Yes, you have to do it. No, don’t ask more questions about it. Yes, you will
need to learn a couple of things, and some of your colleagues are going to
refuse using it, but you have to. In the long run, you will increase your
organization productivity and you won’t be able to live without it.
Some of the things you’ll get:
- Central document repository: no more storing files on your local
hard disk or on a shared folder in the network. With SharePoint you will be
able to store documents in a repository accessible via web. When some other
person needs to collaborate on the document, they can just go the specified
web site, open the document, edit it and save it back to the repository. No
more documents lying around. - Document versioning: yes, will have a whole history of all the
edits made on the document and go back and recover that version that you
need. - One search: search for documents and information inside documents
from a single place. When you install SharePoint Portal Server, you will get
the ability to search across sites and document libraries everywhere. Now
you won’t loose a document again. - Metadata fields: Add information about documents. Forget about
folder hierarchies for classifying documents. Add metadata fields for
describing and searching. - Forms: create a repository of standard forms used in your
organization. Training requests, purchase orders, expense reimbursement,
etc., etc., etc. Create and publish them in SharePoint. - Sites: create special sites for collaboration. A site for the
sale department, human resources department. For that new project we are
starting. - Collaboration features: create calendars, meeting spaces, assign
tasks and create contacts around documents and other objects of the
organization. Everything integrated in one site created for that purpose. - It’s the future: yes, it is. We will have one environment,
invisible in the background, where all our documents will live and all the
collaboration information will be stored. Today is called SharePoint.
Of course, this are just some of the things you will get when deploying
SharePoint. There are a lot of other things you can do with it and customize it
to your needs.
After your implementation don’t forget to go a step further with workflow.
Add document approval and routing to those documents and forms in SharePoint
using our product, Procx. With it, you can really streamline processes and
really do more with less. Go, give it a look at our
SharePoint Workflow
site and our InfoPath
Workflow site.