IntranetBlog reports on a presentation by Shawn Shell, who wrote the CMSWatch "SharePoint Report 2008".
Shawn Shell, CEO of Consejo, and author of CMS Watch's The SharePoint Report 2008 from CMS Watch, accurately summarizes SharePoint in one telling quote during his SharePoint presentation at Enterprise 3: "SharePoint does a lot of things, but it does very few things very well".The list of both cons and pros is a bit feeds-and-speeds for me, but it does highlight some of the major areas where SharePoint needs a lot of expertise to make it happen.
For example, Microsoft posted this video of using Word 2007 to author blog posts. Well, it's in there, but apparently embedded video is too edgy.... Anyway, the voice-over uses a classic Microsoft line, surmising that this is easy for users since they already live in MS Word anyway. Use Word to author a blog post? A lot of overhead, if you ask me.
Link: IntranetBlog.com: The Pros and Cons of SharePoint > (via Joachim)
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- 2
Jon Mell http://jonmell.co.uk | 5/20/2008 6:45:24 AM
Using Word to write a blog post is an interesting one. Many non-technical users have a problem using web based wiki/blog sites as they assume that the browser works like an application. They don't have an awareness of session expiration etc. and so some people spend time writing a blog post or wiki entry over the course of the day only to lose it when they press "Submit".
Also, the "Web 2.0" platforms are less stable than more traditional apps, so even if your session hasn't expired there are sometimes problems and people get frustrated when they lose their carefully crafted blog. Not every blog/wiki tool is as sophisticated as Blogger and will automatically save to draft every 30 seconds.
For business users I have sometimes recommended that they write the post in Word and then cut and paste into their blogging tool (or get an admin assistant to do that). It might not be a 'pure' way of doing it, but it helps with adoption.
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Kurt Binnie | 5/20/2008 7:35:46 AM
Stange that they posted a video using Word for blog posting when they actually have a pretty good tool in Live Writer unless that's just been embedded in Word somehow.
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Christopher Byrne http://www.controlscaddy.com/ | 5/20/2008 7:38:18 AM
"SharePoint does a lot of things, but it does very few things very well"
You are criticizing SharePoint for something that has often said about Lotus Notes an Domino with a positive spin?:
"Lotus Notes does not do any one thing especially well, but it gives the ability to do a lot of things other platforms do not."
Writing and editing blog posts in Word may seem like a lot of overhead to you and others because you live in the tools. As Jon Mell points out in # 2 above, most users trying to work with these tools are not as knowledgeable and comfortable with them. So in fact, what you are calling overhead is something they might call a comfort zone. Would you call it overhead if they chose to edit in in Symphony? And what is easier from a user perspective? Creating a web link in Lotus Notes or creating one in Word?
Sharepoint does have a lot of warts that we members of the Notes and Domino community can point and laugh about. Things like security, the ability to work off line, etc etc. come to mind. But SharePoint is winning hearts and minds where it matters most: ease of use and giving users at least the perception that they find it easy to work with.
@Jon (@2), blogger does great when it autosaves properly, but there are things about that tool that are just crap (and I know this because I run a site on it). There are things I would like to do with it that the Domino Blogsphere template (or any Domino driven template) would excel at doing (like conditional or context-based content) that Blogger cannot come close to doing. That is part of the reason I used Blogger, to see what the big differences are. I do agree that other wiki-based tools fall short of Blogger, but then again I hate wikis because they are to difficult for the ordinary user to grasp, understand, use AND manage well.
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Jon Mell http://jonmell.co.uk | 5/20/2008 7:51:08 AM
@Christopher - it's almost as if the tools need 'simple' mode and 'advanced'. I see a lot of wikis fall over themselves to try to out-do the others in terms of 'functionality' which 80% of the users (if not more) won't use.
One of my favourite wikis (for business users) is actually Basecamp's writeboard, because it is SO simple.
In Microsoft centric sites, there is apparently no other option besides Microsoft Sharepoint. Don't they just ignore the Cons anyway?