Talk:Microsoft SharePoint/Pre-2010 Archive

Purpose

The article is not clear about what Sharepoint is. The article on MS Groove would be a good way to revamp this one. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.215.239.67 (talk) 19:58, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Now that we know what servers SharePoint will run on, can somebody say what exactly SharePoint is for and why somebody would want to use it? Reswobslc 18:23, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Its technology , anybody can use it , depending on its Need.......... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pvnarwade (talk • contribs) 15:57, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm also confused as to what exactly SharePoint is and why anybody would want to use it. The intro description may make sense to techie people, but from my layman's point of view, I'm still not quite sure what it is. A better explanation would be greatly appreciated. -Thunderforge (talk) 22:56, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm a techie and really I have no clue what it does other than take up harddrive space after reading this article. There is a hint that it has something to do with coding database front-end apps and another clue that it has something to do with websites, but other than that there is no direct announcement of what it actually does. 203.134.28.230 (talk) 00:43, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

SharePoint is an Enterpise Portal, which is a fancy name for a content management system that can be used to deliver reporting services. Big companies love it. Cosmo7 (talk) 14:54, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

It can replace an intranet. 65.196.214.163 (talk) 22:59, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

I also fail to find anything that explains the context where it is used and what problems it solves. The whole article reads like a marketing blurp... --Hlovdal (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 13:07, 24 February 2010 (UTC).

I'm a software engineer currently developing in sharepoint... and I'm still not exactly sure what the purpose of sharepoint is. Out of the box, it's a collection of asp.net web pages with an MSSQL database that... uh... doesn't do much. It's more like a framework. With a little work, you can turn it into a wiki, blog, intranet, workflow manager, scheduling system, CVS, "CMS", and pretty much anything that can be made from webpages and computer programs. So anything really. With this framework, it's supposed to be easier and faster then just making webpages that do the task outside of sharepoint. That's debatable, but I'd say it definitely integrates well with office tools. Not that any of that is article-worthy information, but hopefully it'll help you guys cut through the marketing haze. 206.196.158.130 (talk) 21:58, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

I've updated the 'Brief' description to provide a short description about Sharepoint (it's a CMS). It is described as an 'intranet' technology here, but it is widely used by others as an externally facing site. I don't think it sounds like an advert but I'm sure someone will disagree. 207.229.190.73 (talk) 02:29, 20 March 2010 (UTC) - ChicagoBrad

Merge

Merge of Windows SharePoint Services, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server into SharePoint.

These articles are poorly-defined and duplicate a lot of data. We should start by eliminating all the advertising cruft and duplication, which should take us down to about the length of a single good article. At that point it can be decided whether we need to split topics back out. For now these articles need focus, references and style, and the best way to start would be to take the good bits and boil them down to one overview article. Chris Cunningham 10:55, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Discussion

• The articles have a lot of overlap, and do not clear up the distinction. As such, having a single article which starts discussing with WSS (Windows Server component) base platform, and builds on by discussing the features of SharePoint Server (Microsoft Office components) feature-additions could be a good way of reducing the confusion and highlighting the dividing line. As such, I support this proposal.

  However, I would like an offline article (which integrates the articles together) be started and discussed before the live articles are replaced. On consensus, I will start the article. --soum ^talk 11:05, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

The live articles in their current form aren't really particularly good. A crude merge and then online work would allow others to participate; we shouldn't be keeping work private unless there's a really good reason. But if you want to do so then please do. Chris Cunningham 11:25, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

By offline I meant that the article nurtured in an on-wiki subpage, linked to from the discussion, which will replace the current articles only when mature enough. It will still be accessible to others during development to comment as well as contribute. I will start working on that tomorrow (I am a bit busy today, and also need to develop an idea of how it will be structured before I start keying things down. --soum ^talk 11:33, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay, the adapter for my laptop died on me. That too on a weekend. Anyway, the article is under devlopment at User:Soumyasch/Incubator/Microsoft SharePoint. --soum ^talk 11:00, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

I went ahead and performed the merge. I realize not much time was given to discussion, but none of the older revisions are lost, even the deleted revisions can be restored if needed. So, I suggest that the merged version be discussed over rather than restoring the haphazard versions while discussion goes on. --soum ^talk 15:54, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Excellent! Many thanks for this. Chris Cunningham 16:49, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, Chris. :) --soum ^talk 17:29, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

If anyone thinks the deleted revision history of the erstwhile dab article be restored, I can do that also. --soum ^talk 18:13, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Someone should add information about the older SharePoint versions, like SharePoint Portal Server (SPS) as all the links to SPS redirect here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 161.85.127.139 (talk) 11:21, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

After reading the article + this I am going to add the cleanup tag to this article. It's messy and I cannot help otherwise.--BBird (talk) 16:36, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Screenshots needed

Screenshots are needed to provide visual representation of the three components. While MOSD screenie has been added, screenshots of a vanilla WSS site and a MOSS site is needed. Please help. --soum ^talk 15:57, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

As a user trying to get a quick overview of what SharePoint is, the MOSD screenshot I found to be particularly useless. It gives me no useful information on the product. To me, it looked like any other html/site development tool, such as Dreamweaver, as it would look with a blank document.76.226.173.151 (talk) 14:28, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Article lead

I put the component apps into the lead back again. A four paragraph lead is okay by MoS. That apart, a lead should set up enough context for everything else to follow. And it should summarize everything and be able to stand on its own. Many people do just read the lead for a summary. Thats why how the feature set is spread across the apps should be clarified in the lead itself. Otherwise the most important facet of the understanding is being left out. And neither functionality of a lead is being served. --soum ^talk 05:16, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

It needs to be de-bulleted, then; at the moment it looks entirely wrong for an article lead. Chris Cunningham 07:53, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, it might be de-bulleted but not de-emphasized. Because this page can be reached from the version-specific articles. If you search for MOSS 2007, and end up in a page where you do not easily find MOSS 2007, its not going to be a good experience. Thats why the names of WSS and MOSS must be kept emphasized, so that people reaching here via redirects can easily know they have not reached a wrong place. And I cannot think of any other way to emphasize the fact while still keeping the differences highlighted without the current structure. If you have any ideas, be my guest. And this structure is not that unprecedented, I have come across a few. Let me hunt them down.

Same goes for the older names. Since the names of the older versions also redirect here, we need to make it known up front that it evolved into something else. Thats why it is not trivial, but rather an important navigation aid. Thats the key thing here, we have to take into accounts all the ways the article can be reached. Readers expect things to be visible and it is very frustrating if it has to be hunted around all throughout the article. --soum ^talk 09:06, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

You misunderstand the point of bolding alternative terms. One bolds alternative terms when it's not sure the reader has the right article. If a reader looks for an article on "Windows SharePoint Services" and ends up on one called "SharePoint", it's obvious they're on the right article already. I'm fine with WSS and MOSS being bolded (when the intro is re-written), but not with huge marketing terms being bolded in their entirety.

So is the intro going to be rewritten? The current form is unacceptable. Chris Cunningham 09:16, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

You are misunderstanding my intention. When I (a fictional I) am looking for MOSS article (I know it is different from WSS), if I end up in the SharePoint article, I am definitely going to get confused as:

• this is not a disambiguation article.
• there is something else also colloquially called SharePoint, and there is no way I be sure which SharePoint this article refers to.

Thats why provision must be made to easily communicate the information that this SharePoint refers to both versions, and both are covered here. Suppose this were the WSS or MOSS article, wouldn't it be highlighted then that they are referred to as SharePoint as well? Same here. Since the article title is the alternative name, it not only makes sense but is also essential to highlight the official names of the applications this article covers.

And which part is the "huge marketing terms"? The names of the applications themselves? There is no physical entity that goes by the name of SharePoint, so if anything that has to be de-emphasized is the name of the article itself, not any of the applications. And you cannot promote WSS or MOSS (the abbreviations) without first mentioning their full names.

Yes, the current lead looks like a disambiguation, because a part of its job is to disambiguate. So, there will always be a dab-list like look to it. That said, there can other approaches be tried out as well, which might make it more conventional looking.

Like I already said, I am out of ideas as to how to balance the requirements of disambiguating WSS/MOSS in the lead, communicating users that this article is about both while still looking like regular articles, most of which do not have so many constraints. (I can't help but wonder whether separate articles are the better option). What is your suggestion? May be we should wait for others to chip in so we can have fresh ideas. --soum ^talk 09:38, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

It definitely isn't necessary to have the article lead look like a disambiguation article. Bullet points simply aren't a good idea in the lead of an article; even with a bunch of discrete products, you can still get away with prose.

The "huge marketing terms" means "every name Microsoft have given one of this family of products has to go in the lead". Microsoft rename their products every year, and it isn't necessary to go over the whole sordid history while listing them. Rather than saying "MOSS was initially known as SharePoint Portal Server 2001 which was built on top of Exchange and WSS. It was made a part of Microsoft Office with Microsoft Office 2003, where it was known as Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003. It was rechristened again as Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 when it launched with Microsoft Office 2007" - which has some useful anaesthetic properties - we could simply say "MOSS was previously known as SharePoint Server" and "SharePoint Portal Server"". I don't think we lose anything here. We can expand in the article body.

The original rationale for a merge was that the separate articles were incoherent and rambling. I'm happy for a re-split once we've removed cruft and tried to concentrate on encyclopedic content. Chris Cunningham 09:54, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, the shortening you suggested sounds good. The genesis info can be moved into the respective sections. And as long as both WSS and MOSS are identifiable at a glance, I do not care whether its a prose, list, table, infobox or whatever else you (a generic "you") can think of. And I am not suggesting a re-split right away. --soum ^talk 10:07, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Features and functionality

There is a lot of confusion conserning functions in MOSS Standard vs MOSS Enterprise vs WSS. RSS-functionality is not exclusive to MOSS etc. How should a complete product version comparison be formatted? If someone can design the shell, I would be happy to build on it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.182.117.60 (talk) 16:37, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

It can be done by using a feature matrix, like the one in [[Microsoft Visual Studio#Editions feature grid}}. Since most of us here aren't that well versed in this area, I am not creating a placeholder in the article. If you can, please help us create it. If you need any technical help, contact me directly. --soum ^talk 06:39, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Browser support?

How good is Microsoft SharePoint's support for third party browsers (such as Firefox), if there is any at all?—Tokek (talk) 08:38, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

I came to this article with the same question. We use some sahrepoint based apps and when accessing them from firefox it says --

Error

At least Internet Explorer version 6 is needed to use Project Web Access.

Troubleshoot issues with Windows SharePoint Services.

--BBird (talk) 16:27, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Firefox support is limited to the very basic functionalities: - no html editor for the wiki-pages - cumbersome (inexistent) file management to make it short: if Mircosoft's Sharepoint recognizes that Firefox is used, all the handy tools are disabled immediately.

You are referencing a module for Sharepoint, not the product itself. Sharepoint works fine in Firefox for most everything.. if anyone really cares enough I can try to do some testing to see what does and doesnt work. 207.229.190.73 (talk) 02:33, 20 March 2010 (UTC) - ChicagoBrad

Test

Reviews

I miss on this page reviews of Sharepoint. How good is it? For a new, huge Microsoft product, I'd expect to hear more about it but I don't. What is it like, particularly as a wiki? --Robinson weijman (talk) 10:05, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

What about box.net vs. Sharepoint -- SRChiP (talk) 04:33, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

From what I have seen, it is laughable as a wiki. But I have no way of knowing what is intrinsic to Sharepoint, what is local customization and what is configuration. JöG (talk) 20:06, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

There is a native Wiki feature, but I haven't tried it. However, I don't think reviews of a software product are appropriate for an encyclopedia, unless they are specifically noteworthy for some reason. 207.229.190.73 (talk) 02:35, 20 March 2010 (UTC) ChicagoBrad

Agree about not reviewing the software but there should certainly be a section summarizing the reception / reviews - just as with any other product (see especially movies and computer games). --Robinson weijman (talk) 07:29, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Product Versions / History

Why isn't there a table/timeline showing this? There is with most other software products —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.249.2.158 (talk) 11:27, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Seconded. It would be extremely valuable to see a history of versions. Currently, there is no clear organization for the products. --Eptin (talk) 19:23, 13 October 2010 (UTC)