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How good is SharePoint as Document Management System?

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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).

Feature SharePoint Score
Metadata star_five.gif
Very strong, especially when used with Office 2003/2007 documents.
Integration star_three.gif
Integration is present, but only with Microsoft tools. Needs improvement.
Capture star_one.gif
There is no built-in functionality to capture paper documents.
Indexing star_five.gif
Very strong. Indexing for non MS formats (like PDF) and other content sources is also available.
Storage star_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.
Retrieval star_three_half.gif
Search and filtering technologies have been improved in new version but search capabilities are far from ideal.
Security star_three.gif
Item level security is available, but product lacks abilities to set permissions on file type and reports on permissions already set.
Workflow star_four.gif
Workflow capabilities have been improved, but managing complex workflows cannot be done without 3rd party products.
Collaboration star_four.gif
Strong for users using Internet Explorer. It still needs to be improved for Firefox users.
Versioning star_four_half.gif
Strong. It misses some advanced versioning rules.
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Published Oct 09 2007, 09:18 PM by toni
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Comments

 

Luis Du Solier G. said:

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?

October 9, 2007 4:33 PM
 

toni said:

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.

October 9, 2007 4:53 PM
 

Jeremy Thake said:

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.

October 9, 2007 8:55 PM
 

Hassan said:

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

October 10, 2007 7:14 AM
 

Mirrored Blogs said:

This post is a follow-up to a blog post by a fellow blogger. In that post few variables had been taken

October 10, 2007 8:03 AM
 

SBC said:

Is this for WSSv3 or MOSS 2k7?

October 10, 2007 11:09 AM
 

Review of SharePoint features relevant to document management : End User SharePoint said:

Pingback from  Review of SharePoint features relevant to document management : End User SharePoint

October 10, 2007 7:38 PM
 

Review of SharePoint features relevant to document management : End User SharePoint said:

Pingback from  Review of SharePoint features relevant to document management : End User SharePoint

October 10, 2007 11:53 PM
 

toni said:

@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.

October 11, 2007 2:45 PM
 

Rehman Gul said:

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

November 27, 2007 3:01 PM
 

MaryHS said:

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?

February 18, 2008 8:11 PM
 

toni said:

@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.

February 19, 2008 11:23 AM
 

Tom Bizannes said:

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.

www.macroview.com.au/WisdomProducts.htm

June 26, 2008 2:51 AM
 

Steve said:

Some additional info at:

sharepointdocumentmanagement.wordpress.com

September 16, 2008 8:09 AM

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About toni

My name is Toni Frankola and a work as Microsoft Team Leader at Perpetuum Mobile, Croatia. This blog delivers real life use case and my opinions about Microsoft products. Summary: IT consultant specialized in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software – Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and IW solutions - Microsoft Office SharePoint. Specialties: - IT Project Management, Software requirements analysis and software architectures, IT Consulting, IT Sales and Marketing, Product positioning - MCSD, MCAD, MCTS, MBSS, MCT http://www.linkedin.com/in/tonifrankola
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Posts (c) their respective authors. Everything else (c) 2007 SharePoint Experts