I'm looking at introducing SharePoint at work and moving the majority of our file server to SharePoint Online. The main goals of this are:
- Outsourcing the pain and stress of downtime to Microsoft instead of internal IT.
- Easier access for remote workers. About half the workforce work remotely, and I find VPNing in to the file server a bit tedious compared with O365.
- Better integration of files with Microsoft Teams (which I'm also trying to introduce).
- Better search.
- Better Version control.
- Better concurrent working on single Office documents by multiple users.
- "Eating our own dog food" - we're a Microsoft ERP partner and clients ask us about SharePoint. I think we should embrace Microsoft technology more than we do.
I don't have experience of using SharePoint with large numbers of files. I use ODfB (which basically is SharePoint) extensively for my personal files and find it pretty flaky, but that's just issues with the sync client rather than the SP site itself.
I will definitely be using folders and not relying on metadata. I don't care what people say about Microsoft advising to not use folders, I've tried relying just on metadata and think it sucks. Folders for the win every time. We have a folder for each client, and sub-folders under that. About 50 clients, 400GB of data and about a million files (mostly Office files). The data is pretty static and archival - we don't have many concurrent projects (and so not many concurrent or new files). I will probably keep our mapped folders and just map them to SharePoint rather than file shares because that is what everyone is used to, although I'd like to think people will transition to Teams for everything in the long term.
Reading through some old SharePoint threads on ML I see a lot of love in 2015 and a lot of hate in 2018, which puzzles me. To quote from 2015:
@minion-queen said in Sharepoint:
We use SharePoint for all our client data and our custom helpdesk right now. In 30 days we will be moving to Dynamics CRM so it will be even more important then.
We have been using SharePoint for years and can't imagine a company of any size not wanting to use it.
@scottalanmiller said in Sharepoint:
My favourite features of SP are the easy ones: really powerful document library system, remote mappable drives, central database for metadata, easy to use searchable wiki, lists.
@scottalanmiller said in Sharepoint - how do you use it?:
We've been using SharePoint internally at NTG since the original 2003 release. We went 2003, 2007 and 2010 all hosted internally. Then we went to 2010 hosted with Rackspace and then 2013 with Office 365. So we've been using it a long time. We use it for everything, once you get used to it you will be addicted. It is really amazing once you start to leverage it as your central repository for everything.
It sounds awesome. Then in 2018, the mood seems to change:
@dbeato said in SharePoint Online as a File Server:
@dashrender said in SharePoint Online as a File Server:
Anyone here know of a company that completely ditched local fileshares and moved wholly to ODfB and Sharepoint?
We had two customers that did that, and they regretted it. That's because I know it first hand. I have a lot of customers with Dropbox and NextCloud.
@scottalanmiller said in SharePoint Online as a File Server:
@dashrender said in SharePoint Online as a File Server:
Anyone here know of a company that completely ditched local fileshares and moved wholly to ODfB and Sharepoint?
We wanted to but it wasn't good. We went to Nextcloud instead, which is way more enterprise than ODfB.
@scottalanmiller said in SharePoint Online as a File Server:
@momurda said in SharePoint Online as a File Server:
Is anybody in the world happy with Sharepoint Online or OneDrive for Business?
I cant think of two worse 'solutions' for file storage/sharing.
Not of which I am aware. I like SharePoint conceptually, but not in practice.
I appreciate we could be talking about slightly different things - the sync client in ODfB and SharePoint itself, but I get the feeling @scottalanmiller has fallen out of love with SharePoint, is that fair?
My bosses are reluctant to transition to SharePoint, so I'd be putting my neck on the line, and I'm not sure I want to do that.
Give me some more of your experiences with SharePoint please. And where you've had issues, please give some details of what those issues were. I'm hoping that because we primarily work with Office files, and don't have any large Autodesk engineering drawings or Adobe graphics files (for example), the experience will be pretty good. But the proof of the pudding is in the eating, so I'm looking for feedback from out in the field.
Thanks!