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Developer Documentation: Sharepoint Document Management vs. ScrewTurn Wiki [closed]
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Developer Documentation: Sharepoint Document Management vs. ScrewTurn Wiki
I have been tasked with picking a wiki tool for a development organization, comprised of several different development teams. Sharepoint is installed and upper management would prefer this to be used, but in the past it has only used when PMs are forced to use it. None of the developers will update it with content that needs to be shared. I developed in Sharepoint and I liked it, so I have nothing against it. But for this to work I need something I can get everyone using, so Sharepoint will not work.
Step one is to convince management why Sharepoint will not work. We need the typical wiki features:
WYSIWYG, Clean interface, Easy to use, Attach Files to pages, Support for groups of users, Open source, Hosted Locally. (Maybe others I am not considering now?)
Can anyone provide a list of objective reasons why Sharepoint is not the solution we can use to take our first step?
There are many such products out there so step 2 should be easier.
SharePoint is the exact opposite of a wiki: A wiki is lightweight, easy to use, obvious, quick, doesn't get in the way.
To elaborate: A wiki allows your to jot down an idea quickly and moving details to the next page. In SP, people start to create processes, editing rights, workflows.
Wikis are designed to not get in the way. SP is designed to prevent you from doing "something bad"; whatever that might be. Wikis are driven by the idea that brainstorming works in open space while SP is driven by FUD: Who can see this information? Can it be used against me? How can I prevent someone to see/edit something?
Note: This is not a critique of SP per se; it's just how it used in most organizations. If you look at the security settings and edit rights, you sometimes feel like the workers of the company must all have been inmates in some high-profile prison (or should be).
I have absolutely no sharepoint-foo at all, but the sharepoint setup by IT at my employer has a wiki that we can use for documentation. Wouldn't that be good enough? Works ok-ish in firefox on mac, so I'm a happy camper.
SharePoint is best when using many of it's features (eg DM, WCM, workflow, collaberation etc) - you get a lot of it's benefits from the synergy of using all these things together with a common interface.
In any one area though, it's far from the 'best of breed' application - so, if you want a product for a specific job (eg a wiki), SharePoint isn't the most fully-featured/easy-to-use/delete-as-applicable product to be using - there will be products that do that (single) job far better.
You could also try looking at this question to see others experiences with SharePoint wiki's
I have used MediaWiki, Instiki and Sharepoint. Sharepoint does not work correctly with firefox on purpose. Its wiki functionality is an after thought. All kinds of additional features nobody use. But it does appeal to managers.
Instiki can be up and running in less than a minute and MediaWiki has everything you could need. Sharepoint annoyed most people on our team so nobody wanted to use it which meant a lot of knowledge was lost.
Which version of SharePoint are you using WSS 3.0/MOSS 2007 includes both wiki and blog functionality.
Although the SharePoint wiki isn't as feature-rich as most, the fact is that if your developers would not update a SharePoint wiki, chances are that they would not update any other kind, either.
I recommend creating a SharePoint wiki, and then actually reading the starting page, where it gives the definition of wikiwiki. I recommend only using a wiki (of any kind) for documents that can be written quickly, so that developers can get back to developing as soon as possible. Let the structure and accuracy grow over time. Just get the facts into the wiki quickly.
Wikis offer workflows, Document management and more too. I would disagree with those who say you can't do this in a wiki. Check out Confluence by Atlassian
Related
I'm looking for a page that provides a good, fairly basic and brief, end-user targeted overview of the capabilities of Sharepoint 2010, and another that does the same for Sharepoint 2013. I searched microsoft.com and couldn't really find much. Most of what I found was based on the assumption that the reader was familiar with Sharepoint already and was upgrading from an older version. I was hoping to find something for folks new to Sharepoint, checking it out for the very first time. Something kind of like a product info sheet that you'd see in a trade show booth, maybe.
Any pointers to something along these lines would be appreciated.
Background:
I work for a large university, and we offer Google Apps, Box, and Sharepoint (2010 now, 2013 soon) as options to support collaborative projects. I'm trying to help our user community understand the different capabilities of and optimal use cases for each tool. I've found good overview material for Box and Google Apps, but I'm getting stuck finding this for Sharepoint. And -- as luck would have it -- our users tend to be the least familiar with Sharepoint.
It's often hard to find decent information about SharePoint on the internet.. ;)
Maybe some of these links will help, but most probably you have already seen them all:
http://www.slideshare.net/pointbeyond/comparison-webinar3
http://sharepointpromag.com/blog/sharepoint-2010-vs-sharepoint-2013-small-step-or-big-jump
http://www.rharbridge.com/?page_id=966 [from a technical point of view]
http://www.fpweb.net/sharepoint-server-2013/features/end-user/
http://www.cmswire.com/cms/social-business/sharepoint-2013-social-features-highlights-019624.php
http://office.microsoft.com/en-001/sharepoint/sharepoint-2013-overview-collaboration-software-features-FX103789323.aspx [collaboration feature overview - and it's official! ;)]
JFYI: there are also a couple of frameworks and platforms available which improve the social capabilities, for example MatchPoint Snow is one I have heard of.
Update:
Ok, if you're willing to actually convince people to use SharePoint, try following query - I think there are some good results there (but maybe there also too tech-targeted): https://www.google.ch/#q=why%20should%20i%20use%20sharepoint
For example:
http://www.rackspace.com/knowledge_center/whitepaper/6-things-every-manager-should-know-about-microsoft-sharepoint
http://www.degdigital.com/blog/why-sharepoint-2013-considerations-for-your-platform-selection/
http://newsletter.stc-carolina.org/How+to+Encourage+Good+Use+of+SharePoint
I work for a large organization and we have been utilizing SharePoint for document library. Yesterday my boss called me to his office and asked me:
"I heard that SharePoint is an ECM! So what can it do for us?".
"What kind of problem do you want us to solve utilizing SharePoint?", I replied.
"I want to know what it means when they say it is a ECM and how it can help us?", He said.
I told him it has Document Management, WorkFlow, Records Management, Search and some other stuff.
Anywho, He wants me to put togetter a list of things that SharePoint offers as an ECM.
You might find some useful info on the MS ECM team's blog.
Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server has a substantial content management system available. What was previously Microsoft Content Management Server was discontinued and that functionality was put under the Sharepoint umbrella. Usually this is referring to web content, but it can honestly be any kind of content relevant to an enterprise. It is intended to be a direct competitor to all the major WCMS out there, focused especially on the enterprise (governance, auditing, security model, etc).
That having been said, the current iteration of MOSS's EWCM pretty much blows. If you can develop your CM strategy to be parallel to MOSS, it can work out OK, otherwise it's much more pain than it's worth. Use SP for document management and use something else for content management.
Sharepoint is a collaboration platform restricted to a windows environment
Give Alfresco communities (labs) a go is my opinion here as it 'acts' as a Sharepoint server so Microsoft Office suite will not notice the difference but your wallet will...
Er... think the boss got a bit too much $$$ to spend. But really, an't we supposed to deploy a technical solution to solve a business problem.
The list of features can be found at
http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/product/capabilities/Pages/default.aspx
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I'm starting a new job involving Sharepoint design/development. While the job will involve training courses on Sharepoint and other technologies I haven't used, I am interested to get a headstart and learn a little more about Sharepoint.
Are there any good articles explaining Sharepoint development and what I need to know (being a beginner in the technology)? I am strong with C# and ASP.NET as I use it everyday (job or no job), it's just the Sharepoint specific stuff I wonder. I am checking out MSDN. I did check out some other threads on this, but I am not really looking for a book.
A better question would be what blogs are there which focus on code snippets and best practises?
Thanks
There are lots of SharePoint virtual labs. They are good b/c they let you get your hands on the technology without too much of the setup hassle. :)
http://www.microsoft.com/click/SharePointDeveloper/html/Default.html
This site has the information I started with when learning SharePoint: webcasts from TechEd by Andrew Connell and Rob Bogue and the hands-on-labs that go along with them.
There are very many SharePoint MVPs that have blogs that are easy to find and many of them hang around on twitter so it's easy to get help.
http://andrewconnell.com/blog/archive/2008/11/25/Free-MSDN-Webcasts-amp-HOLs-for-MOSS-2007-WCM-Development.aspx has info on some newer webcasts
http://www.sharepointpodshow.com/ and http://www.methings.com/podcast/70342/MOSS-Gone-Wild.php
are 2 excellent SharePoint Podcasts.
A few months ago I was looking for decent SharePoint articles just to get an introduction to the technology. I found an entire section on CodeProject dedicated to it. Check it out if you haven't already, I found a number of good articles there.
Also, check out the SharePoint dev wiki
In addition to all the links provided by others:
Microsoft has a Best Practices Resource Center for SharePoint Server 2007 on Technet
The official SharePoint Team Blog has some good info.
Sharepoint Joel has a list of Top 100 SharePoint blogs, though a year old provides a good starting point of blogs to look at.
Several MSDN articles such as:
Disposal Best Practices
Common Coding Issues using the SharePoint Object Model
Edit: Also just noticed that the Patterns & Practices team has a SharePoint Guidance project on codeplex.
Sharepoint was a disaster for me (as I've said before), but I'd be willing to give it another try once .Net 4.0 and VS 2010 are released.
I would definitely download the VS 2010 beta and give the new Sharepoint integration a spin. I hear that it is a big improvement over what we have now.
As for documentation, msdn was the best learning resource I could find. It was more concise than what you will get with most books, although books usually provide a storyline and cohesive progression of learning.
Hope that helps, Good luck.
Codeplex is good for examples of developement. Given the rate of change with "best practices" I have seen some books that have become out of date quite rapidly.
I personally have gained a lot of valuable knowledge from looking at questions on forums like this one, trying to replicate the issue on a developement VM. I would recommend having a VM for "play" as hands on will run you up against many of the strengths and weaknesses with different approaches.
If you can get a backup of an existing content database you are using, having lots of documents and document libraries is good for hitting real data and trying out different search configurations etc.
One additional site you shouldn't forget is myrampup.com. It's a community-based training site which will help you get the knowledge you need to develop solutions on the SharePoint platform.
Before learning SharePoint development, learn what SharePoint can do. Use it and become familiar with its features. Many people's first thought is to develop new features when much of what they want to do can be done with existing SharePoint features. It's a huge, complex product.
I've found some very good videos for learning Sharepoint at Point8020
Very good reference for SharePoint Object Model:
http://www.etechplanet.com/post/2009/08/28/Overview-of-SharePoint-Object-Model.aspx
A good starting resource is the Microsoft RampUp Site it's a free resource that has 2 tracks for SharePoint for developers. Each track consists of articles, slide casts and virtual labs to help you gain an understanding of what goes into developing for SharePoint. They are not all inclusive but it should give you a good starting point.
There is also a user centric overview on the Microsoft Office Site for SharePoint 2007 that can help get you an understanding of some of the features in SharePoint.
I don't know if any of the resources have been update yet for SharePoint 2010, but hopefully those will follow soon.
Also check Microsoft Learning with SharePoint 2010 around the corner you might find free courses. Microsoft usually releases free online courseware for new products around the time of release.
For uo to date announcements check out the SharePoint Team blog, usually there's lots of good information around there.
Good Luck.
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I'm trying to wrap my head around SharePoint. Why is it good? Why is it bad?
At a glance it appears to offer some incredible collaboration tools. However, the cost looks astronomical and it seems to be rigid & difficult to customize.
To those who've worked with SharePoint; please describe something good and something bad about it.
Pros:
Document management is its most well-known
function and integrates extremely
well with Office 2007.
Create group calendars that can be
overlayed onto your personal Outlook
and managed on the web.
Notifications in response to certain
actions on the group website
Wiki-type functionality with full
integration into the Office stack.
Full database backend which gives
you the reliability and safety of a
true RDBMS.
Extremely customizable if you choose
to develop custom websites using
ASP.NET (not the built-in wizard/gui
editor).
Form-data collection
Cons:
Freebie version is somewhat limited
on customization.
How to handle multiple editors to a
single file is not obvious.
Workflow for offline editing of
documents is non-obvious.
Very steep learning curve to use it
the right way.
Getting people to use it is like
getting people to go to the dentist.
Out-of-the-box templates don't do a
lot.
Customizing without writing code
really limits your options.
Integration with older versions of
office is ugly
Mac integration is non-existant (has
this changed recently?)
It has pretty good Office 2007 integration. As an example, Excel understands when you have a file checked out and will let you check it in (with comments) when you close it. The document management features simplistic version control (although it's not required; you can go with a single version for each file).
In SharePoint, everything is essentially a list internally and it's very easy to create a custom one. On a related note, I haven't used either yet, but it supposedly works well with workflows and InfoPath.
On the downside, it's pretty much a resource beast. It requires multiple machines with powerful specs, particularly if you want to "really" use it for document management and to be the backbone of your intranet/internet site. It scales to an extent, but it's not pretty from my vantage point.
Customizing it presents it's own challenges. You really need people focused on it full time, as both administration and customization require their own impressive learning curves.
Lastly, some of the out of the box parts are poorly implemented. The wiki is a prime example; it's basically useless in my opinion. So one thing to keep in mind is that some may consider SharePoint as a whole package as "best in class" (not saying I do!), its individual features often are not.
Good
Out of the box, it offers a ton of functionality and power, even for the stock web parts. Just creating a library of documents that anyone can open/edit/upload to is simple...even for those non-web-savvy amongst us.
Bad
Pretty much everything else.
The "Discussion Board" is a glorified Outlook email chain.
The disconnect between achieving similar results in SharePoint Designer 2007 and using the web interface are jarring and annoying
Attempting to customize the look and feel of a SharePoint site usually ends in complete disaster. Especially with WSS 3.0.
The nickel & diming scheme between the WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 tiers is absolutely painful; WSS 3.0 is just barely functional enough to be extremely frustrating to use
Changing MS styles is almost impossible due to their horribly-laid-out and obnoxiously large CSS file.
IT IS 2009...GET RID OF THE TABLES FOR NON-TABULAR DATA ALREADY!
It's a beast to use. And handing two complete rebranding projects for two totally different areas of the company is driving me to the point of a nervous breakdown. Especially when opening the core.css file occasionally results in all the styles I've redefined getting reset to the defaults. Without anything done by me other than just OPENING the file. And there is no ability to undo these changes.
Good thing: Great communication tool. Instead of sending out a company wide email you can post an announcement to your SharePoint site. Users can subscribe to an RSS feed of the announcements or have a email alert sent to them when the list is updated.
Bad thing: Error messages displayed on a SharePoint site are generic and the link to help resolve the issue rarely is of any help.
Good:
It can be a great collaboration tool. Beginning developing for sharepoint is simple, assuming you are familar with ASP.NET webparts.
Bad:
The development lifecycle isn't fully implemented. There are no built-in facilities for testing, among other things.
SharePoint is evolving and becoming a better collaboration tool for Microsoft Office environments. It plays well in a small to medium sized business setting. It is critical to implement “best practices” on setup; otherwise it will quickly become a nightmare to maintain and to use.
For “best practices” here are two books that I recommend for SharePoint 2007:
Essential SharePoint 2007
Sharepoint 2007
A lot of the cool things in Sharepoint are avaialable in Windows Sharepoint Services 3.0, which is free with windows server 2003/2008. All you need extra is a license for SQL Server 2000 and later, which most mirosoft shops have. In WSS you can do document management, workflows, custom sites, blogs, wiki's, etc.
If you need Excel Services, Forms Server, CMS, or some of the other MOSS features, then that's another thing. And yes, it does cost a lot of money, but it' cheaper than doing it from scratch in most cases.
Pluses:
- Great object model.
- A lot of good features just come out of the box.
Minuses:
- Steap learning curve to do things the right way.
- It's very easy to hang yourself by doing things the wrong way.
- Debugging and deployment is about as pleasurable as root canal.
good :
A lot of things can be done. Wokflowks, InfoPath forms, Excel Services, Business Data Catalogs and etc.
Bad :
You won't be able to do these described easily. Must have sharepoint administrative and development skills for good solutions that don't improve quickly.
If you have a license for Microsoft Server 2003 then you can install the standalone version of Sharepoint for FREE!
Download Sharepoint
The install is very simple when using the internal database.
Microsoft Office Sharepoint Designer 2007 is a must have for any customization.
I have created a couple Company Intranets using Sharepoint and have been very pleased with its features.
Microsoft Office 2007 interfaces nicely with sharepoint.
I have found Sharepoint to be very powerful and easy to learn. There are lots of people developing sites using sharepoint. The level of customization is awesome. The simplest customization is done in your browser, the next level is using Microsoft Sharepoint Designer 2007, and finally using Visual Studio to create new apps(webparts).
Are there any blogs, guides, checklists, or controls we should be using to ensure our SharePoint implementation is accessible?
Preferrably to the W3C double A standard, or as close to that as we can get.
We're implementing an extranet solution.
This study has already been funded by Microsoft, and unfortunately the results only seem to be online in a Word Document.
The document is hosted on this blog:
http://blog.mastykarz.nl/best-practices-for-developing-accessible-web-sites-in-microsoft-office-sharepoint-server-2007/
And the path to the document is here:
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=121877
I'm unsure on whether it would be a good thing to copy the contents of that into here to fully answer the question in a way that will be indexed by search engines, but I'll play safe as it's not my content.
The best place to start is the Accessibility Kit for Sharepoint. With this, you may reach single A standard, but in my experience, you will find it very tough to reach AA.
Microsoft didn't factor in accessibility in Sharepoint, and even 2007 suffers from a huge overdependence on table layout.
Good luck!
How are you deploying the implementation? Is it as an Intranet, or, is it as a public facing website.
I think one of the first rules is to be extremely selective with the use of out of the box web parts. Many of the web-parts I looked at weren't compliant even on a basic level.
Andrew
The best way is to run checks as you develop so you know where your pain points are.
The next step maybe to start with a minimal masterpage so you can choose what elements are presented to the user.
More advanced you can override the render methods to remove or change bits of the page that are not compliant with your checks. EG changing the case of tags (XHTML does not like all caps)
A bit more in this guide.
http://techtalkpt.wordpress.com/2008/06/18/building-accessible-sharepoint-sites-part-1/
http://techtalkpt.wordpress.com/2008/08/07/building-accessible-sharepoint-sites-part-2/
I recently read the MOSS book by Andrew Connell (www.andrewconnell.com) and it has a chapter dedicated to accessibility and SharePoint sites.
Simply put SharePoint sites are very difficult to generate W3C AAA standards, but the Accessibility Kit is one of the best starting points.
Stronly recommend his book for this chapter (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0470224754?tag=andrewconnell-20&camp=14573&creative=327641&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=0470224754&adid=18S6FKQJR5FZK56WHH6A&)
It depends how much of Sharepoint out of the box you are intending to use. In implementing our public facing site we managed to achieve AA compliance, although the amount of custom development required has raised questions over the benefits we are actually gaining from using Sharepoint in the first place.
A few pointers:
We made heavy use of SPQuery/SPSiteDataQuery to render site data to screen using xslt which gave us full control over the output. I found this link helpful:
http://blog.thekid.me.uk/archive/2007/02/25/xml-results-using-spsitedataquery-in-sharepoint.aspx
Check out RadEditor for Sharepoint for a nice accessible rich text editor for publishing.
For xhtml compliance, things were a little more tricky, we had to override most of the Sharepoint publishing controls' render methods to correct dodgy output.
If you are wanting to leverage the portal like capabilites of Sharepoint in your extranet it is more problematic. The web part framework is not accessible and I have not yet found a way to make it so. Any suggestions welcome!