Microsoft Sharepoint

mikem · #1 (**permalink**) 09-08-2004, 03:26 PM

Do you think that SP can successfully replace the traditional Intranet site? I say no and I'm trying to convince my IS group.

nickykay · #2 (**permalink**) 09-09-2004, 08:52 AM

Why not?

We are looking at replacing our homegrown portals with SharePoint. Some of the functionality we want will have to be customized. The search appears to be pretty good, certainly better than the non-existent one we have now.

We have been using SharePoint Services as a collaborative tool for teams and depts for a year now and that has gone well, despite the learnign curve.

nickykay · #3 (**permalink**) 09-10-2004, 09:10 AM

We have talked to Microsoft and I've gotten the impression that they are working on things. Right now it's aquestion of build buy or wait in terms of customization.

I've found some limits, and some odd things, but a lot of it is learning the way they do things and all the usual stuff. We are excited about the possibilities.

fezzig · #4 (**permalink**) 09-10-2004, 10:05 AM

nickykay, you said "Some of the functionality we want will have to be customized." but you're already using a 100% home-grown portal that's totally customized for your company, right? I'm wondering why, if you already have a customized solution, you're changing to something mass-produced.

nickykay · #5 (**permalink**) 09-10-2004, 11:19 AM

We're quickly outgrowing some of the systems we have created. Some have been more adaptable than others, but all of it is somewhat limited. I'm not suggesting SharePoint is unlimited, but I am interested in a platform that can provide more flexibility and growth.

That and collaborative tools for many as opposed to custome built apps for a few that have questionable support as time goes on.

My biggest concern is how much customization we have to get into it. Oh yes, I'm also very concerned about multi-lingual issues.

nickykay · #6 (**permalink**) 09-10-2004, 11:56 AM

I know what you mean, of course integration with Office 2003 was a big plus in our opinion. But it does seem like we will have to play in that area!

fezzig · #7 (**permalink**) 09-10-2004, 12:21 PM

nickykay - how do you think your budget for maintenance programming and customization of SharePoint (consultants or in-house developers) will compare with your budget for maintaining your existing portal? Do you think that it will be a significant cost in addition to the cost of the software, or not too bad?

tdorey - of course Microsoft would be very happy if people bought nothing but Microsoft products :-)

nickykay · #8 (**permalink**) 09-10-2004, 01:53 PM

I think it will be comparable, but we really have to think through what level of support we are going to be able to provide to people developing web parts who may not have their own resource. I don't want to become a Web Parts shop for an entire organization ... reviewing and setting policy will be demanding enough.

Our experience has been to bring help in where we've needed it to develop large-scale projects, but have our own resource who works alongside and then inherits it. In many cases it's a tremendous education ... another factor is are we paying for it or do other groups in our organization pay for it (we're not a development shop for the entire company).

Also, if someone doesn't bring money to the table, then they will have to work with what's available to them.

From what I've learned about SharePoint, just using it out of the box is going to keep most small groups busy, and any custom development you do needs to steer clear of cutting itself off from the evolution of a very young product.

What fun!

nickykay · #9 (**permalink**) 09-17-2004, 12:49 PM

At the end of the day, here is what we keep coming back to - our employees will truly decide what to do with this thing, so we aren't trying to push out everything we can, we are trying to open the doors.

To that end we will be implementing the portal and a basic version of search, but the portal won't be a destination point until we do our user research and business requirements.

Even then, many won't be able to articulate what they want to do with it, they will mostly know what information they want to find. Other features will probably fall under "hey, neat!".

merrillr · #10 (**permalink**) 09-22-2004, 12:57 PM

We have been running Sharepoint for a few years to support teams and smaller projects.

The biggest issue we have run into is migration from one machine to another. We had to retire the initial machine it was running on - and there is no good way to migrate the data between systems because Sharepoint creates and uses local NTFS permissions that are machine specific .

This is a really large problem long-term - but we are now hoping that someone will come up with a way to help us maintain / migrate the data from the sharepoint before we have to retire the new hardware

Other issues are a lack of documentation and a backend DB structure that does not make a lot of sense / is not documented / difficult to read & write to.

We continue to use it for some things, but if you are going to base critical company docs on a web tool, I suggest first at least looking at some other options like Plone ( http://plone.org/ ) (Free Plone hosting http://www.objectis.org/english ) or Mambo.
We are looking to go in this direction ourselves. Good luck

nickykay · #11 (**permalink**) 10-04-2004, 12:35 PM

I have used Mambo a bit, pretty cool. We are going with SharePoint for a variety of reasons, I think I am just trying to ease into it slowly and try to limit customizations unless it's really necessary. It's inevitable that we will, but I'm concerned with getting out of whack with how MS is developing the product.