When I told people I was writing a blog about SharePoint, I got a lot of interesting responses. As the title of this document might suggest, most responses were firmly in the negative. Here are some examples:
You get the idea.
Many people have had bad experiences with SharePoint over the years – and I’m not here to dispute that. On the other hand, I am here to tell you that when you say, “I hate SharePoint,” what you’re really saying is:
The average intranet homepage is busy, to put it mildly. It’s crowded with videos, gallery sliders, columns, boxes, and widgets. The objective is to give the user everything they could possibly need in a single location – a design choice which is textbook bad UX.
Most of your users will not use the entire functionality that a SharePoint intranet offers – most won’t need to. What you users will care about is whether it’s easy to find the features that they do use. HubSpot research shows that 76% of website users only care that it’s easy for them to find the features they want. Simplify the front page of your intranet until it's easy for most users to find what they need.
Box, Dropbox, and other file-sharing and storage solutions have taken the world by storm, and it’s easy to see the appeal. Just add a file, and everyone in the group can access it. Right-click, generate a custom link, and anyone who has the link can use it. Since it’s that easy, why not just use Dropbox?
Here’s the deal: you need to explain to your users, very carefully, why ignoring access management is a bad idea.
From an administration perspective, the idea that anyone with access to a Dropbox folder can view all its files is terrifying. To preserve the security of mission-critical data, your administrator needs to carefully control who can access it, using a central management tool such as Active Directory.
To be fair, Dropbox does have Active Directory integration – BUT
You need to explain to your users that you have the choice of either paying extra for an unwieldy security solution or using the built-in security for a solution that you already own. You need to explain to them the consequences (fines in the $250K range) for ignoring that security. Lastly, you need to take steps to ensure that your SharePoint implementation is as Dropbox-like as possible (there are ways).
SharePoint isn’t inherently buggy, but it has a lot of settings and advanced tools. If you’re setting up SharePoint for the first time, there are some common mistakes that you might make, such as:
When these configuration errors accumulate, it makes SharePoint difficult to use – which makes your engagement numbers crash. Better not to make these mistakes in the first place.