The search functionality could be improved, especially when dealing with 'lift' lists, where there are performance issues. The aesthetics of certain fields are not up to the mark compared to other products.
I am not sure if SharePoint has been integrated with Copilot at the moment. The introduction of AI and automation with Copilot could be a beneficial improvement.
IT Service Manager at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 10
2024-10-14T09:19:00Z
Oct 14, 2024
There's room for improvement in the search functionality, although it has matured significantly over the years. I can't pinpoint specific other areas for improvement because Microsoft continually updates the product.
When you are trying to migrate from a different platform to SharePoint for file storage, the upload utility should be more flexible, taking more files and then updating you on the upload status of the files you are trying to transfer into SharePoint. This part is quite clunky and could be improved.
The limitations and boundaries must be extended. Often, the documents pile up and reach the limit provided, and we need to archive them. It would be good if the capacity were increased.
There's a challenge with desktop applications synchronizing with online documents in real-time. If someone is working on a document in the desktop version of Excel, for example, and someone else is editing the same document online, the changes won't sync immediately. That's the only real challenge we've encountered.
We'd like to be able to upload from MS Excel to deploy tasks and use drop-down lists to collect further information. We need to set up tracking tasks from scratch. In other words, we would like to create tracking tasks by templates embedded or uploaded directly. Make progress elaboration without boundary. If you have another format of data file, it can support text. Additional functions for a next-generation iteration could include a better project file format. They should add dependencies for project schedule updates when one task schedule has been changed.
SharePoint’s scalability could be improved. I don't know how much an organization pays to scale SharePoint, but I have seen quite a few organizations opting out of SharePoint. The reason may be its scalability or because it is less cost-effective.
Perhaps it would be possible to add more design tools to improve the platform. While the current design is good, other similar platforms, such as Wix.com, offer better design tools. Wix.com is a website-building site that specializes in this area. Microsoft could take inspiration from them and incorporate similar tools. The initial setup is complex and has room for improvement. The documentation is poor and has room for improvement.
Director and Senior Consultant at PowerMark Solutions
User
2021-10-14T01:13:51Z
Oct 14, 2021
Some suggestions:
* Link library New options to both corporate and nominated department template libraries, so that templates can be managed as a dynamic corporate resource
* Streamline document generation from menu templates so that documents are by default saved into the library and folder currently displayed by the user
* Streamline the association of search refiners with metadata, so that configuring search becomes less of an arcane process. Bring classic search into the modern UI - and bring back search refiners!!!
* Introduce an extension of search, supporting pre-configured search scopes based on metadata and content type queries, using a UI or wizard approach rather than needing developer assistance
* Modify the versioning approach, so that collaborative editing can be done together with controlled versioning. Generating a new version every time a paragraph is edited has severely damaged the value of alerts and version history. Alerts based on changes to documents were valuable.
* Consider toggling collaborative editing on or off on a selected document. During initial drafting, collaborative editing makes sense. Once a document has been approved more control on change is needed
* Bring back the welcome page for document sets. Document sets are great for case management (e.g. incident management, small projects, etc), and the welcome page is valuable in providing guidance to staff about the processes
* Support interlinking/interdependency of documents. E.g. if I change a policy, I'd like to know the associated procedural documents in case they, too, need an update.
SharePoint Online could improve the user interface and when modifying any of the user interfaces can be challenging. Additionally, there are challenges with the detail in the analytics user interface and the overall customization could improve. In the next release of the solution, they need to fix the user interface. It is not user-friendly for a generic user. It should be easier because in some of the applications it's quite easy to assign the permission, you only need to use the right click of the mouse and select the permission that we need to assign. However, in SharePoint, it's a bit complex.
CEO l Founder at a manufacturing company with 11-50 employees
Real User
2022-04-27T12:00:00Z
Apr 27, 2022
Document management and the ability to easily integrate single sign-on (SSO) are areas for improvement in SharePoint. Integrating SharePoint with other software is what I'd like to see in its next release.
IT business analysis, development and governance at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Real User
2022-04-06T19:01:32Z
Apr 6, 2022
Despite the enthusiasm and very good promises offered by SharePoint, the usage of the power platform is limited, so that's an area for improvement, but I would suggest this just as a team feature. It's hard to highlight other areas for improvement, but a better approach towards licensing power platform components for guest users would be great. SharePoint licensing costs could be lowered to introduce it to the outside guests of a tenant, then to supply them with power apps and power automate features. A more straightforward integration with Azure, including better licensing in terms of using Azure components and functions, is also another area for improvement in SharePoint. My advice for Microsoft, and this is something I'd like to see in the next release of SharePoint, is for them to constantly improve training material. Currently, the training material is organized in a way where a new feature appears and is enforced, then they develop the training material for that new feature. What happens is that the total product or solution, e.g. SharePoint, then lacks overall introduction in terms of training. There should be a balance between the introduction of the tool and the introduction of the new feature. They should have comprehensive introductory courses for both Office 365 and SharePoint, instead of needing to Google for particular situations. I'm trying to get the knowledge bit by bit, so I'm losing the idea of the whole product, e.g. SharePoint is losing its essence. To get onboarded to any new product, it's important to get a good introduction into that product.
IT Manager at The Ventoulis Institute for Local Journalism
Real User
2021-11-16T18:08:00Z
Nov 16, 2021
It has worked very well for me. It seems like they've improved everything. I don't have any cons about it as such, but I don't think they have a talk-to-text, speech-to-text, or speech-to-type. That would be cool for accessibility.
The solution lacks collaboration features so that I am unable to collaboratively create and work on a document with others. The second element that is lacking is compliance or records management so that certain documents, of a legal nature, for example, are only accessible to certain users. I would really like to see that kind of feature. From a compliance perspective like GDPR and if the document or data contains personally identifiable data PII data, the SharePoint feature for records management should allow to identify the data being PII data and also provide feature for GDPR wherein the customer is asked for confirmation if needs to be stored and how the data and documents will be used and for what purpose. If the customer does not confirm should not allow storage of documents and data that contains personal information should not be stored without customers consent. It should allow for archiving feature post the period for which the customer has given the consent for the data and document to be stored is over should allow to delete the data and document. Looking for GDPR and other compliance features built into the product as a workflow
Director and Senior Consultant at PowerMark Solutions
User
Oct 14, 2021
@Ram Chenna Interesting. SharePoint Online certainly has most of these features. You can even create your own PII and other rules, as well has relying on the 'out of the box' ones for GDPR. Asking for customer consent is another matter - you'd need to develop custom workflow and metadata I think, as there are lots of business requirement considerations
* Workflow engine * Video streaming and huge file retrieving and uploading * It does not support video streaming and huge file retrieving and uploading * The workflow engine cannot support business needs.
I would like a simpler, more cost-effective solution for connecting data sources with workflows and BI tools, or data mining tools. There are different tools for data mining and for data evaluation, but you have to be a skilled programmer to tie them together. There is no simple and low-cost method to do this, provided that development time is a cost factor. There are some automatic solutions for this task, such as Team Foundation Server, which is built on SharePoint. These tools can learn specific errors that are being made, using data mining techniques, and they are able to target these errors for correction. Having this capability built in, and customizable for the customer would be of great interest. I would like to see support for Visual Studio to connect to SharePoint and have a wizard to connect data processes to iHubs, like an analysis server or data mining model, to an output, and to have a smart way of creating workflows. Microsoft will tell you that they already have that for SharePoint online, it's called "Flow", but it is not customer compatible.
The way to change the version of the files in SharePoint should be improved. The method of synchronizing files from local to cloud can also use improvement. I would also like to see improvements in the interface, speed to load the page, mark favorite directories, synchronize the most recent, and the least accessed files automatically do the archiving. I would like to have an option at the first sync to choose more locations on your computer.
The UI could be more flexible out of the box. With coding, you can customize the look and feel to your heart's content, but configuration without coding is limited.
There is always room for improvement. Workflow is something that can become more intelligent. I can't say to what extent intelligence can added, but I think there is always a scope for making it more intelligent.
Information Technology Manager at a transportation company with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
2019-02-07T15:59:00Z
Feb 7, 2019
Microsoft seems to always be making changes. Sometimes you will get a message saying some aspect of what they deliver is being discontinued and often you simply never had time to explore what it had to offer in the first place.
* Better collaboration, and team sites (social flavour) mobile enabled * More and improved integration capabilities into the eco-system of solutions available.
I would be liking to see the talk features included in SharePoint because Microsoft effectively discontinued this talk and put something like logic apps but only for Azure, and most German companies do not like Windows Azure because they do not want to put that data into a cloud where everyone can see it. So, there's a lot of distrust with Azure environments and you need something to have on premises as a similar solution. And this talk is something like a big playing ground. For instance, if you want to play monopoly and anyone wants to move the pieces but moving the pieces on street A to street B means you are changing your business process from, I have been starting tax declaration, to I've been finding it but not yet sending it out. So, if you wanted to have something like a business process be denoted as a board game, which is what Monopoly did in 1945, effectively.
* Processing data from multiple site collections is not easy as they reside in different databases. * The management of the product/back-end is complex.
IT Solutions Architect at a transportation company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
2018-09-25T09:22:00Z
Sep 25, 2018
We need the storage of the files, the documents right now are in the database. Maybe SharePoint has to improve the capability to store the information in file systems. In theory right now, it could do that. But, I understand that some functions are lost when you store the information in a file system, so maybe that's a way SharePoint can improve.
Vice President & Head Technology Transition at EXL Services
Real User
2018-08-12T07:43:00Z
Aug 12, 2018
It should have more user-friendly customization, as it still requires developers to get engaged and build sites. I would like it to be more compliant with global regulations. There are certain features which could be included that currently are not there, such as compliance and record management capabilities.
OTA Manager, VRA at United States Department of Defense
User
2018-08-01T18:06:00Z
Aug 1, 2018
* During uptime under our network, it is hard to find info when content is hefty. * It should have a Google-caliber search ability and a model-based GUI.
System Manager at a financial services firm with 11-50 employees
Real User
2018-07-29T06:51:00Z
Jul 29, 2018
We are mainly using third-party tools for it, at the moment, for automating processes. In the new version, for 2019, I know that some of the processes are finally in SharePoint. They are a now using third-party tools for it. Also, the integration with Outlook could be improved.
Information Technology Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Real User
2018-07-25T07:31:00Z
Jul 25, 2018
They need to integrate all the solutions, for example, Office 365, into SharePoint. The idea is to create a workplace for people in the company. There should be only one place - it could be Skype for Business, OneDrive - for the news, for internal information about the company, or new documents. This is the idea, to create an ecosystem for people in the company.
SharePoint is a Microsoft-based platform for building web applications. It covers a widerange of capabilities and while it is appropriate for experienced webdevelopers, even non-technical minded users can easily navigate through thesystem and execute functions such as collaborating data, managing documents andfiles, creating websites, managing social networking solutions, and automatingworkflow. Major areas that SharePoint deals with are websites,communities, content, search, insights, and...
The search functionality could be improved, especially when dealing with 'lift' lists, where there are performance issues. The aesthetics of certain fields are not up to the mark compared to other products.
I am not sure if SharePoint has been integrated with Copilot at the moment. The introduction of AI and automation with Copilot could be a beneficial improvement.
There's room for improvement in the search functionality, although it has matured significantly over the years. I can't pinpoint specific other areas for improvement because Microsoft continually updates the product.
The solution's support services and GenAI could be improved and made faster and more knowledgeable.
The solution should be made more user-friendly for technical and business people.
The solution should improve its integration with other project management tools.
When you are trying to migrate from a different platform to SharePoint for file storage, the upload utility should be more flexible, taking more files and then updating you on the upload status of the files you are trying to transfer into SharePoint. This part is quite clunky and could be improved.
SharePoint should not provide frequent updates.
The limitations and boundaries must be extended. Often, the documents pile up and reach the limit provided, and we need to archive them. It would be good if the capacity were increased.
There's a challenge with desktop applications synchronizing with online documents in real-time. If someone is working on a document in the desktop version of Excel, for example, and someone else is editing the same document online, the changes won't sync immediately. That's the only real challenge we've encountered.
We'd like to be able to upload from MS Excel to deploy tasks and use drop-down lists to collect further information. We need to set up tracking tasks from scratch. In other words, we would like to create tracking tasks by templates embedded or uploaded directly. Make progress elaboration without boundary. If you have another format of data file, it can support text. Additional functions for a next-generation iteration could include a better project file format. They should add dependencies for project schedule updates when one task schedule has been changed.
SharePoint’s scalability could be improved. I don't know how much an organization pays to scale SharePoint, but I have seen quite a few organizations opting out of SharePoint. The reason may be its scalability or because it is less cost-effective.
Perhaps it would be possible to add more design tools to improve the platform. While the current design is good, other similar platforms, such as Wix.com, offer better design tools. Wix.com is a website-building site that specializes in this area. Microsoft could take inspiration from them and incorporate similar tools. The initial setup is complex and has room for improvement. The documentation is poor and has room for improvement.
Some suggestions:
* Link library New options to both corporate and nominated department template libraries, so that templates can be managed as a dynamic corporate resource
* Streamline document generation from menu templates so that documents are by default saved into the library and folder currently displayed by the user
* Streamline the association of search refiners with metadata, so that configuring search becomes less of an arcane process. Bring classic search into the modern UI - and bring back search refiners!!!
* Introduce an extension of search, supporting pre-configured search scopes based on metadata and content type queries, using a UI or wizard approach rather than needing developer assistance
* Modify the versioning approach, so that collaborative editing can be done together with controlled versioning. Generating a new version every time a paragraph is edited has severely damaged the value of alerts and version history. Alerts based on changes to documents were valuable.
* Consider toggling collaborative editing on or off on a selected document. During initial drafting, collaborative editing makes sense. Once a document has been approved more control on change is needed
* Bring back the welcome page for document sets. Document sets are great for case management (e.g. incident management, small projects, etc), and the welcome page is valuable in providing guidance to staff about the processes
* Support interlinking/interdependency of documents. E.g. if I change a policy, I'd like to know the associated procedural documents in case they, too, need an update.
SharePoint Online could improve the user interface and when modifying any of the user interfaces can be challenging. Additionally, there are challenges with the detail in the analytics user interface and the overall customization could improve. In the next release of the solution, they need to fix the user interface. It is not user-friendly for a generic user. It should be easier because in some of the applications it's quite easy to assign the permission, you only need to use the right click of the mouse and select the permission that we need to assign. However, in SharePoint, it's a bit complex.
Document management and the ability to easily integrate single sign-on (SSO) are areas for improvement in SharePoint. Integrating SharePoint with other software is what I'd like to see in its next release.
Despite the enthusiasm and very good promises offered by SharePoint, the usage of the power platform is limited, so that's an area for improvement, but I would suggest this just as a team feature. It's hard to highlight other areas for improvement, but a better approach towards licensing power platform components for guest users would be great. SharePoint licensing costs could be lowered to introduce it to the outside guests of a tenant, then to supply them with power apps and power automate features. A more straightforward integration with Azure, including better licensing in terms of using Azure components and functions, is also another area for improvement in SharePoint. My advice for Microsoft, and this is something I'd like to see in the next release of SharePoint, is for them to constantly improve training material. Currently, the training material is organized in a way where a new feature appears and is enforced, then they develop the training material for that new feature. What happens is that the total product or solution, e.g. SharePoint, then lacks overall introduction in terms of training. There should be a balance between the introduction of the tool and the introduction of the new feature. They should have comprehensive introductory courses for both Office 365 and SharePoint, instead of needing to Google for particular situations. I'm trying to get the knowledge bit by bit, so I'm losing the idea of the whole product, e.g. SharePoint is losing its essence. To get onboarded to any new product, it's important to get a good introduction into that product.
It has worked very well for me. It seems like they've improved everything. I don't have any cons about it as such, but I don't think they have a talk-to-text, speech-to-text, or speech-to-type. That would be cool for accessibility.
The solution lacks collaboration features so that I am unable to collaboratively create and work on a document with others. The second element that is lacking is compliance or records management so that certain documents, of a legal nature, for example, are only accessible to certain users. I would really like to see that kind of feature. From a compliance perspective like GDPR and if the document or data contains personally identifiable data PII data, the SharePoint feature for records management should allow to identify the data being PII data and also provide feature for GDPR wherein the customer is asked for confirmation if needs to be stored and how the data and documents will be used and for what purpose. If the customer does not confirm should not allow storage of documents and data that contains personal information should not be stored without customers consent. It should allow for archiving feature post the period for which the customer has given the consent for the data and document to be stored is over should allow to delete the data and document. Looking for GDPR and other compliance features built into the product as a workflow
@Ram Chenna Interesting. SharePoint Online certainly has most of these features. You can even create your own PII and other rules, as well has relying on the 'out of the box' ones for GDPR. Asking for customer consent is another matter - you'd need to develop custom workflow and metadata I think, as there are lots of business requirement considerations
* Workflow engine * Video streaming and huge file retrieving and uploading * It does not support video streaming and huge file retrieving and uploading * The workflow engine cannot support business needs.
The areas of this solution that need improvement are the relationships between lists, cross-site web parts, and page-building tools.
This solution would benefit from the implementation of enhanced online forms and template development capabilities.
I would like a simpler, more cost-effective solution for connecting data sources with workflows and BI tools, or data mining tools. There are different tools for data mining and for data evaluation, but you have to be a skilled programmer to tie them together. There is no simple and low-cost method to do this, provided that development time is a cost factor. There are some automatic solutions for this task, such as Team Foundation Server, which is built on SharePoint. These tools can learn specific errors that are being made, using data mining techniques, and they are able to target these errors for correction. Having this capability built in, and customizable for the customer would be of great interest. I would like to see support for Visual Studio to connect to SharePoint and have a wizard to connect data processes to iHubs, like an analysis server or data mining model, to an output, and to have a smart way of creating workflows. Microsoft will tell you that they already have that for SharePoint online, it's called "Flow", but it is not customer compatible.
The way to change the version of the files in SharePoint should be improved. The method of synchronizing files from local to cloud can also use improvement. I would also like to see improvements in the interface, speed to load the page, mark favorite directories, synchronize the most recent, and the least accessed files automatically do the archiving. I would like to have an option at the first sync to choose more locations on your computer.
Special implementation and development should be easy.
The user experience is very poor. Configuration for new aspect means usually buying add-ons or a very high level of customization.
The UI could be more flexible out of the box. With coding, you can customize the look and feel to your heart's content, but configuration without coding is limited.
Better wiki offerings.
There is always room for improvement. Workflow is something that can become more intelligent. I can't say to what extent intelligence can added, but I think there is always a scope for making it more intelligent.
Search integration across SharePoint, Yammer, Teams, and OneDrive.
Microsoft seems to always be making changes. Sometimes you will get a message saying some aspect of what they deliver is being discontinued and often you simply never had time to explore what it had to offer in the first place.
It should have a lighter interface.
Search can be improved a lot because we are always trying to compare it with Google Search. Beyond that, it would be helpful to tag the documents.
* Advise users to update the content. * Maybe allowing users to change their background and text by themselves.
* Better collaboration, and team sites (social flavour) mobile enabled * More and improved integration capabilities into the eco-system of solutions available.
I would be liking to see the talk features included in SharePoint because Microsoft effectively discontinued this talk and put something like logic apps but only for Azure, and most German companies do not like Windows Azure because they do not want to put that data into a cloud where everyone can see it. So, there's a lot of distrust with Azure environments and you need something to have on premises as a similar solution. And this talk is something like a big playing ground. For instance, if you want to play monopoly and anyone wants to move the pieces but moving the pieces on street A to street B means you are changing your business process from, I have been starting tax declaration, to I've been finding it but not yet sending it out. So, if you wanted to have something like a business process be denoted as a board game, which is what Monopoly did in 1945, effectively.
* Ease of use. * Improvement on the user interface (UI).
* Processing data from multiple site collections is not easy as they reside in different databases. * The management of the product/back-end is complex.
SharePoint sometimes cannot handle the amount of co-editing that we do. Of course, this could be the user, not the tool.
We need the storage of the files, the documents right now are in the database. Maybe SharePoint has to improve the capability to store the information in file systems. In theory right now, it could do that. But, I understand that some functions are lost when you store the information in a file system, so maybe that's a way SharePoint can improve.
It should have more user-friendly customization, as it still requires developers to get engaged and build sites. I would like it to be more compliant with global regulations. There are certain features which could be included that currently are not there, such as compliance and record management capabilities.
* During uptime under our network, it is hard to find info when content is hefty. * It should have a Google-caliber search ability and a model-based GUI.
We would like more security features, like automating.
We are mainly using third-party tools for it, at the moment, for automating processes. In the new version, for 2019, I know that some of the processes are finally in SharePoint. They are a now using third-party tools for it. Also, the integration with Outlook could be improved.
They need to integrate all the solutions, for example, Office 365, into SharePoint. The idea is to create a workplace for people in the company. There should be only one place - it could be Skype for Business, OneDrive - for the news, for internal information about the company, or new documents. This is the idea, to create an ecosystem for people in the company.
Integration with Outlook would be a major improvement. Staff also commented that it does not integrate despite being part of the Microsoft family.
It is too heavy. MS should not have paid foreign coders dollars per each row of code. They wasted the stability and reliability in the end.
SharePoint designer workflows can be buggy sometimes without any apparent reason. Also, customization can be somewhat burdensome.
Replication needs improvement.