m$ sharepoint

[ch0l0man]

does anyone have experience with m$ sharepoint?
the company i work for is going to use it instead of websphere, e-room or sap, so i would like to hear some feedback on it.
and not the same old m$ sucks :D
thanks

[murakami]

Here are my observations from the user end:

sharepoint seems to duplicate a lot Outlook/Exchange functions that users never ever seem to figure out despite training.

Sharepoint seems to be better suited for a workgroup than a whole enterprise.

Its been pitched as way to manage and share project management information from M$ Project, but as most line managers know from experience project is great for Gantt charts, but not for actually managing a project, its reporting capabilities are limited, and its a pain in the butt to use if you stray from the templates.

If you deploy it as a portal solution, it will be used for a while, then probably forgotten since most folks use email as a method of communication instead of going through another program.

[ch0l0man]

thanks murakami!

yeah we will be using to as a portal, i will be testing it for functionality, security issues and giving my opinion for enhancements, (not much chance of that with a m$ product).

we started with sap portal but it had way to many security issues and would just error out at times. there is a url in sap that will let you grab full admin control, not good. sap said they werent aware of the issue, yeah right.

thanks again for your feedback!

[murakami]

Have y'all considered plone ?

I've been playing with it and its basically zope with lots of templates. Seems to make zope much more useable, but then again I've never been much of a Python person.

[ch0l0man]

i took a quick peak and it doesnt look like what they want, and being open source is a big killer.
the guy in charge wanted to use sharepoint right out the box,lol.
the devolpment wanted websphere since it was by far more customable but i believe management didnt like the cost of it, go figure.
i just want them to hurry and decide so i can keep my job :)

e-room collaberation work rather well, but again the price was to much.

[murakami]

Yeah, I hear ya.

What kills me is that a large chunk of internet is Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP, but folks still are all scared of open source. What makes me cringe is all the folks that buy Oracle App Server which is little more than warmed over JServ.

[rusty]

How about this sharepoint clone

http://drs.sourceforge.net/

It's basically a open source sharepoint clone.
Runs on a linux server, running frontpage extensions on apache.

Check out the screenshots on the webpage.

[ch0l0man]

thanks rusty!

looks cool, but i dont think the cic department knows what *nix is.
but ill pass this on to my boss maybe she can convince them.

i already have noticed that $harepoint limits its features based on what version of m$ office you have.
if you have anything below office xp you can not edit letters in word online.
if you dont have office 3k you dont get the ability to upload multiple docs. huh?
that is just lame, a quick way to make the next buck.
mind you that this is the beta i have so it might change by release day, but i wont hold my breath.