Delivery Director at Ciber, Inc
Real User
A central repository for artifacts

What is our primary use case?

Project management activities.

How has it helped my organization?

A central repository for artifacts, and planning for corporate projects.

What is most valuable?

Libraries, lists, and reporting.

What needs improvement?

Better wiki offerings.

Buyer's Guide
SharePoint
May 2024
Learn what your peers think about SharePoint. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2024.
772,277 professionals have used our research since 2012.

For how long have I used the solution?

More than five years.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user631614 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technology Architect at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Some of the valuable features are collaboration, DLP, and the search capability.

What is most valuable?

Collaboration, DLP, and the search capability are some of the features I like the most.

How has it helped my organization?

It has improved our productivity to a great extent with its great collaboration features. Previously, business users were sharing documents through emails while different people contributed to the same document. This created a lot of confusion, such as:

  • Issues with merging changes from some users
  • No tracking of changes
  • Version management

The business users had to spend a lot of time to get this to closure. SharePoint has helped a great deal in this space.

What needs improvement?

  • UX
  • Performance (especially Office 365): This is an issues when the sites are accessed from Asia/Australia, which is bad compared to accessing from the USA
  • The mobile experience

For how long have I used the solution?

I have worked with this platform/tool for more than eight years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The current version is very stable compared to versions 2007 and 2010.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

There are some performance issues with respect to the amount of data that has to be stored.

How are customer service and technical support?

The technical support is very good.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have seen customers using other tools and switching to SharePoint. Technology upgrades and feature upgrades are the key reasons for this.

How was the initial setup?

The setup is complex, as you need to consider lots of things for the farm design.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The pricing is good. I have heard that MS gives very good deals on volume licensing.

What other advice do I have?

It's a good tool, but be prepared to adapt to the new way of working with SharePoint and Office 365. They bring their own new features which are very good, but you will experience a learning curve.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
SharePoint
May 2024
Learn what your peers think about SharePoint. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2024.
772,277 professionals have used our research since 2012.
PeerSpot user
IT & PMO Manager at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees
Vendor
Integrates with Office 365 and Active Directory. We went with it because of it's familiarity to our users.

What is most valuable?

Integration with Office 365 and Active Directory, and access from all our company users as part of the Office 365 licenses. Also, hassle free access from mobile devices to sites, forms, and lists, with powerful content search and preview.

How has it helped my organization?

We use it for all intensive document sharing business units and especially for document versioning control (quality control area in manufacturing). We also use the online forms (Infopath) to automate simple procedures in conjunction with Microsoft Flow..

What needs improvement?

The cloud-local file synchronization application (OneDrive for Business). It is not as simple as expected, but it works.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used SharePoint since 2013. From on-premise to the online version.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

Sharepoint Online is a mature product.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We have had no issues with stability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have had no issues with scalability, but you must buy additional storage if you use the given amount within your tenant (enterprise plans: 1 TB + .5 GB per subscribed user).

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

The customer service is very good.

Technical Support:

Technical support is really good; fast responses and good resolutions within the standard included support.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We used SharePoint 2010 on premise. We switched due to the license cost and to give access to all our company users. Also, because SPO was included in the Office 365 plans. As a SaaS, it is always up to date.

How was the initial setup?

Setup was not complex at all. We used third party tools to migrate productive sites and the new sites were created easily. The main difficulty is user adoption. It must be done with a lot of workshops.

What about the implementation team?

We implement through a Microsoft Partner. The expertise was very high.

What was our ROI?

No ROI calculation, but today we have almost all of our procedures online - paperless office.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

You can always make a good deal with Microsoft, especially shortly before the end of their fiscal year (July).

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We did a business case and technical evaluation of Google Apps and Office 365. The winner was Office 365 due to user familiarity.

What other advice do I have?

It is always good to start with a special need in a business unit and show quick wins to other units, as part of the adoption plan.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Senior SharePoint Architect at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Consultant
It provides a platform for documentation management, BI, and supports mobile devices.

What is most valuable?

How has it helped my organization?

Global accessibility over O365 increased the collaboration within the organization.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used it for more than 11 years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I have not encountered any stability issues, as such.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

There were scalability issues with SP 2013, but MS made some improvements in SP 2016.

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support from MS is great, especially in the cloud area.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We were previously using a custom solution that was hard to maintain and there was also lack of user adoption. With SP, we were able to see great improvement in those areas.

How was the initial setup?

Initial setup was straightforward.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Go for O365 plans that have different pricing as per business needs.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

From the beginning, I was in favour of SharePoint. However, for customers, we have evaluated solutions such as Liferay, Sitecore, Drupal, etc.

What other advice do I have?

For enterprise global collaboration, DMS, and ECM needs, this is the right platform.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: My company is a Microsoft Gold partner.
PeerSpot user
it_user326337 - PeerSpot reviewer
it_user326337Customer Success Manager at PeerSpot
Consultant

Sunny, can you elaborate on the scalability issues that you've experienced, especially the ones where you've seen improvements over time?

PeerSpot user
Data Expert with 51-200 employees
Vendor
What is SkyDrive Pro in SharePoint 2013

With the release of SharePoint 2013 came a new feature that has proven to confuse almost everyone, SkyDrive Pro. The confusion lies with another Microsoft product called SkyDrive that is completely unrelated to SharePoint. Confused as well? You’re not the only one and you shouldn’t feel bad about it, I have talked with people that make a living with SharePoint who are just as confused. I am writing this to answer some of the many questions I get when speaking on SharePoint 2013 “What People want from SharePoint 2013”.

First, there was SkyDrive

Let’s start with the one everyone knows, SkyDrive. SkyDrive is free to the public; anyone can have a SkyDrive account it is usually attached to your Hotmail, Live or Outlook.com account.

SkyDrive is a place somewhere in the “cloud” as some would say. Essentially, a place where you can store your files without having to worry about it and Microsoft is taking care of the storage for you. A competitor to the very popular service called Dropbox.

 

What is SkyDrive Pro in SharePoint 2013

If we try to simply the service, because I could write quite a bit just on SkyDrive, you can put your files there and share them with others. After adding your files on SkyDrive, you assign “Public”, “View” or “View and Edit” permissions and generate a hyperlink for people to access the files or folders. You do have 7GB of storage, though you can always purchase more. There are a few other fun features like commenting on files and folders but this is not the focus of my article.

Do you remember the SharePoint “My Sites”?

These became popular with SharePoint 2010 though in many cases, it wasn’t really used to its full potential. The same goes for SharePoint 2007 where it was even less popular. The way I see it, My Sites is the new “My Documents” found on our computers.

In SharePoint 2013, we still have the concept of My Sites.

What is SkyDrive Pro in SharePoint 2013

SharePoint My Sites:

If activated, it allows users in your organization to have a “personal” environment, so to speak. It creates a SharePoint Site Collection for every user that uses a My Site. This Site Collection comes with a few things including a Blog subsite, a Tasks List and of course… a Document Library.

Teaser: This Document Library is what some confuse with “SkyDrive Pro”.

The SkyDrive link in the Top Bar of SharePoint 2013

So why did I talk about the My Sites earlier if we are covering SharePoint 2013 SkyDrive Pro exactly? Well, we established that when you create a My Site as a user, you get your own Site Collection, which includes a Site with a Documents Library amongst other things. The SkyDrive hyperlink at the top is just a link to this Document Library.

What is SkyDrive Pro in SharePoint 2013

If you look at this screenshot, you’ll notice that after I clicked on the SkyDrive link, I arrived to my so-called “SkyDrive Pro” which, if we look at the url, really just is my Document Library. Here is the fun part, this is still not SkyDrive Pro, all it is, is a hyperlink with the name SkyDrive to a personal Document Library.

SkyDrive Pro – The document synchronization service

SkyDrive Pro is not really something that comes with SharePoint 2013. It actually comes with Microsoft Office 2013 and very recently as a standalone download from the Microsoft site.

Let’s take the Document Library in our personal My Site for example, which is called SkyDrive Pro in many places. SharePoint 2013 has a new “Sync” button that tells your installed SkyDrive Pro to launch and sync with this document library to make the documents available offline and on your desktop.

What is SkyDrive Pro in SharePoint 2013

Once you click on it, SkyDrive Pro will launch

What is SkyDrive Pro in SharePoint 2013

and will allow you to Sync this Document Library to the specified location.

The result:

What is SkyDrive Pro in SharePoint 2013

So is this SkyDrive Pro?

Well this is what I am trying to explain; SkyDrive Pro isn’t a specific Document Library or place in SharePoint. It’s the service that runs on your computer that does the Sync job for you. You can even launch SkyDrive Pro from the start menu. 

What is SkyDrive Pro in SharePoint 2013

SkyDrive Pro can be used with almost every Document Library

Right now we established that there is a public service called SkyDrive and that there is also a link called SkyDrive in SharePoint that actually points to your Document Library in your My Site. Then, we looked at a “Sync” button that launches your installed SkyDrive Pro service to Sync that Document Library to your Desktop.

But, what about other Document Libraries? 

The Sync button is contextual to the url or where you are when you click it. So if I go to my Team Site and click on Sync, it will want to Sync with the Document Library there. If I go to a specific Document Library and click on Sync, then it will want to Sync with that Library. Let’s see.

 

What is SkyDrive Pro in SharePoint 2013

The only difference with the Document Library from your My Site is that this one will not be stored under SkyDrive Pro in your Favorites but under SharePoint.

What is SkyDrive Pro in SharePoint 2013

But it’s still SkyDrive Pro on your computer doing everything and making it happen.

Prevent Document Libraries from being sync’ed with SkyDrive Pro

If you do not wish for a Document Library to be available to Sync through SkyDrive Pro, there is an option in the Advanced Settings of a Document Library.

What is SkyDrive Pro in SharePoint 2013

Once set to no, the Sync button for the Document Library will not longer be available.

What is SkyDrive Pro in SharePoint 2013

 

Launching SkyDrive Pro from your Computer

The SkyDrive Pro client on your computer can also be launched and used to browse your Site and available document Libraries.

Once launched, it will appear in your tray as an icon with blue clouds. You can use it to Sync to a new Library by right clicking and selecting “Sync a new Library”.

What is SkyDrive Pro in SharePoint 2013

This will launch a new menu where you can enter a SharePoint 2013 url and select a Document Library to Sync.

What is SkyDrive Pro in SharePoint 2013

Problem with the terminology and things to know

Let’s try to put everything we learned in an easy summarized view. 

SkyDrive: A free online service offered by Microsoft that lets you store and share files and folders. It has nothing to do with SharePoint. 

My Site: This is not SkyDrive Pro; it’s still your My Site which is a Site Collection owned by the User. 

SkyDrive Pro (the link): In SharePoint 2013 there is a link at the top called SkyDrive which points to the Document Library in your My Site. Once “Sync’ed” it will appear in your Computer by using the application SkyDrive Pro installed by Office 2013 or standalone. This Document Library will appear as “SkyDrive Pro” in your local “Favorites” which can lead to confusion.

The Real SkyDrive Pro: A synchronization service installed by Office 2013 or standalone from the Microsoft download site. Once installed it will allow you to Sync any Document Library from SharePoint 2013 or Office 365 to your Computer. These will then appear in your Windows Explorer under “Favorites”.

Things to know

SkyDrive Pro is not a Migration Tool: Just because you can drag and drop files to SharePoint using SkyDrive Pro does not mean it is a migration tool for content. You will want to preserve the authors and timestamps (created, created by, modified, modified by). This is something SkyDrive Pro will not do while copying your files.

Work Offline: When it Syncs your files from SharePoint 2013 to your Computer, the files are actually copied. This lets users work offline. SkyDrive Pro is the new Groove 2007 and SharePoint Workspace 2010 but simplified. 

Stopping a Sync: Important to know, especially for security reasons is that files that were copied by a Sync with SkyDrive Pro will stay on the users computer once the Sync is stopped.

The real challenge for you

You’ll have to see how you will take on this confusion within your own organization. Microsoft has opted to call the Document Library in your My Site “SkyDrive Pro” in hope to keep the confusion to a minimum no doubt. This would probably help users think of SkyDrive as the free service and SkyDrive Pro a similar service but with files and folders stored in their own corporate Document Library on SharePoint 2013 or even Office 365.

Everything will depend on how you bring this terminology in.  If you are migrating to SharePoint 2013 or Office 365 this is something you’ll want to make sure is understood beforehand by your Power Users.

I wrote this article because I saw a lot of confusion both online and during my conference sessions on SharePoint 2013. I wrote an article “What People want from SharePoint 2013” which covers many other questions and uncertainties I have noticed. You can also check out my comparison of SkyDrive Pro vs Dropbox.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user515928 - PeerSpot reviewer
SharePoint Architect at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Consultant
The search feature supports a range of hybrid on-premises and cloud configurations, with customizable display templates and refiners.

What is most valuable?

  • Document management supports a wide range of capabilities including cross-folder views, custom views, group-by views, versioning, alerts, MS Office integration, workflows, and very flexible permissioning.
  • Collaboration in general is quite capable, including calendars, tasks, custom lists, and the ability to easily view data from within MS Office, as well as the built-in apps support found in both cloud and on premises versions.
  • Search is exceptionally powerful, supporting a range of hybrid on-premises and cloud configurations, with customizable display templates and refiners.
  • The ability to leverage multi-level Taxonomy is useful for hierarchies, views, filters and navigation.
  • The out-of-the-box Workflow capabilities are good, and easily extensible with excellent third-party applications.
  • We found SharePoint makes an excellent framework for developing an intranet, with built-in support for multi-language versions that adapt to the user's preferred language.
  • SharePoint has several excellent available APIs for extension, customization and integration with LOB applications.

How has it helped my organization?

By creating a platform for collaboration, it empowers users to collaborate and work together on documents, tasks and calendars.

What needs improvement?

PowerShell for Office 365 is exceptionally limited. The CmdLets available for SharePoint Online are focused on site provisioning and permissioning, and do not include CmdLets for managing Items, documents, libraries, folders, default metadata, tagging, and views.

Development can be a challenge, especially as the development model and direction promoted by Microsoft rapidly evolves, and product components get deprecated. The App model is necessarily restrictive in what it allows to be done, in order to maintain the stability in the multi-tenancy environment. This leads to moving to either client-side object model development, or splitting the application with some functionality done on dedicated servers outside the cloud-based SharePoint environment.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used this solution for 14 years

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The early RTP versions can be buggy. There are always challenges with patches, but the product has improved over time.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The product is designed for scalability, except for the List View Threshold limitation.

How is customer service and technical support?

Technical support is poor. Microsoft makes it tough to get quality support.

How was the initial setup?

Initial setup is somewhat complex; it requires a professional for installation and configuration.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Cloud is the cheapest, but less flexible. The cost of the product is quite reasonable considering the feature set. The larger portion of the cost of the product is getting good professional help in shaping it to the organization's needs.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Before choosing this product, we explored alternatives such as Documentum from EMC (now spun off to OpenText), Slack, Box, Dropbox and even WordPress and Jive. However, for all-around capabilities that include not just document management, workflows, calendar, task management, blogging, calendars and overall business process management, we deemed SharePoint as the best overall.

WordPress for basic websites or Intranet is great, but there is no direct competitor for the full breadth of SharePoint. However, for narrow sets of functions, Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, Wedoist, Slack, and others offer competition.

What other advice do I have?

Get a real professional to work with your team. Ensure training and collaborative working with users is included in your deployment plan. Adoption is key.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user512340 - PeerSpot reviewer
it_user512340Management: Information and records at a non-tech company
Vendor

Hi
Where records are accessed from the cloud-host (more than one host), what do I need to do that will help upload to the local server or incorporate into local software (SharePoint)?
I have metadata and the born digital on cloud.
What are the risks?

it_user421563 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT admin at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Consultant
It's pretty easy to scale services when you require more performance.

What is most valuable?

SharePoint is the ideal platform in the collaboration scenario where is quite easy to set up document repositories with appropriate permissions with just few mouse clicks.

In a publishing/internet scenario, it has a powerful publishing infrastructure that allows editors to publish contents with predefined layouts in a quick and easy way, with features like scheduled publish and unpublish, caching for page load performance and multilingual site support.

The search capabilities empower the company to create new kinds of applications that in the past used to be implemented with a web/database application and now can be realized using SharePoint lists and libraries as a backend.

How has it helped my organization?

It helped us particularly with document digitalization, both from a repository standpoint and from a project documentation sharing and co-authoring perspective, with great integration with the MS Office suite.

It also helped us manage simple processes that used to be carried out through email and now are centralized in a single spot.

What needs improvement?

It would be nice if the platform made it easier to implement a complete document management process (digitalization, OCR, protocols, etc.) without the need to integrate software from different vendors.

For how long have I used the solution?

I’ve been using SharePoint for six years, including previous versions.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We have not really had stability issues, particularly in the 2013 version.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Once the guidelines and the hardware requirements are fulfilled, the performance result is in line with expectations. Beyond that, SharePoint 2013 has been created with scalability in mind, with all services deployable on an on-demand basis, independently, even on a dedicated machine. In addition, is pretty easy to scale services when you require more performance.

How are customer service and technical support?

Fortunately, we did not encounter major issues, but support has been generally good.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I did not use a previous solution.

How was the initial setup?

We used a consultancy company to set up the environment and everything has been deployed within the estimated time frame. The seamless integration with Active Directory made it easy to provide access to all company users.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Pricing is in line with other enterprise products. For a small company, the cloud version might be more suitable from a licensing cost standpoint. Bigger companies should take a decision based on the size of the IT department and the number of users involved, which can make an on-premises solution more convenient.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We thought about an open source solution, but the features and the support provided wasn’t sufficient to satisfy our organization’s needs.

What other advice do I have?

Like other products similar to this, it is very important to pay attention to employee’s training regarding the use of the platform. They should be prepared for the change. Otherwise, they would be tempted to reject it without evaluating properly the advantages.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
System Architect at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Consultant
It collaborates with other MS products. Network sharing is no longer required to store attached documents.

What is most valuable?

Collaboration with other Microsoft products has made SharePoint a real tool for us. You can use a personal OneDrive storage to share your own documents with others, but also use SharePoint sites to manage projects with external users.

How has it helped my organization?

All attachments are put under SharePoint. So, no more of network sharing is required to store documents. Document versioning is also a useful feature for our organization.

No need to worry any more about emails with attachments and obsolete versions with those attachments. People can edit an online version at the same time. You don’t have to save and send anything anymore.

Though Office 365 Groups is only partly based on SharePoint Online, it gives a great option to share team information with inside and outside users.

What needs improvement?

SharePoint Online is excellent as is, but licensing for the on-premises version is expensive.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this product for eight years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I have not encountered any stability issues. It is an excellent product if you don’t have to customize it too much.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

How are customer service and technical support?

I would rate the technical support level 9/10.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I did not use any other solutions prior to SharePoint and I would not change to another product either.

How was the initial setup?

Setup is very straightforward when you know the architecture.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I didn’t evaluate other products.

What other advice do I have?

Keep it simple. Make use of this product without huge amounts of custom applications and scripting.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: We are a Microsoft Gold partner.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free SharePoint Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: May 2024
Buyer's Guide
Download our free SharePoint Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.