharePoint's feature set?

Yes

Did Microsoft SharePoint live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Microsoft SharePoint go as expected?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy Microsoft SharePoint again?

Yes

Likelihood to Recommend

[MS] Sharepoint is well suited for a company intranet site because you can post your documentation in very specific spaces where permissions and security restrictions are needed depending on your audience. You can also have shared spaces that are open to the entire company. This way, it's very easy to update information as you also have versioning control and you can follow activity when documents/information changes. If you are trying to use [MS] Sharepoint to share information outside of your organization or use it solely as a documentation repository, then I don't think you're using it to the best of its abilities.

MS Sharepoint - Good Not Great

Overall Satisfaction with MS SharePoint