Opinion: Difficulty of Using/Administering SharePoint

[donb01]

I'll try to be brief. I'm a noob to the point that I have never used or worked with SharePoint, but I have no doubt I could teach myself to use it. I am not in the IT dept, I am the telecom manager, but I have many of the same skill sets as the IT staff.

Here is the scenario and question from my boss:

Integrated healthcare delivery network with about 10 physical sites in a 15 mile radius, 1300 staff, and 50 depts. IT is outsourced to a management firm that manages our own staff. Average staff IT intellect on a 100 point scale, 40 - 60 with a few bright points.

"The Lone Ranger" is the guy who is the IT manager right now. Picture a 50 year old guy who looks like he smoked too much pot and stuck his finger in a light socket and you will have it nailed. Keeps to himself, likes to play with the live systems, no communication skills, has his own agenda - I'm sure you know the type....

So our company is looking for ways to do some collaboration among the members of different project teams we have. The Lone Ranger has installed SharePoint somewhere in the world and has set up some stuff for his own department and maybe a couple of others. The IT management firm (his ultimate boss) says that we do not want to set up SharePoint for this purpose in our organization because it would get too big and become a management nightmare. The Lone Ranger says "Naaah, It's no big deal, it's really simple." and wants all the groups set up on it.

I have searched the web for places to learn the user experience, demos to play with, servers set up for noobs to mess around with, etc hand have found very little information except stuff about authoring, etc - nothing from an end user's perspective.

My boss wants me to answer the question (for his boss, etc) of whether the IT management company is right, and this is going to be too time intensive for our organization, or if this is going to be a no-brainer and anyone will be able to administer these 'applications'. I downloaded some tutorials and stuff from MS, but they of course need me to have access to SharePoint to use them against it - I don't even know where to find it, and the guy's not about to help me.

My ASSUMPTION is that sharepoint will be like setting up a website with a WYSIWYG tool, which I have done, and users will be able to upload documents and view files and the like similar to the way one uploads stuff to facebook, etc?? I told him it may be just like using a website to the end users, but I have no clue.

He wants to know if we can expect to train an average person in each department to set up and maintain their own sites and content, and the end users will be able to deal with it, or if we are going to have to hire a dedicated staff member (or more) who's sole job is going to be maintaining and modifying the portals for all of the different departments that have them.

I have no doubt I could learn it and administer it, given privileges, but I know (as it has happened before) that I would end up being the go-to-guy expert on the subject, and I have no intention to take on another huge content management nightmare.

We already have an Intranet which was set up by the IT management company based on some CMS or other - I've never cared enough to find out. There are some departments maintaining their own content libraries on there, so I know they're not all stupid!

So if I could hear from you folks who have experience in maintaining this for a mid-size company that will have multiple separate islands of information thru your company - how much of a monster will this be to build, modify, and have pools of 'average' users working with? Will it become a support nightmare?

Thank you!

 

[vbkris]

hey,

let me try to anwer this as best as possible

Integrated healthcare delivery network with about 10 physical sites in a 15 mile radius, 1300 staff, and 50 depts. IT is outsourced to a management firm that manages our own staff. Average staff IT intellect on a 100 point scale, 40 - 60 with a few bright points.
.....

So our company is looking for ways to do some collaboration among the members of different project teams we have. The Lone Ranger has installed SharePoint somewhere in the world and has set up some stuff for his own department and maybe a couple of others

For collaboration nothing beats MOSS, it gives you really cool features such as discussion boards, blogging, wikis etc which can be enabled at the click of the mouse. The Lone Ranger is correct in saying that its real simple , as in once you have setup the pilot site its a breeze from there.

The IT management firm (his ultimate boss) says that we do not want to set up SharePoint for this purpose in our organization because it would get too big and become a management nightmare

What exactly does big mean? expected usage? are we talking about infrastructure here?

I have searched the web for places to learn the user experience, demos to play with, servers set up for noobs to mess around with, etc hand have found very little information except stuff about authoring, etc - nothing from an end user's perspective.

Check this out:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...cb-ada8-4db5-a47b-df17e14b2c74&displaylang=en

its a VHD and a pretty heavy download. but it will help you in getting started. one thing about MOSS is that initially there will be a learning curve as applicable to any product being used. but once you are setup and start using it you will love the flexibility that it provides.

My boss wants me to answer the question (for his boss, etc) of whether the IT management company is right, and this is going to be too time intensive for our organization, or if this is going to be a no-brainer and anyone will be able to administer these 'applications'. I downloaded some tutorials and stuff from MS, but they of course need me to have access to SharePoint to use them against it - I don't even know where to find it, and the guy's not about to help me.

its a no-nrainer for me, but however i would suggest you to get going with the VHD. that should give you an idea of what you are getting into.

My ASSUMPTION is that sharepoint will be like setting up a website with a WYSIWYG tool, which I have done, and users will be able to upload documents and view files and the like similar to the way one uploads stuff to facebook, etc?? I told him it may be just like using a website to the end users, but I have no clue.

even better, MOSS gives you all this and also provides those who are interested in "exploring" it with powerful tools such as the SharePoint Designer etc.

He wants to know if we can expect to train an average person in each department to set up and maintain their own sites and content, and the end users will be able to deal with it, or if we are going to have to hire a dedicated staff member (or more) who's sole job is going to be maintaining and modifying the portals for all of the different departments that have them.

Users can maitain their own sites in MOSS, once again this requires some training. However you would need someone who has knowhow in MOSS to help smooth the teething issues.

I have no doubt I could learn it and administer it, given privileges, but I know (as it has happened before) that I would end up being the go-to-guy expert on the subject, and I have no intention to take on another huge content management nightmare.

Nothing that MOSS can do here mate. Its a very simple tool to use. but if people are not even going to learn it nothing can be done

So if I could hear from you folks who have experience in maintaining this for a mid-size company that will have multiple separate islands of information thru your company - how much of a monster will this be to build, modify, and have pools of 'average' users working with? Will it become a support nightmare?

I would ask you to go in for it

Some points to note:
1. Even though MS promotes MOSS as this completely user friendly tool you would still need some technical guy who has to take care of stuff such as infrastructure, deciding number of servers, initial installation etc. Once that is done it is straight forward. However dont let me be the person who decides that for you. Use the VHD.
2. Cost - You should take this also into account. Currently i have no leads in this area

Known is handfull, Unknown is worldfull

 

[donb01]

Thanks for the info ) I'd have to do that download at home and burn it to a disk - they have the bandwidth throttled here and it would probably take me a day to download it! At home I could probably start it and toss in a movie.

I do have a 2003 server that belongs to me I could drop it on - I would have to pop in another drive, but those drives are pretty cheap these days.

I don't know what "big" means exactly. My guess would translate it into "We don't have anyone on staff at our corporate level that knows how this application works so we don't want to support it." Which would pretty much fit the experience we've had to date with the outsourced IT support company! In other words, if The Lone Ranger gets hit by a bus after we roll this out company-wide we're all in a world of hurt! Funny... Same position I'm in as the telecom manager )

 

[Divaldo]

We are running MOSS 2007 in the school i work in.

We rolled it out a couple of years ago and each teacher has a site for each class they teach.

Seeing as we have teachers managing and maintaining their own sites (And nothing more than this!!!), i'm sure people at your place will manage easily.

So long as you have people in the correct groups in AD and you spend some time getting the permissions within SharePoint spot-on, then it really is simple.

You could do with someone in charge of the overall structure of the thing, then let people maintain individual sites (with an overall administrator also able to manage them, just in case!). It may be a good idea to diasble self service site creation, so that at least in the beginning, the admisitrator can keep a handle on how many sites are getting created.

Finally, make sure you get the backups right. There is a recycle bin for restoring individual documents which users can access themselves, but you may also want to ensure you can restore on a site by site or document by document basis.