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Should implement SharePoint with no dedicated admin?

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duluter

Technical User
Apr 6, 2009
2
US
Hello.

I work for a small company with ~14 employees. Generally, clients hire us to prepare documents for them. Most of these documents are pretty straightforward. We never have more than one or two people working on an individual project at the same time. We currently do all our work the old fashioned way--files in networked file shares, email through an Exchange server. At any one time, we will have 100 open projects, each with 1 to 10 documents that need to be prepared. Often it will take months to more than a year to complete all the docs in a project. But much of that time is just spent waiting on info from the client or from other subconsultants. Actual preparation time for each doc is probably between one to four weeks.

Our main problem is tracking which deliverables are due for all the projects, when they are due, and what the current status is for each deliverable. We do not have much of a problem with using file shares to store our docs because our docs are just not super complex and we never have more than a couple of people actively involved in them.

My boss wants to migrate our stuff into SharePoint, but he does not want to hire a SharePoint developer to set up and run the thing. The job will fall to me and my co-worker, and we have zero experience with SharePoint and we both have other primary job responsibilities that have nothing to do with managing SharePoint.

I think it may be a mistake to migrate to SharePoint, especially without a dedicated "SharePoint person" who would be the expert at setting up and maintaining the system.

Anyone out there have any experience trying to learn and run SharePoint as a non-primary part of their job? Or do you know others who have done this? Are we headed for trouble, or should I relax? The more I read, the more I feel that SharePoint is way overkill for what we need. And we have at least two remote personnel who can't work through remote desktop or vpn because they are on very slow internet connections. If we managed all our docs through SharePoint, I think it will be a big burden for them.

Any guidance you all have would be most appreciated.


Thanks,

Duluter
 
Sharepoint would really be perfect for requirements. Sharepoint isnt hard but it sure take more skill and knowledge about sharepoint than "zero experience"! My biggest concern about your situation would be backup and disaster recovery. With the extended life cycle of your projects a problem 6 months into a project would be brutal to your situation if i understand it correctly. Recovering a failed sharepoint server can very easy or it can be very complicated. It wouldnt be as simple as restoring a file or folder from a backup tape, all docs and information are stored in a SQL database. That means you need more than "zero experience" with SQL, IIS, and sharepoint. I mean a simple windows update could take all your documents offline, a hardware failure, or act of god(if you will) could mean total loss of data if you dont have the skill to recover it. I think its a bad idea. Thats just my opinion. I love sharepoint, great product, the more you use it the more you like it and depend on it. But i wouldnt risk business critical data on a platform i knew nothing about and would be required to support.



RoadKi11

"This apparent fear reaction is typical, rather than try to solve technical problems technically, policy solutions are often chosen." - Fred Cohen
 
Thank you for the post, Roadki11.

I was just reading up on SharePoint backup and recovery. Sounds complicated. I should clarify one thing--our company does have a part-time IT person/ network admin who contracts with us. He is probably fairly knowledgeable about some of this, but he will not be doing the day-to-day SharePoint upkeep. Thus, he will probably not be super-familiar with whatever system we put in place. I just feel that one of us needs to be committed to being the SharePoint admin, and this should be one of our primary job functions. I don't see that happening because we are all busy with other stuff. I can't believe we're considering putting a bunch of our business-critical data into a system that none of us is an expert in. That seems like the wrong decision.


Duluter
 
I have no prior knowledge about sharepoint until my company decided to start using it. I have learned stuff by getting books, playing around basically on our sharepoint site to figure things out and asking questions on here and to people i work with to try and figure it out. I am still testing the waters with sharepoint and learning new things everyday by just working with it.

hope this helps

Elizabetht
 
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