Microsoft Office SharePoint Server Reviews

I'm a product development manager and we are resellers of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server. 

I like the collaboration, the ability for multiple users to work on a single document and be able to firstly collaborate and share notes about the document, as well as being able to work on the document without losing the information. Previously, there was little control over who had the latest document and this was a big challenge for us, trying to consolidate all of the aspects together. This provides a way for us to work together. It's really important, collaboration is one of the key reasons we have the software.

The areas around security, such as protection and things like that have not been available, and I think the product could be improved in that area, particularly when you are scanning documents from the scanners for sharing. IBM has got the capability in their content management solution, but SharePoint doesn't have it. It's an area where the competition already has those features, so including it would go a long way to ensuring that the software is at least above the requirements. 

I'd like to see security protection as an additional feature. I'd also like to see features on AI, on artificial intelligence. I know IBM has a product and their mobile capture application that is scalable on Android, so iOS uses the AI to really help you capture a document using your phone. So whenever you're taking the photo of the document, AI is available to crop through the document to auto-check for you, and it captures the angle for that document just using your phone. It uses AI to read documents such as invoices, and it's able to auto-capture your invoice number, the date, etc. All of this is AI-enabled, so it is AI that is reading the invoice and getting key parameters from the document such as the invoice number, the date, the purchase amount, and it populates this in the content management. This is a feature that I'd really like to see in SharePoint, and their use of AI to help in content management terms.

I've been using this solution for about four years. 

It's a stable product. 

It's a scalable solution but the competition also has software that's really scalable. That's all I can compare it to. 

We generally get our support from a different business partner and not from Microsoft directly. From Microsoft, the support normally takes longer than we need and it's not a route we appreciate. We prefer getting support from an IBM business partner, it takes less time. 

Of course the price could be lower. The competition has a much more expensive product, but in terms of the features that are available, they also offer more. In my opinion, the price of SharePoint is fine because it's relative to what the competition has and in terms of the features the competition is offering. Here in Africa, cost is a big factor in making decisions. I would say almost 70% of organizations will look at cost first, and then probably 25% will look at the features the product offers. The cost is really a big factor. Then there's the question of whether it's open sourced.

Given the amount of time I've spent using enterprise product management solutions, Microsoft really ensures that their software is easy to use. There is readily available documentation. Support can take a while and we had to pay for it from another source, but the knowledge base for the product is really good. The community around the products is great, not just locally but even on the internet. You find user groups and communities that are using the application. 

I would rate this solution an eight based on how easy it is to use.

Our primary use cases are document archiving, revision control, and workflows.

This solution has provided us with a collaborative workspace to allow everyone to work together and be on the same page.

The most valuable feature is the ease of use and learning.

I would like to see more Agile techniques and seamless integration with other applications.

I have been using this SharePoint Server for five years.

We primarily use the solution for document sharing and collaboration.

I couldn't name a specific improvement to our organization because of this solution.

The forms aspect of the solution, for example, the creation of surveys, is its most valuable aspect.

The search feature needs improvement. I can never find the information I need when I use it.

They need a well-implemented Wiki engine. What they have now doesn't really comply to what I would expect from a Wiki platform.

The stability is good. I've never had issues with it.

I can't really speak to scalability, because I haven't tried to scale it, but I don't think it would be a problem to do so. We currently have over 500 employees at our organization using the solution. We don't plan to increase usage anytime soon.

I've never had any interactions with technical support.

The initial setup is complex. Coming from a standard deployment, you still need to take significant steps to make it really shine within your organization. You need to implement it in a certain way to make it useable.

We use the cloud deployment model of the solution.

I'm not that big a fan of SharePoint, so there isn't too much that I really like about it.

My advice to those considering implementation would be to really know for what purpose you would like to use the platform and not just install it and start using it. You need to understand it and plan things out beforehand.

I'd rate the solution three out of ten. With the complexity and performance, it's hard to work with. In our case, it may be because of the way it's been implemented. In general, my experience with SharePoint is not great. 

SharePoint should choose a more specific direction and not try to be the toolbox for every kind of solution that users want. That the solution thinks it needs to cover everything means that users have to do a lot of configuration before it complies with what they really need. The solution needs to be more specific and narrow the scope of usage. 

The most valuable features for us are their document management list and hybrid forms. We also use third-party add-ons to achieve workflows and other recent apps.

One of the reasons why we don't recommend the cloud version of SharePoint is the cost. With the on-premise version, you pay for the license once. For the cloud version, there is a recurring fee.

The truth is there are some places where SharePoint is pretty decent for the thing that it does. Microsoft has a very good product. It's difficult to find room for improvement because you can get add-ons that support it. With SharePoint, if you are not subscribed to the SharePoint environment libraries, you can probably get third party tools that you can add on to it. It's difficult to see other tools that allow people to collaborate on documents and data in these libraries. 

I think these tools do a pretty good job. There is only one area of improvement. Maybe Microsoft can invest a little bit more into the ease at which integration can be done with other third-party applications.

I know that Microsoft released SharePoint 2016, but I don't know if there is SharePoint 2019. We have only worked with the higher version of SharePoint since 2013. I don't know how much they have done in the area of integration. I think integration is a very important area of focus for SharePoint because it's very easy for SharePoint to become the go-to area, where everybody in your organization can come. Your costs, documents, sites, lists, and data can all be in one place. I would like to see them make it easier for people who are not using Exchange to connect to different data sources.

For example, a lot of people are using Google Apps. If I'm using Google Apps, there are plugins that we can just plug into SharePoint automatically to share documents and Google spreadsheets seamlessly. A Google spreadsheet can be imported into a SharePoint library. You can also point a SharePoint library to a Google spreadsheet, or the data source coming out of Google spreadsheet.

Integration also should include tools like Tableau, Salesforce, and some of the top software out there. It's not good enough to have website integration. That's not enough. You want to make an integration where Microsoft can build a wizard and you can just click a few times to create the integration. Then, just enter your username and password and point to the URL.
Those custom integrations are crucial, especially for smaller businesses. For large organizations that are deploying SharePoint in the enterprise, they already have an IT department, resources, and tons of administrators. They already have resources that can quickly build web services, called drivers or connectors. For small organizations, however, it would be good for Microsoft to invest in connectors. Microsoft can build and provide connectors for some of the more frequently used integrations, such as PayPal, Google Apps, Salesforce, SAP, etc. I think that would be great.

There is another area that Microsoft can improve on. I don't know what they have done with InfoPath. I think that's still a mystery. There's still a very big opportunity for form development and apps development framework that you can use quickly. Otherwise, Microsoft is telling everybody to go and buy two licenses to do serious forms of development. I think that's going to be a problem. I know that they're trying to encourage their partners to build those tools. However, workflows and easier to use and more robust forms infrastructure on top of SharePoint would go a long way. It is very expensive. They expect everyone to pay $20 or $30 per user per month. Microsoft can definitely help if they can build some of those capabilities, especially for people that want to invest in SharePoint. You're not investing much in to get some of the functionalities out.

We've been using this solution for eight years.

Most of our customers are enterprise customers. For enterprise customers deploying SharePoint, the setup is quite complex. If you don't know what you're doing, you can get yourself into trouble very quickly if you have a lot of data or users. It's very simple when you have a pair of small deployments. Then you can just click next a couple of times to engineer a solution. It's quite complex, however, if you have lots of users or you have terabytes of content. If you have a complex deployment, it gets very tricky and you have to get people who know what they're doing to be able to deploy even though there are challenges.

That's another big problem with Microsoft SharePoint because there was nobody to warn us and tell us at the beginning that, for enterprise deployment, we needed to think very carefully about certain things. It took us some time to build the competencies to understand the tricky areas. We had to learn what to do about performance and so many different things on an enterprise level.

The bottom line is that SharePoint is indeed for complex deployments. You just have to get the right team to be able to deploy it properly.

It's difficult to rate in general because there are so many different parts of SharePoint. As a personal collaboration, I would rate it as eight out of ten.

The most valuable features are:

• Document management
• Version control
• Workflows
• Templates for generating sites

This product has improved the way our organization functions in the following manner:

• We are provided with policies and procedures for administration.
• We can store all the documentation related to all IT projects.
• We have developed some workflows for automating licensing requests and other type of requests.

I think that it can be improved in terms of security, to manage roles and better performance.

We have used this product for at least five years.

I have not encountered any deployment issues.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

I would give the customer service a 7/10 rating.

I would give the technical support a 7/10 rating.

We previously used IBM Lotus Notes applications.

This tool was implemented by our in-house team.

Before choosing this product, we considered continuing with IBM Lotus Notes.

Try to define a simple structure in regards to the sites and try to organize it in a homogeneous way.

The solution's most valuable features is its document management. It allows sharing with external users and integrates well with Office apps and Microsoft Flow.

The interface is okay for the type of work users do on it.

The licensing needs to be improved, especially when there are a lot of users. It's okay if there are a handful of users, but when there are 20 or 30, paying monthly for all of these licenses is difficult.

The solution needs to enable better sharing capabilities between users and external users. Several users also have problems with linking their emails to their Microsoft account.

The solution is mostly stable. If the service is not available, it's only for a few minutes and will restore without any intervention needed from our side.

We can help our customers scale easily. It's not a problem for them, because they are small and medium-sized companies.

Techincal support is good. I am able to open cases through the partnership channel to Microsoft and they solve any problems we have. I don't have issues dealing with them.

The initial setup is straightforward. Deployment takes anywhere from two weeks to a month.

I've been using the solution for four years. We use the public cloud deployment model. There's no on-premises deployment model. We are a Microsoft partner and typically work with small and medium-sized companies (about 50-80 employees).

Normally I recommend this product. However, there are others in the market that could offer the same capabilities or the same features, but at the same cost without a license.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

We primarily use the solution as a personalized interface for the corporate internet portal.

The workflow is very rudimentary. We use the intensive workflows. However, these need to be improved. Microsoft may be coming up with a new flow currently, but I'm not sure. I'm hoping Microsoft will have all emphasis on WorkflowMax because the one we currently have is very rudimentary.

The solution needs to be more collaborative. I believe they are just coming up with the themes for this right now. 

The solution is more or less stable. You need to manage it carefully. If it's managed then it remains stable.

The solution is scalable. You can do both horizontal and vertical scaling.

I'd rate the solution five out of ten. 

They're not as focused on ECM, and I try to think holistically, which is why I gave them such a rating. They're not made as an ECM solution, but I think more as an internet portal. They need to put more emphasis on the ECM part.