Ask YC: Thoughts on MSFT Sharepoint?
Curious what everyone thinks of MSFT sharepoint. What do you think it does exactly? It's pretty vague
32 comments
I think it massively sucks. I work with it every day. It is a slow beast. It does have widgets for blogging and wiki pages, but even the simple task of blogging is painful with it. One of the things I've heard, but not explored myself, is that at the back-end is a giant SQL-ish database and every page and site created with it is something like a single record, so security administration is nightmare as it is not nearly granular enough. I'd like to learn otherwise. At the same time, it seems MS is committed to SharePoint, so I'm sure there will be ongoing improvements. Honestly, most of the time I'd rather have WordPress and a good Wiki in-house. At the same time, I think I'd be hard-pressed to identify a competitor to all SharePoint has to offer (workflow, document management, check-out/in, integration with instant messenger, etc.).
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I'd be hard-pressed to identify a competitor to all SharePoint has to offer (workflow, document management, check-out/in, integration with instant messenger, etc.).
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Er... Lotus Notes has been around for about 25 years, and has all that, and a lot more -- the fine-grained security you ask for, and replication, Java/VB integration and runs on about 6 different platforms including Windows. Even a small company of two people can have it up and running for a couple of hundred bucks. IBM's marketing is atrocious, but Notes is an incredibly secure and flexible product.
It actually does store everything in a huge MSSQL database behind the scenes. From an administrative standpoint this is wonderful because there is only one thing to back up.
Security is pretty good. You can usually set permissions on a per page or per item basis, but it's a pain to do so.
Security is pretty good. You can usually set permissions on a per page or per item basis, but it's a pain to do so.
I can assure you that backing up SharePoint is a bit more complicated than a single database backup. There's a bit of a left hand/right hand problem at Microsoft when it comes to this product. The SharePoint team seems to go out of their way to make SQL Server-based backups painful, and they ignore the high availability technologies built in to the DBMS. You'd think they were trying to be database agnostic.
It's quite easy to say 'SharePoint Sux' and move along. However after about 3-4 years of Sharepoint consulting, I feel qualified to say "Sharepoint can suck" :)
Sharepoint is pitched as the consumer facing glue for your enterprise.
You need document templates? You need to discuss a project? You need to collaborate about something? You need to have a workflow around tasks/forms/documents? You want a company portal for all information?
It is the definition of "Enterprise Software" and is pure overkill for the small business unless you are using the free WSS version that comes with Windows Server 2003.
That said, there are some very cool things that you can do with it when you integrate MOSS with Office 2007 like multiple shared calendars and task list integration.
You will have to ignore the magic behind the scenes though!
Oh... one more thing... skinning Sharepoint to something less than boxy is very difficult, especially if you have a large portal.
Sharepoint is pitched as the consumer facing glue for your enterprise.
You need document templates? You need to discuss a project? You need to collaborate about something? You need to have a workflow around tasks/forms/documents? You want a company portal for all information?
It is the definition of "Enterprise Software" and is pure overkill for the small business unless you are using the free WSS version that comes with Windows Server 2003.
That said, there are some very cool things that you can do with it when you integrate MOSS with Office 2007 like multiple shared calendars and task list integration.
You will have to ignore the magic behind the scenes though!
Oh... one more thing... skinning Sharepoint to something less than boxy is very difficult, especially if you have a large portal.
By SharePoint I'm assuming you mean Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007
I had a client last year that was looking into it, so I did a lot of research and playing around for them. I probably read about eight books on it. In addition, I wrote a small application that automates the hooking up of Sharepoint into other Enterprise datastores (like web services or DB2 databases) I also am using at my one of my large clients. I know a little about it.
Yes, it's a beast, but large-app software is like that, so everybody stop complaining. It also has fine-grained security, so that comment was off-base. I think the learning curve is too steep for Joe Blow the startup guy to use to it's maximum effectiveness. On the other hand, it does enough out of the box to make it an interesting option for small teams. The shared calendaring in Outlook and shared list management in Access make it attractive. Add in offline access with Groove, and learning just a few features can give a team a lot of power.
To really understand MOSS you have to realize that it is the future of Microsoft's platform: shove everything out onto the web, then write workflow and security and forms management and office integration into it. Office becomes more of a gateway to use SharePoint than a stand-alone product.
I know the first time I saw the workflow engine work _inside_ of Office docs I thought that was a pretty cool integration. Likewise, endusers being able to create their own web pages with live data from other systems? Neat. I can see a natural progression for a startup to begin with Groove, then graduate to MOSS once things start cooking. It would certainly be better than using a dozen other free apps that all do not interoperate -- as long as you don't eat up precious time fooling around with it. The whole point is to leverage the parts that work together naturally, not become a MOSS expert.
But the look of the thing? Butt-ugly. No getting around that. The UI is so bad it's hard to convince people that there is as much going on under the hood as there is.
In short, I'm not crazy about it, but the more I think about it, the more value I can see it bringing a small team.
I had a client last year that was looking into it, so I did a lot of research and playing around for them. I probably read about eight books on it. In addition, I wrote a small application that automates the hooking up of Sharepoint into other Enterprise datastores (like web services or DB2 databases) I also am using at my one of my large clients. I know a little about it.
Yes, it's a beast, but large-app software is like that, so everybody stop complaining. It also has fine-grained security, so that comment was off-base. I think the learning curve is too steep for Joe Blow the startup guy to use to it's maximum effectiveness. On the other hand, it does enough out of the box to make it an interesting option for small teams. The shared calendaring in Outlook and shared list management in Access make it attractive. Add in offline access with Groove, and learning just a few features can give a team a lot of power.
To really understand MOSS you have to realize that it is the future of Microsoft's platform: shove everything out onto the web, then write workflow and security and forms management and office integration into it. Office becomes more of a gateway to use SharePoint than a stand-alone product.
I know the first time I saw the workflow engine work _inside_ of Office docs I thought that was a pretty cool integration. Likewise, endusers being able to create their own web pages with live data from other systems? Neat. I can see a natural progression for a startup to begin with Groove, then graduate to MOSS once things start cooking. It would certainly be better than using a dozen other free apps that all do not interoperate -- as long as you don't eat up precious time fooling around with it. The whole point is to leverage the parts that work together naturally, not become a MOSS expert.
But the look of the thing? Butt-ugly. No getting around that. The UI is so bad it's hard to convince people that there is as much going on under the hood as there is.
In short, I'm not crazy about it, but the more I think about it, the more value I can see it bringing a small team.
Sharepoint makes it easy for end users to create database driven websites.
Sharepoint enterprise deployments are rapidly growing for the same reasons IE grew so fast and Google Calendar killing Kiko; Integration.
Sharepoint integrates with Outlook, Word, Active directory, IIS, SQL server, ASP.net.
An added benefit is that you host your own data, which many enterprises seem to love.
Show me a web site creation platform that integrates into the MS world like Sharepoint and I'll show you some rich founders... hint hint
Sharepoint enterprise deployments are rapidly growing for the same reasons IE grew so fast and Google Calendar killing Kiko; Integration.
Sharepoint integrates with Outlook, Word, Active directory, IIS, SQL server, ASP.net.
An added benefit is that you host your own data, which many enterprises seem to love.
Show me a web site creation platform that integrates into the MS world like Sharepoint and I'll show you some rich founders... hint hint
The business types really love it, and they may have perfectly good reasons, but it's just terrible for developers. It's proprietary, enormous, and gets in your way... the last three things a hacker wants to see in software.
Any wiki (I like DocuWiki) will be worlds better for a development team.
Any wiki (I like DocuWiki) will be worlds better for a development team.
Seconding this; the best dev team portal is a wiki. Preferably MediaWiki, but Trac is all right as well.
I left a company that used Trac effectively and joined (for a short time) another one that used SharePoint. Total suckage. Glad I got out of there.
How does Trac compare to SharePoint (WSS3)?
I am looking at building a collaboration platform that does a lot of what Sharepoint offers. Looking at using Trac or WSS3 or something better if anyone knows of anything.
Thanks.
I am looking at building a collaboration platform that does a lot of what Sharepoint offers. Looking at using Trac or WSS3 or something better if anyone knows of anything.
Thanks.
This was about 4 years ago. SharePoint may have improved since then, but the main thing that I didn't like about it compared to Trac was it forced you into a single structure which was hard to change, especially if you weren't the person who originally set it up.
When I joined, a SharePoint structure was already established and filled with out of date design documents. Unfortunately nobody (other than me) wanted to it bring up to date because they were already behind schedule getting things actually working. This in itself is not suprising - unless it's specifically part of their job, whoever sets up this kind of collaboration software generally won't to spend the ongoing effort to keep it organized properly and up to date so rigid structures that look good at the start often end up looking like dilapidated housing projects from the 1970's.
Part of the reason SharePoint sucked was that it offered no intrinsic editing, rendering or linking features. All it could really do is offer a place to put other documents. With Trac or any other wiki, editing and linking pages is trivial so its less of an ongoing effort to keep up to date. Furthermore anyone with the time is free generally free to create a separate collections of pages with whatever organization they want. This means newcomers can easily create new structures that reflects the current engineering design while referring back to the old information.
When I joined, a SharePoint structure was already established and filled with out of date design documents. Unfortunately nobody (other than me) wanted to it bring up to date because they were already behind schedule getting things actually working. This in itself is not suprising - unless it's specifically part of their job, whoever sets up this kind of collaboration software generally won't to spend the ongoing effort to keep it organized properly and up to date so rigid structures that look good at the start often end up looking like dilapidated housing projects from the 1970's.
Part of the reason SharePoint sucked was that it offered no intrinsic editing, rendering or linking features. All it could really do is offer a place to put other documents. With Trac or any other wiki, editing and linking pages is trivial so its less of an ongoing effort to keep up to date. Furthermore anyone with the time is free generally free to create a separate collections of pages with whatever organization they want. This means newcomers can easily create new structures that reflects the current engineering design while referring back to the old information.
If you believe desktop applications have a future, it's obviously a wonderful innovation. If, on the other hand, you believe that the future of personal computing is "in the cloud", then it is a crazy boondoggle that tries to attach obsolete technology to the Internet.
If, like most of us, you think there isn't an absolute truth on either side, it's probably a relatively effective stopgap measure until Microsoft actually figures out the Internet. History would indicate that they will figure it out, eventually, and history indicates that a large segment of the market probably won't come around until sometime after Microsoft does.
Personally, I think that, in the case of the Internet, Microsoft misunderstood it for far too long, and they've lost their chance to make the rules (thankfully--I've been in the in the technology industry long enough to know that when MS makes the rules, everybody else suffers, including consumers), but they'll still be able to mark out plenty of territory for themselves.
If, like most of us, you think there isn't an absolute truth on either side, it's probably a relatively effective stopgap measure until Microsoft actually figures out the Internet. History would indicate that they will figure it out, eventually, and history indicates that a large segment of the market probably won't come around until sometime after Microsoft does.
Personally, I think that, in the case of the Internet, Microsoft misunderstood it for far too long, and they've lost their chance to make the rules (thankfully--I've been in the in the technology industry long enough to know that when MS makes the rules, everybody else suffers, including consumers), but they'll still be able to mark out plenty of territory for themselves.
It is the jack of all trades and the master of none, with one exception. It works very well with ActiveDirectory. Other than that, it will do a mediocre job at being anything you can dream up: CMS, blog platform, wiki, customer portal, intranet.
And keep in mind that, in many of those capacities, the tool will live or die by how effectively it's organized and used and not really on its own technical merit. The best thing you can do is write down what you want to accomplish and find something that makes it as hard as possible to not accomplish that. MOSS, in my opinion, puts up more barriers than it takes down because to the end user it's not very intuitive, has issues with Firefox, etc.
And keep in mind that, in many of those capacities, the tool will live or die by how effectively it's organized and used and not really on its own technical merit. The best thing you can do is write down what you want to accomplish and find something that makes it as hard as possible to not accomplish that. MOSS, in my opinion, puts up more barriers than it takes down because to the end user it's not very intuitive, has issues with Firefox, etc.
I come from an "enterprise" environment where all our IT management are goo-goo over Sharepoint. From my personal standpoint Sharepoint is really quite lacking in features. Yeah, it has a Wiki -- but it's no comparison to the likes of say, DokuWiki. Yeah, it has a forum-like portion -- but you could probably pick any of the top 10 forums available for free on the Net and it'd be 10x more powerful than what Sharepoint offers. It's also an online file manager -- with searching and ACLs built-in. Not exactly ground-breaking stuff here.
To pay for this kind-of stuff when there's far better options online and for free seems almost ludicrous to me. Not to mention a terrible waste of money.
To pay for this kind-of stuff when there's far better options online and for free seems almost ludicrous to me. Not to mention a terrible waste of money.
At my large sluggish company everyone thinks it is the bee's knees while I shudder to use it. But, I do wonder if it is more than I think.
see I just cant figure out everything it does. the interface isnt horrible, its the experience.
my first impression was that it was awful. But on second thought I think my judgment was a bit clouded, if it was an open source project it would be a religion.
We use it here at work, and the major problem with it, IMHO, is that its search functionality sucks. Its search will pull up matches in multiple versions of a document, and further exacerbating the problem, our company uses Sharepoint for various Daily Activity Reports. So, if you're unlucky enough to have a bunch of people entering your search term in their daily activity report, you'll get tons of useless hits. Of course, you can manually drill down to a narrower site to search from, but this sort of violates the premise (ie, you have to already know what you're searching for.)
I've only been a user of it, not an admin, but I loathe the interface so much that it doesn't matter what else is in there. Shitty version management behind an awkward-as-hell pile of documents, along with some ass messaging thing I have no interest in (that's the parts people have tried to tell me were useful).
It's possible that it's only the "out-of-the-box" interface I hate as I gather that it's customizable, but that's how I've always seen it, and I don't find it usable.
It's possible that it's only the "out-of-the-box" interface I hate as I gather that it's customizable, but that's how I've always seen it, and I don't find it usable.
The problem with Sharepoint from my point of view is that it is too slow. The Document Management Part is very nice but only effectively useable with the Internet Explrer. So for a MS Shop it can be a very nice tool in smaller companies or a startup I would use a Multiblog System and/or Wiki to discuss and as knowledge base.
Moss 2007 is better than Sharepoint 2003, but not completely there yet. It has some flaws and customers often needs to do quite a bit of customization to satisfy their needs and requirements.
Moss 2007 is a virus, since it ships with some versions of Windows 2003 Server. People just start using it.
Lastly it pays my lunch and bills.
Moss 2007 is a virus, since it ships with some versions of Windows 2003 Server. People just start using it.
Lastly it pays my lunch and bills.
Short answer: difficult for developers to effecitvely build something lightweight that runs fast. It's just plain slow. @rman666 said it best regarding blogs/wikis/bookmarking creation: impossibly slow.
In my experience it's a heavy handed solution meant for big problems (like serious enterprise work with hundreds or thousands of users). While you can do a lot with it, little is simple or straightforward.
Chances are if you don't immediately see how it'll solve the huge problem you've been having, it's not for you. Things need to be pretty bad before it will seem better, but at that point it's great.
Chances are if you don't immediately see how it'll solve the huge problem you've been having, it's not for you. Things need to be pretty bad before it will seem better, but at that point it's great.
okay, here's a better question:
should startups use sharepoint? im not saying just the hackers/the dev process. also for the business side.
should startups use sharepoint? im not saying just the hackers/the dev process. also for the business side.
No. It's too generalized. Find something more specific to your needs. You can make SharePoint into anything, but spend the time building your startup.
If you're considering MOSS from a startup perspective, I'd stay far away from it. The licensing for it is expensive, and hiring people to work on it is also expensive.
Unless you have a full .Net infrastructure and team in place, you could probably find better alternatives elsewhere.
Unless you have a full .Net infrastructure and team in place, you could probably find better alternatives elsewhere.
I think it's interesting but, like others mentioned, a bit overkill for a small startup.
If anyone is interested in SharePoint online training, check out http://www.learnsharepoint.com/. It's one of our sites.
If anyone is interested in SharePoint online training, check out http://www.learnsharepoint.com/. It's one of our sites.
I hope Google Sites takes off and kills this ugly beast.