What is SharePoint?

I remember asking this question when my immediate supervisor asked me if I would be interested in becoming the technical lead for a new project.  I had successfully planned and implemented SCOM 2007, and he thought it would be a natural fit for me to plan and implement MOSS 2007.  It was a pretty heady time in my life, because my son was just born, probably a day before or after.  I can recall the exact time my training as a SharePoint administrator/engineer/architect began because of my son.  He is almost 5 years old now.

What is SharePoint?

Again, this question still resonates with me .  My supervisor told me that the client expected SharePoint yesterday, isn’t that always the case.  So I knew my mandate for the immediate future: learn, read, digest, soak, and more importantly understand what SharePoint is exactly.  Since my background is really in history, not computers, I hit the books/Internet and tried my best to devour the information out there.  Within a week time, I kind of, sort of knew what SharePoint is and isn’t.  But that really didn’t help…at all.  I needed an actual SharePoint environment where I can prod, poke, and feel my way around the product.   In order for me to understand SharePoint, I needed to dissect it. Gross!!!

What is SharePoint?

And still this question is being asked. After years of going to SharePoint Saturday events, meeting people at user groups, attending training session with either New Horizon or Global Knowledge, you would think I would have a clearer understanding of how to answer that question.  Considering it has been 5 years, you would think that all that knowledge soaking to my bones, I can at recite the SharePoint mantra. Yes, I do, but no I really don’t, because there is not a quick answer to that question.  The answer isn’t something that is easy to digest because SharePoint is really a lot of things.  It is a document repository of some sort; it is a collaboration tool, it does encompass elements of enterprise content management; it can be a social network within your organization; it can smooth business processes with workflows; it can create rich dashboard with Business Intelligence; it can be so much more.  Because organizations are widely different with different goals and processes, SharePoint can be made to fit their needs.  So now I know what SharePoint is…I think?

What is SharePoint?

Being a consultant, I get this question from time to time from clients.  They have heard of SharePoint and some can even spell it properly…and they are really interested in knowing what it really is.  And with SharePoint Online now available, they keep asking ¿Que es SharePoint?  During client engagements, I would usually begin by letting them know that SharePoint is a collaboration platform; as the infamous Keanu Reeves would say, “Whoa”.  A platform; I stress it is a platform, because it is not an application.  It isn’t something you install on your desktop computer.  There is no File or Edit menu; you can’t press Ctrl-Q to quit SharePoint (maybe the browser, but not SharePoint).  Microsoft Word is a word processing application; Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet application; Microsoft SharePoint is a platform that, at its core, its main agenda is collaboration, mostly using other Microsoft products to create a robust productive environment.  You can use SharePoint alone, but with Word, Excel, InfoPath, Outlook, Lync, and other products like SCOM or UAG, SharePoint becomes the hub, the central point, of how business begins and ends for the organization.  And for the nth time, it is NOT a file server.  And usually at this point, I would demo SharePoint.

And yet…

What is SharePoint?

I can only stresss this question, because I am subsonsciously still asking.  SharePoint is hard to describe because it is a flexible platform. I think I got hooked into SharePoint because of its flexibility.  A great example that I often point to are the permission levels in SharePoint.  There are so many to name.  But what really gives me goose bumps is that the permission is not top to bottom, vertical, but rather it is both vertical and horizontal hierarchical if that makes any sense; a future blog post.  So in the end…SharePoint is a collaboration platform that help organization to organize manage, classify, and understand their information so their end users will be able to efficiently and effectively do their work. And on top of that collaboration core, organization can build extension of SharePoint features like social networking; Business Intelligence; automation of workflows; Record and archival repository; eDiscovery; and so much more.

So the purpose of this blog is to try to answer this basic question by reviewing the diversity of functions and roles SharePoint can play within an organization.  This question may never be completely answered, but I will try to document issues and problems I have encountered with SharePoint.  It will be a historical record for me and hopefully it can add another small drop in that wide ocean of information that is already out there.