MS SharePoint
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server is used by organizations and businesses for content management and so staff can collaborate on projects and share schedules with one another.
As listed on the MS SharePoint product page, the technology is used for:
- Collaboration and Social Computing
- Enterprise Content Management
- Portals
- Business Process and Forms
- Enterprise Search
- Business Intelligence
Review
SharePoint is a CMS and productivity tool that I have used within a corporate setting that provided one portal for the company I worked for, and within that portal, access to information of affiliated offices.
Pros
This CMS is most cost-effective in terms of time. The main features I have used for collaboration include the discussion boards, calendar, and file sharing. These features have particularly been useful when dealing with staff in other locations as it expedites communication and saves having to email back and forth or call each other. Additionally, SharePoint allows an individual to indicate whether or not other people can edit the shared files. If one user is changing a file using SharePoint, the CMS will prevent other users from accessing the file. In some cases, this is a good feature but the downside is that a user can often forget that the document is open, thus preventing any access, modification or deletion completely. User access restrictions and permissions can also be set on SharePoint, thus preventing or allowing specific staff to access and collaborate on a variety of projects. Like other CMS’s, SharePoint allows users to customize their pages.
Cons
Another downside to this collaboration technology is that not all employees will use it, especially if they are not directly connected to any projects. Because of this, some staff could miss out on some key communication or schedule changes.