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How good is SharePoint as Document Management System?

Toni Frankola - October 9, 2007

One of the most
important features of SharePoint 2007 is document management. I decided to
review SharePoint in terms of features that a document management solution should
have. Definition on DMS can be found here (I just adapted this definition with
few things mentioned in April 2007 edition of Directions on Microsoft).

FeatureSharePoint
Score
Metadatastar_five.gif

Very strong, especially when used with Office 2003/2007 documents.

Integrationstar_three.gif

Integration is present, but only with Microsoft tools. Needs improvement.

Capturestar_one.gif

There is no built-in functionality to capture paper documents.

Indexingstar_five.gif

Very strong. Indexing for non MS formats (like PDF) and other content sources
is also available.

Storagestar_three.gif

SharePoint and SQL Server 2005 act as very stabile storage platform. Document
migration and retention policies be introduced in SharePoint 2007 but
these still need improvements. 3rd party tools are required for
serious document archiving.

Retrievalstar_three_half.gif

Search and filtering technologies have been improved in new version but
search capabilities are far from ideal.

Securitystar_three.gif

Item level security is available, but product lacks abilities to set
permissions on file type and reports on permissions already set.

Workflowstar_four.gif
Workflow
capabilities have been improved, but managing complex workflows cannot be
done without 3rd party products.
Collaborationstar_four.gif
Strong for
users using Internet Explorer. It still needs to be improved for Firefox
users.
Versioningstar_four_half.gif
Strong. It
misses some advanced versioning rules.
Tags | document management, editions
 0 16
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Toni Frankola

Microsoft SharePoint MVP, consultant, speaker, blogger, entrepreneur, and geek. Co-founder of syskit.com.

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16 Responses

  • Luis Du Solier G. October 9, 2007 at 9:33 pm

    Hi if you said that there’s no biult-in functionality to capture papers why you rate it 5?And in versioning ahy you said 4.5?

    Reply
  • http:// October 9, 2007 at 9:53 pm

    I pasted wrong image for Capture. 🙁

    Versioning is great but sometimes is a bit hard to configure it in complex implementations: you cannot store minor versions for previous major versions, you cannot limit versions by document size etc.

    Reply
  • Jeremy Thake October 10, 2007 at 1:55 am

    Just out of interest, where it doesn’t mean that 5 stars, what would you like to see in the product?

    For example, integration – because you can navigate to online document libraries via the Windows File system, any applicaiton in Windows can access this and save to these libraries. Were you referring to have further integration with metadata in other applications?

    Very good overview for Document Management though, just interested in how you thought through these ratings.

    Reply
  • Hassan October 10, 2007 at 12:14 pm

    Good overview, but yeah how did you came to this conclusion, it would be a good idea if we could know what we would want more in SharePoint’s Document Management features.

    Hassan

    Reply
  • SBC October 10, 2007 at 4:09 pm

    Is this for WSSv3 or MOSS 2k7?

    Reply
  • http:// October 11, 2007 at 7:45 pm

    @Jeremy & Hasan: I will post additional post with “missing features”

    @SBC: This is for MOSS 2007. But since MOSS is built on WSS; I would say that grades for Metadata, Storage, Security, Workflow, Collaboration and Versioning are same for MOSS and WSS.

    Reply
  • Rehman Gul November 27, 2007 at 9:01 pm

    Storage at 3 is a bit strict on the marking side…

    I think it should be rated around 4 and 4.5….

    http://rehmangul.wordpress.com

    Reply
  • http:// February 19, 2008 at 2:11 am

    By ‘integration – MS Tools only’ do you mean that there’s still no ability to add comments to PDFs that are on a document library?

    Reply
  • toni February 19, 2008 at 5:23 pm

    @MaryHS: You can, but only MS tools will allow you to use 100% potential of SharePoint like tagging documents from your client, working with documents stored to SharePoint directly etc.

    When working with other files like PDFs all basic functionalities will work, but you advanced will not.

    Reply
  • Tom Bizannes June 26, 2008 at 7:51 am

    Retrieval? Security?
    What about Navigation and Ease of setting Security.
    You need a third party tool like WISDOM DMF to make navigating and retrieving easy or to WISDOM DMF Professional to make setting document level permissions a snap and working with PDF files a breeze.
    http://www.macroview.com.au/WisdomProducts.htm

    Reply
  • Joe July 16, 2008 at 6:50 pm

    i prefer hyperoffice

    Reply
  • Scott August 20, 2008 at 1:23 pm

    Some good articles and info on Capture and Scanning with Sharepoint at http://www.scanguru.com

    Reply
  • TomP September 16, 2008 at 11:09 am

    The lack of front end capture for Sharepoint is true but Fujitsu scanners have Scan to Sharepoint functionality out of the box.

    Reply
  • Gabriel @ ClearPeople April 13, 2009 at 2:46 pm

    Guys thought I should share a few resources with you which involves work that we have had our hands on lately. There are two entries on our blog:

    From March 2009
    http://thesharepointpeople.blogspot.com/2009/03/real-life-document-management-on.html

    From September 2008
    http://thesharepointpeople.blogspot.com/2008/09/document-management-on-sharepoint.html

    Also, this Microsoft Case Study might be interesting for some of you: http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/casestudy.aspx?casestudyid=4000003953

    Let me know if you want some more info. You can email me on gabriel_at_clearpeople.com

    Gabriel

    Reply
  • iTechnology Forms Accelerator March 2, 2010 at 9:18 am

    In my company for more than half year we developed with WSS very ambitious product and the more skeptic I was, the more we go straight with it. So all I can say at least is the beautiful result available at http://www.myitechnology.com. I think it worth all sometimes difficult process.
    And how good is SharePoint Document Management System? According to this product, user’s feedback is quite good, so for us SharePoint functionality is completely enough and applicable to our goals.

    Reply
  • John Klok June 23, 2015 at 3:03 pm

    Great post ! Now a days document management system is very essential for big as well as SME’s also. Every organization has data and document which requires good handling and management. Using the latest Document Management System and office automation is very helpful and advantageous. It removes the unnecessary spaces and keeps the document safe and secure.

    Reply
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