Microsoft Office SharePoint Server Reviews

I use this solution for mixing and analyzing data.

The software is friendly to use for mixing data and analyzing it.

Stability and the reporting system need improvement.

The interface is friendly but you have some limits and you have to use your imagination to make the graphs better.

In the next release, I would like to see the possibility to integrate market information directly into the product. It will help us in saving time.

I have been using this system for what seems like forever. I have been with this company for two years now and before this, I was using SharePoint.

This solution is not very stable. It is useful to arrange data but it's not the best for big data. Sometimes we have issues with our reports as a result.

This solution is scalable, but we do not have many tasks to integrate this product.

Previously with this company, we have not used another product. This is the only one.

This solution was already in place when I arrived, so I was not a part of the initial setup.

I haven't had a lot of time to explore this solution better and I am sure that it is better than what I know about it right now.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

I work as a team leader of IT Systems Development for the fire department. It's a government organization and we are partners with Microsoft. We use SharePoint internally, mainly for our employees. There are about 20 who use the solution now, most in admin or engineers. We are now also looking at other systems that may be developed using SharePoint too.

The most valuable feature of the product is that it's robust and you can access many features from Microsoft, such as Exchange, through SharePoint. It makes for an interesting product. 

The product could be improved by accommodating different technologies, particularly integration. Hopefully, Microsoft won't change the product because they tend to do that. 
I'm not really sure about additional features but I think using SharePoint as an application server means it's competing with other similar products like Oracle Application Server, and they should aim for that level. 

I've been using this solution for five years. 

It seems to be a stable solution. 

The solution is scalable but I think it still has its boundaries. For our environment, it's good enough.

As far as I remember, the initial setup was not complicated. It took perhaps a week to set up and we had a team working on it. 

We used to deploy the solution on-premise only, but we've now started moving over to Cloud and eventually we'll deploy only on Cloud. 

I would rate this product a seven out of 10. 

I am a consultant and this is one of the solutions that I implement for my clients.

I have worked on many projects in my career and the deployment model varies. For some customers, I have used SharePoint online, while others have been on-premises. In some cases, I have used a hybrid configuration where the customer is using it online as well as on-premises.

The most valuable feature of this solution is the Communication Site. In the most recent version, it is much more user-friendly, and any user can maintain it, including changing the content or other small tasks. In the older version, users were dependant on the developers. This dependency can now be avoided.

You can extend the features in this solution however you want.

Many of our customers would like to see an OCR feature, so it would be very good to have this in a future release. For example, you have invoices that have been scanned and uploaded into the SharePoint document library. If you are attaching the metadata along with the particular document then it is fine because you can search it well. However, if it is a PDF from an invoice that you scanned, then you will not be able to search for the details. You will only be able to search for it by name. Many of my customers are requesting a feature like this and will go ahead with the product once it is there.

Technical support for this solution can be improved.

Migrating a site to SharePoint online is not recommended, but it should be made smoother because customers demand it. There should be a good solution for this.

SharePoint would benefit from having more plugins available for it.

Microsoft Forms should have more features. The basics are there, but we need to be able to connect directly to the database. Line-level entry should also be there.

The stability of this solution for the end-user is fine. We are seeing some changes in the development side, but generally, it is stable.

This solution is scalable.

I have been in contact with technical support several times. Most recently was about eight months ago when I was having trouble migrating to the SharePoint online. Unfortunately, they didn't help me very much and I had to solve the problem myself.

We have FastTrack support tickets, and even with this, it took them too long to look at our issue. We had to first raise a normal support ticket before it was escalated to FastTrack. It was more than fifteen days, so I had to work on it myself. I was able to solve it by looking at the log, but it took time.

The initial setup of this solution is easy, but we have to set up the servers.

The deployment of a basic SharePoint site will take only a few minutes. If we need to do some customization then it will take longer and depend on the requirements.

Some of my customers have opted to purchase OpenText instead, because of the additional features that it has.

The suitability of this solution depends on the customer's requirements. If they have a basic requirement for document management, I feel that SharePoint is not very stable for this. However, the workflow is good and there are many other good things. It is a complete umbrella. If you have a good team then you can easily handle it.

Overall, it is a good product, and I recommend it.

The only complaint we have is about the lack of OCR capability. It is really difficult to convince a customer who wants a document management system that this solution is right for them.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

With SharePoint, we have done multiple types of projects. It's a complete ECM, Enterprise Content Management piece. We have implemented something like Power App forms for big oil and gas companies based out of Houston. Power App forms for outages can work in offline mode, which is helpful. We also use it to work on tablets and mobile phones as well and that kind of stuff.

There's a lot of features that are quite useful. Building Flow and Power Apps is great. Eventually, we started to use it for platforms too, however, now it's gone, it's not there anymore. SharePoint Online, both classic and modern versions, we have worked with extensively and so we know it very well.

The implementation and configuring of the resolution are very easy in the online version.

Microsoft is working to improve the solution daily. They're always adding more features and functionalities.

The solution needs to have more flexibility. The classic version had more flexibility, however, the modern version has many more limitations.

We've been using the solution since 2007.

The stability of the solution is pretty good. The online version doesn't have any bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or fail. It also doesn't need any infrastructure or virtual machine as it's all completely online and the cloud keep it very stable. You don't need a backup because it is backed up by Microsoft.

As a Microsoft partner, we get fantastic customer service. We're quite satisfied with their level of service.

While the solution was not complex to set up, I did find that it had a medium level of complexity, so it wasn't quite straightforward. The online version is a bit easier to manage than the on-premise version.

We're an end-to-end service. We provide implementation services to our clients.

Our customers handle the licensing costs. The pricing varies from customer to customer. Some, for example, might have Enterprise Agreements, or EAs, and that pricing is different.

We are a Microsoft Gold partner. I don't use the solution myself. I'm a consultant. I suggest solutions such as these to my clients.

If our clients, for example, are on Office 365 or on-premise and they want to migrate, that is where we give guidance. We'll ask: Why not move online? Why not use SharePoint Online, rather than using the on-premise version? What are the pros and cons of both? Then, if they would like to move forward and migrate, we can handle implementation for them.

We use the solution as a suite altogether, and SharePoint is part of it. It also has Teams, Power Apps, Flow, etc. It's all part of the Microsoft Office offering.

We used to use the on-premise version, however, since somewhere between 2010 and 2013 we've been using the online version of the solution. Most users are no longer interested in maintaining infrastructures if they don't have to.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

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.

InfoPath and Nintex Workflow Engine are the features that are most important to me.

We used SharePoint to automate the documentation flow and develop SharePoint-based IT systems for licensing, managing documents, the help desk, and task libraries.

We used InfoPath forms to automate our organizational processes and forms, and managed the workflow for these forms using Nintex Workflow Engine. Using these features together, we converted our paper work to electronic digital data.

The Branding and User Interface Design and CK Editor should be improved, as well as the upgrade process.

There needs to be a clear and direct process for upgrade from one SharePoint version to another. The documentation available on TechNet is insufficient. We had to create a visual studio solution for the upgrade from SharePoint Server 2007 to the 2010 edition.

Multi-lingual support, including Arabic, is weak in the CK Editor. This is especially a problem when you copy Arabic from Microsoft Word. The format is not the same and we need to reformat the content every time.

There is also room for improvement in Branding and User Interface Design. One of our SharePoint environments is the internet-facing site: www.pcma.ps. There is not enough documentation or a direct process for redesigning the standard SharePoint interface.

I have been using SharePoint for six years.

For the most part, we did not have any stability issues.

We did not have any issues with scalability.

I would rate the level of technical support as moderate.

Before we moved to SharePoint, we used a locally developed .Net-based system which had lots of bugs, and lacked features when you compare it to SharePoint.

The initial setup was straightforward and easy.

The licensing model for SharePoint 2013 and 2016 is more efficient than the 2010 version because they removed the internet edition, which was the most expensive.

We went directly with SharePoint because it was the content management leader at the time.

I highly recommend it, but it is better to hire at least one SharePoint expert so that you will have a good implementation and internal support.

Document library is the most used part of the portal solution. With the optimized search service, we easily keep all company digital content on SharePoint Server.

Workflow management automation features can be implemented easily without need for software development using SharePoint Designer.

Enhanced user access management features fully integrated with Active Directory allowed us to gain the trust of the users and they use SharePoint to store and share all company digital content created by them.

The multi-language support allows collaboration using local languages in eight different countries.

Allowing information to be shared across the company using the document library on SharePoint improved the effectiveness of our operations and new projects.

Consolidating all company digital content on SharePoint allowed creating company know how, which is used to improve our operations and new projects.

Implementing business process automation using workflow management improved company efficiency, allowing process transparency and possibility for follow-up at each step of the processes.

Implementing business process automation using workflow management allowed us to stop using paper.

There is no feature to show the workflow progress graphically.

Although there are different templates for graphical design, when you need any customization, especially on the main page, you need software development.

The solution requires a lot of hardware capacity for high availability and performance.

There is only one licensing model for the on-premise option and the licensing cost is high.

When you create forms using InfoPath Forms and workflows using SharePoint Designer there is no easy way to move the workflow and the forms from development to test and from test to production environment. The only way is to do the same job twice(if you have development and production environment) or three times(if you have development, test and production environment).

We are using SharePoint Server for more than nine years; started with 2007 version and made the upgrade to 2013 version in 2013.

I have not encountered any stability issues, but proper capacity planning and management is essential.

I have not encountered any scalability issues; you can easily add features, hardware capacity, etc.

There is a lot of documentation. You can easily find information on the blogs. Microsoft provides support at affordable rates. The implementation project can be a challenge. In Turkey, we have problems finding good architects, not just for SharePoint but for any solution.

We didn’t previously use another solution.

The planning was a challenge because in Turkey we have problems finding good architects, not just for SharePoint but for any solution. We solved this by asking for support from Microsoft.

Doing proper requirement analysis is essential. At the moment, SharePoint provides a server/call-based licensing model for on-premise implementation, so the number of users is important. The cloud option can be considered if the number of users is below 100. There is a need for database server licenses, too. (We use Microsoft SQL Server.) In my opinion, there is no need for Software Assurance.

We didn’t evaluate other products because back in 2007, SharePoint Server was the only option.

If you already decided to implement SharePoint Server, plan at least two servers if you are implementing on premise (one for database, one for application services). Adding a third server for only the search service can prevent performance problems. Do Active Directory integration if you decide on the cloud option.

If you are at the research stage of your project, be aware that at the moment, there are a lot of alternate solutions that can provide needed features. After doing a business requirement analysis, do research for alternate solution, so you can have the solution you really need. You might be able to get it free of charge, because some open-source solutions can meet your needs too. Think about implementation consultancy and support if you decide to implement an open-source solution.

Don’t implement different products for different features because integration is a headache.

The solution meets all our needs, including workflow management automation.

Our primary use case of SharePoint is as a document library, or repository of files, for our project management sites which are basically communication sites. We're currently using the solution on-prem but have also used it on cloud. We have a vendor relationship with Microsoft and I'm a business system analyst

I like the way the solution was helpful in delivering project updates. I can incorporate my project timelines presented in web page format along with the KPIs. The documentation repository is within the same page too so you have the updates, the timeline status, and the documents which you can pull out. It means you can collaborate with others all in the one location.

The solution could probably be improved by incorporating some of the power apps for workflow and easy set up. I usually get most of the workflows in automated mode and we're barely using the full features of SharePoint. I think it could be simplified so it doesn't require coding. For example, if there's an ad hoc workflow, it could be added immediately instead of going to a different application. If they could incorporate and enhance the user friendliness of SharePoint with the workflow of SharePoint, that would be great. 

I'm not sure it's feasible for SharePoint to integrate with mobile gadgets as an additional feature but if they were able to do that, it would mean that even if you have external documents, they can be extended to any variable whether it's a gadget, tablet, watch or whatever. Right now, the SharePoint site can be rendered in mobile apps, but there's a limitation, it doesn't extend to smart watches.

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

This is a stable solution. 

We haven't had any issues with scalability. It's quite easy to scale up or down. 

I don't have much interface with the Microsoft Office because it's usually the SharePoint architect or developer that needs to make contact with support.

I would recommend this product. I've also used Citrix ShareFile and if I compare that solution to SharePoint, my preference would be to go with SharePoint. It's a more user friendly and intuitive solution.

I would rate this solution a nine out of 10.