Sharepoint Ideas

We use SharePoint 2013. We really only use it for document storage, team Calendars/contacts and task management.

I dont really need the ins and outs of how to but rather a suggestion of where to start some research on trying to do more with sharepoint.


So i was just curious what others were doing in their environment and do they feel they were helpful to the teams they support.

delemorte said:

We use SharePoint 2013. We really only use it for document storage, team Calendars/contacts and task management.

I dont really need the ins and outs of how to but rather a suggestion of where to start some research on trying to do more with sharepoint.


So i was just curious what others were doing in their environment and do they feel they were helpful to the teams they support.

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my org uses a sharepoint for inventory management.... yeah not working as well as it was thought out to be... K.I.S.S. should be enforced mercilessly to avoid sharepoint feature creep into all aspects of business. also plan backup procedures if the sharepoint goes down.

thank you.. Any one else got any neat or interesting uses with their Sharepoint environment?

We use sharepoint, we have a manager who thinks it's the cure for all ills. Not a fan myself.

We use it to share internal documents mostly.

The workflow functionality can be fairly flexible and powerful and can do fun stuff with item lists....

David_Schroth said:

The workflow functionality can be fairly flexible and powerful and can do fun stuff with item lists....

Click to expand...

Great idea. We have a ton of crazy processes that could benefit from that. Thanks!!

I agree with what was said above. There are lots of things you can do with SharePoint but it can creep into everything your company does. Over the last two years we have switched over our quality management system, engineering change notices, product trackers, customer calls and support tickets, etc (practically everything except our ERP and engineering documentation). The list grows longer every year.
By itself that isn't a problem - it is very useful. There are some downsides: when SharePoint goes down everything goes down. Any performance problems become company wide issues (if your systems are not scaled appropriately). It tends to become the only tool in the belt - even if SharePoint isn't a good solution to a particular problem it gets shoehorned anyways.

Personally... I avoid it like the plague.

Others in my organization use it for document collaboration/sharing though.

David_Schroth said:

The workflow functionality can be fairly flexible and powerful and can do fun stuff with item lists....

Click to expand...

i've found them extremely rigid and unusable...

we have used them for certain tasks but, i think if you're a programmer or if you come from a programming background you'd be really disappointed...

It was used for logging support tickets, but that was probably the 03 version. It was not fun, don't do this.

I administer an internal departmental SharePoint site that a little over 1,100 employees use throughout the state in my company. Our department is a bit of a central nexus of activity for my company so it the processes I have transferred to SharePoint are only the ones that allow us to regain man-hours and realize improvements or to have more data available for tracking and trending to act on.

Techs in the field use a custom .aspx pages with custom forms and list views to submit tickets from their iPads in the field that our department processes. Workflows launch automatically and let management and upper management know of certain situations based on those tickets. Inventory tracking and auditing tools allow our warehouses to input massive lists of equipment that our department can audit. Various tools allow us to track financial stats for how much credit is being given away and how who is giving it.

I also created a tool that lets a group of 80 people set their status in real time so everyone can see if they are on break or lunch and if they are managing any specific processes for the day. All our departments’ staff use the site to see this info, as well as a knowledge base for our procedures. Our department uses it for an interactive and automated vacation calendar as well.

You can get SharePoint to do amazing things if you wear a few extra hats and tie in custom html / aspx pages, InfoPath forms, and workflows, you can get a site that runs a lot of your departments processes.

I actually won a national award from my company including a trip to headquarters and a ceremony for my efforts and pioneering approaches to some processes that had been archaic until I got my hands on them .

I REALLY enjoy this kind of stuff, been doing it since 2007, love finding a way to improve a process and make things run smoother, get rid of shared excel spread sheets, and stop the bombardment of status emails no one wants.

As an afterthought, just know what kinds of data and uses you need from it. It’s not meant to be a high volume transactional database, or replace an access data base, it can complement those things however. Also machine-state workflows and loops are not possible unless you do a lot of custom programming. And workflows chains that are initiated by change in another list item will usually break after 5-10 instances, they never run forever as MS build in some safeguards to keep a person lacking in foresight/experience from creating a monster that brings the whole farm to its knees.