With so many people experiencing issues with Microsoft Office 2013 activation and random requests to re-activate which result in error codes, or issues where "A problem has occurred" with no log entries or error codes when you try to install the software, it's quite possible Microsoft has strongly encouraged people to seek alternatives.
Since experiencing so many reliability issues with Microsoft Office 2013, issues that did not exist with Microsoft Office 2010, I've become a vocal advocate for making the
I think is has more to due with Microsoft lack of advancement in Office... For the most part what we are doing in Office 2013, is the same stuff we were doing in Office 95. Sure there were some incremental changes that took advantage of newer technologies, some new UI changes that I am not sure if it makes things better. But for the most part things haven't changed too much. Word is still a word processor, Excel is still a spreadsheet Outlook is still a memory hog Access is still causing businesses to slowly go
Some of the bigger changes have to do with things like sharepoint integration, which really does work fairly well in newer versions of Office in a corporate setting.
However, it still can be rather buggy, and doesn't play nicely with Chrome unless there is some plugin I'm not aware of (that is, the more web-based parts - if you just directly open a file from Office no browser is involved).
I really detest Sharepoint. It's the flavor of the moment at work. It's slow and saves from MS Office applications sometimes fail silently. It pretends to be a suitable replacement for shared network drives, but it doesn't work for that.
I use it rather than the old Wiki (TWiki, no gem itself) just to be a good sport, but it really sucks. It really exposes how poorly integrated MS's own internal teams must me - it is such an obvious bolt-on.
SharePoint is a lot more than a shared network drive. I'd say it is a light version of Documentum. If you or the team is using it as only that then: you aren't using it right, no one setup it up right and/or you weren't properly trained.
No, we absolutely are NOT using it as a shared network drive, because it sucks for that. It uses an inefficient protocol (webdav) and so is absolutely glacial when writing many files. It also has a large black list of file extensions. We end up putting a bunch of links to files on the shared drives. One of the intentions was to make documents (and information in general) easier to find then when they were in the Wiki. It definitely has not accomplished that, but I don't fault the product for that - it seems
The integration is really good but it assumes you have a SharePoint administrator setting it up. As far as glacial file transfers that sounds like a SQLServer issue generally. You need to make sure the server is setup to handle the file transfers. As far as wiki vs. SharePoint.... SharePoint works well because it can allow deep linking within office documents to one another in a reliable version controlled way. You can also do really powerful searches.
As for not allowing extensions you need, that's def
The integration is really good but it assumes you have a SharePoint administrator setting it up.
We do have an administrator, now internal. Originally we were using an outside vendor. Either way, I'm not sure how the administrator could be responsible for the embarrassing kludge that is the Office-Sharepoint "integration". It is so clearly a bolt-on afterthought to the whole office suite that I'm a little surprised I have to defend my position.
As far as glacial file transfers that sounds like a SQLServer issue generally.
It could be, but this is two setups now - one with the outside vendor and one done internally. I guess they could both be clueless, but it sure seems par for the
Try copying a folder with a few thousand files in it to Sharepoint and then perform the same action on a shared network drive.
Sharepoint by default is going to want to structure information. The assumption is that thousands of files are going to be upload by an admin not a general user. Making uploading thousands of files hard is a feature not a bug.
Every once in a while, it simply fails to save the document you are editing silently
There are error messages being passed. If they are being blocked some
Anyway Seraphim_72 is giving you the same answer. Your problem isn't SharePoint but admins that don't know how to admin SharePoint.
Actually, there are three problems:
It's probably true that my admin is not the best. Oh well.
The Office integration is terrible. It's an obviously bolted-on hack. Failing silently on the client is NOT alright.
Sharepoint is oversold as a solution.
It is an expensive Wiki with marginally better Office integration than competing products. Other than the integration, it has little competitive advantage. I'm sure the ability to version control Powerpoint is useful to someone, but for me they are typically one-of
You aren't getting it. Sharepoint is a cheap document management library like Documentum: http://www.emc.com/domains/doc... [emc.com] not an expensive fileshare.
As for the Office integration being terrible, that's just not true. Failing silently is not alright but that shouldn't be happening there is something going wrong with your config.
As for metadata... actually the Project Managers, Systems Analysts, Business analysts.... should be doing it not the engineers. Library maintenance is supposed to be part of some
What you and Seraphim_72 seem to be telling us is that Sharepoint sucks. It shouldn't be installed without paying a consultant a painfully large amount of money, and that person won't be effective without getting lots more permissions on the system than he or she usually get.. It's apparently easy to make a config mistake (two separate admins did it) enables dangerous behavior (silently losing data). It may be acceptable to allow that in the config, but it should not be easy to make that mistake. It requires constant addition of metadata, which apparently should be entered by somebody who didn't create the document and doesn't necessarily know what's in it. It expects people to use it its way, and deliberately makes it hard to import files (at least, that's what "feature" suggests to me).
I'm taking this largely from what the Sharepoint fans are telling us, with only a little input from what the person who doesn't like Sharepoint said. It's actually a bit frightening.
I wouldn't say SharePoint sucks. It sucks when you don't use it as intended. The GP was using it as a file share. SharePoint is very good as a light document management solution with MS Office integration.
As far as the rest, I said the comparison is to Documentum. Documentum generally recommends an implementation team. It is not uncommon that Documentum has a permanent IT support department (i.e. multiple people). Share Point can get by with less than 1. As for metadata and using it its way. Yes. Th
OK, would it be fair to say that Sharepoint sucks in roles that lots of people seem to expect it to be useful for? I'm hardly an expert, but I kept getting the impression that it was a bad tool intended for general use. So, the bad Sharepoint rep is mostly due to people's inaccurate expectations and the Microsoft marketing, well, "people" seem perhaps too charitable?
OK, would it be fair to say that Sharepoint sucks in roles that lots of people seem to expect it to be useful for?
Yes that's fair. Though IMHO most companies and individuals don't really use any of their software right. So for example the #1 thing people do with Excel is keep lists. There is far better outlining software than Excel which is much better for lists. But...
I'm hardly an expert, but I kept getting the impression that it was a bad tool intended for general use.
Sharepoint is sold as far more than a document library.
First off, they emphasize these ridiculous social networking style features. "Connecting to people". As if you don't know who the members of your team are. The interface to the collaboration side of things is through the web browser. If you are such an MS house that you have Sharepoint, then you already use Outlook as your primary written communication tool - no one is going to switch over to Sharepoint for collaboration unless you take away Outlook, or
First off, they emphasize these ridiculous social networking style features. "Connecting to people". As if you don't know who the members of your team are.
Well Yammer is a new feature. People in large companies often don't know the other people in their teams. You may not have worked in large enough organizations where this is a problem.
. If you are such an MS house that you have Sharepoint, then you already use Outlook as your primary written communication tool - no one is going to switch over to Sha
It sounds to me in your description like your company might be too small to have the sorts of problems that SharePoint is designed to fix.
I agree with this. At the time of our decision to use Sharepoint, our engineering was being run by a guy who was very fond of books about Toyota. Our company has about 450x less revenue than Toyota. Most of our engineers know a single system very well and "own" it. When you want to know something about a system, you ask the engineer - not look it up on Sharepoint. I've tried very hard to be a good company man and embrace Sharepoint. I put all of the work that it is feasible to in it, I use it to document my
If you don't need document management then SharePoint won't do anything for you. It is entirely possible that a wiki would be a better choice. At this point sing you already have it maybe consolidate down to just a few SharePoint sites like: Engineering, HR, Accounting... That way you can use SharePoint for areas where people are unfamiliar with who to talk to. So for example if you don't know who in Accounting handles foreign checks and what the policy is for foreign purchase SharePoint works for you,
You can probably thank Microsoft for this... (Score:4, Informative)
Since experiencing so many reliability issues with Microsoft Office 2013, issues that did not exist with Microsoft Office 2010, I've become a vocal advocate for making the
Re: (Score:5, Funny)
I think is has more to due with Microsoft lack of advancement in Office... For the most part what we are doing in Office 2013, is the same stuff we were doing in Office 95.
Sure there were some incremental changes that took advantage of newer technologies, some new UI changes that I am not sure if it makes things better. But for the most part things haven't changed too much.
Word is still a word processor,
Excel is still a spreadsheet
Outlook is still a memory hog
Access is still causing businesses to slowly go
Re: (Score:2)
Some of the bigger changes have to do with things like sharepoint integration, which really does work fairly well in newer versions of Office in a corporate setting.
However, it still can be rather buggy, and doesn't play nicely with Chrome unless there is some plugin I'm not aware of (that is, the more web-based parts - if you just directly open a file from Office no browser is involved).
Re: (Score:5, Insightful)
I really detest Sharepoint. It's the flavor of the moment at work. It's slow and saves from MS Office applications sometimes fail silently. It pretends to be a suitable replacement for shared network drives, but it doesn't work for that.
I use it rather than the old Wiki (TWiki, no gem itself) just to be a good sport, but it really sucks. It really exposes how poorly integrated MS's own internal teams must me - it is such an obvious bolt-on.
Re: (Score:2)
SharePoint is a lot more than a shared network drive. I'd say it is a light version of Documentum. If you or the team is using it as only that then: you aren't using it right, no one setup it up right and/or you weren't properly trained.
Re: (Score:2)
No, we absolutely are NOT using it as a shared network drive, because it sucks for that. It uses an inefficient protocol (webdav) and so is absolutely glacial when writing many files. It also has a large black list of file extensions. We end up putting a bunch of links to files on the shared drives. One of the intentions was to make documents (and information in general) easier to find then when they were in the Wiki. It definitely has not accomplished that, but I don't fault the product for that - it seems
Re: (Score:2)
The integration is really good but it assumes you have a SharePoint administrator setting it up. As far as glacial file transfers that sounds like a SQLServer issue generally. You need to make sure the server is setup to handle the file transfers. As far as wiki vs. SharePoint.... SharePoint works well because it can allow deep linking within office documents to one another in a reliable version controlled way. You can also do really powerful searches.
As for not allowing extensions you need, that's def
Re: (Score:2)
The integration is really good but it assumes you have a SharePoint administrator setting it up.
We do have an administrator, now internal. Originally we were using an outside vendor. Either way, I'm not sure how the administrator could be responsible for the embarrassing kludge that is the Office-Sharepoint "integration". It is so clearly a bolt-on afterthought to the whole office suite that I'm a little surprised I have to defend my position.
As far as glacial file transfers that sounds like a SQLServer issue generally.
It could be, but this is two setups now - one with the outside vendor and one done internally. I guess they could both be clueless, but it sure seems par for the
Re: (Score:2)
Sharepoint by default is going to want to structure information. The assumption is that thousands of files are going to be upload by an admin not a general user. Making uploading thousands of files hard is a feature not a bug.
There are error messages being passed. If they are being blocked some
Re: (Score:2)
Anyway Seraphim_72 is giving you the same answer. Your problem isn't SharePoint but admins that don't know how to admin SharePoint.
Actually, there are three problems:
It is an expensive Wiki with marginally better Office integration than competing products. Other than the integration, it has little competitive advantage. I'm sure the ability to version control Powerpoint is useful to someone, but for me they are typically one-of
Re: (Score:2)
You aren't getting it. Sharepoint is a cheap document management library like Documentum: http://www.emc.com/domains/doc... [emc.com] not an expensive fileshare.
As for the Office integration being terrible, that's just not true. Failing silently is not alright but that shouldn't be happening there is something going wrong with your config.
As for metadata... actually the Project Managers, Systems Analysts, Business analysts.... should be doing it not the engineers. Library maintenance is supposed to be part of some
Re:You can probably thank Microsoft for this... (Score:2)
What you and Seraphim_72 seem to be telling us is that Sharepoint sucks. It shouldn't be installed without paying a consultant a painfully large amount of money, and that person won't be effective without getting lots more permissions on the system than he or she usually get.. It's apparently easy to make a config mistake (two separate admins did it) enables dangerous behavior (silently losing data). It may be acceptable to allow that in the config, but it should not be easy to make that mistake. It requires constant addition of metadata, which apparently should be entered by somebody who didn't create the document and doesn't necessarily know what's in it. It expects people to use it its way, and deliberately makes it hard to import files (at least, that's what "feature" suggests to me).
I'm taking this largely from what the Sharepoint fans are telling us, with only a little input from what the person who doesn't like Sharepoint said. It's actually a bit frightening.
Re: (Score:2)
I wouldn't say SharePoint sucks. It sucks when you don't use it as intended. The GP was using it as a file share. SharePoint is very good as a light document management solution with MS Office integration.
As far as the rest, I said the comparison is to Documentum. Documentum generally recommends an implementation team. It is not uncommon that Documentum has a permanent IT support department (i.e. multiple people). Share Point can get by with less than 1. As for metadata and using it its way. Yes. Th
Re: (Score:2)
OK, would it be fair to say that Sharepoint sucks in roles that lots of people seem to expect it to be useful for? I'm hardly an expert, but I kept getting the impression that it was a bad tool intended for general use. So, the bad Sharepoint rep is mostly due to people's inaccurate expectations and the Microsoft marketing, well, "people" seem perhaps too charitable?
Re: (Score:2)
Yes that's fair. Though IMHO most companies and individuals don't really use any of their software right. So for example the #1 thing people do with Excel is keep lists. There is far better outlining software than Excel which is much better for lists. But...
I think most companies (over
Re: (Score:2)
Sharepoint is sold as far more than a document library.
First off, they emphasize these ridiculous social networking style features. "Connecting to people". As if you don't know who the members of your team are. The interface to the collaboration side of things is through the web browser. If you are such an MS house that you have Sharepoint, then you already use Outlook as your primary written communication tool - no one is going to switch over to Sharepoint for collaboration unless you take away Outlook, or
Re: (Score:2)
Well Yammer is a new feature. People in large companies often don't know the other people in their teams. You may not have worked in large enough organizations where this is a problem.
Re: (Score:2)
It sounds to me in your description like your company might be too small to have the sorts of problems that SharePoint is designed to fix.
I agree with this. At the time of our decision to use Sharepoint, our engineering was being run by a guy who was very fond of books about Toyota. Our company has about 450x less revenue than Toyota. Most of our engineers know a single system very well and "own" it. When you want to know something about a system, you ask the engineer - not look it up on Sharepoint. I've tried very hard to be a good company man and embrace Sharepoint. I put all of the work that it is feasible to in it, I use it to document my
Re: (Score:2)
If you don't need document management then SharePoint won't do anything for you. It is entirely possible that a wiki would be a better choice. At this point sing you already have it maybe consolidate down to just a few SharePoint sites like: Engineering, HR, Accounting... That way you can use SharePoint for areas where people are unfamiliar with who to talk to. So for example if you don't know who in Accounting handles foreign checks and what the policy is for foreign purchase SharePoint works for you,
Re: (Score:2)
Heh, I'd probably just walk over to accounting and start asking people who I should talk to :)
Their answer might very well be someone in Singapore or Malaysia, but that would be my approach...
Anyway, I think you are right and I'm just not in a big enough organization for this kind of software.