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Here's the situation: you've got a small office of 8-20 employees who work in a consulting business and whose main products/deliverables are reports, spreadsheets, occasional CAD drawings, Gantt charts, project plans, and the like. Not only do they produce those things, they receive reports for which they produce comments/observations. Much of what they produce is collaborative or iterative (ie, not necessarily 'live editing' of spreadsheets, but several people must all contribute to a doc over the space of a week or so). To do so, they need efficient means of communication, discussion, versioning, etc.
Needs: document repository, shared editing of many types of documents, a messaging system for internal office communication, "sharing" system that permits clients to upload or download large files, a managed-content "front page" web site, an internal intranet, shared calendars, contacts lists, some sort of system to produce and maintain office policies and procedures, and otherwise manage internal communications and office admin. Some considerations for discussion, so I'm intentionally not specifying: (1) ideally, systems are usable by different OSes. Obviously there are going to be problems ensuring total OS independence. (2) ideally, the system doesn't require full-time online presence. Should a consultant wind up in a basement office with no internet, he won't be totally lost (again, not perfect). Note: no obligation for Free/Open Source software, although they are preferred. The goal here is an office that communicates and collaborates efficiently.
Ten years ago, you'd be sitting in a cube farm, using Microsoft Office and a shared drive and emailing documents back and forth. Later they'd have added Sharepoint. These days, there's been a ton of innovation in these areas, and there's consensus that collaboration-by-email is not fun. And there are lots of new approaches to these age-old problems.
So, how would you do it?
(Score: 2) by zafiro17 on Tuesday November 18 2014, @08:10PM
Glad to have a 'pro' answer here - there must be tons of work for people like you, because I don't see obvious solutions on the market for what I consider really serious and not-totally-addressed problems. I confess Microsoft has a pretty good offer here, but (and this should be the topic of another Ask Soylent News) my office's Sharepoint site is a piece of crap. That makes me really dislike Sharepoint, but in the back of my head I keep wondering if maybe the problem isn't Sharepoint, it's the way my company set it up for us.
Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis - Jack Handey
(Score: 1) by iamjacksusername on Tuesday November 18 2014, @08:50PM
Yeah Sharepoint is a beast. For most companies, trying to host your own SharePoint without a department to actively develop it is a waste of resources. It is a fantastic framework if you a) want to build your own platform or, b) want to buy a platform somebody else has developed. SharePoint by default is pretty much a waste though. Most installs I have seen are basically dumping grounds for random files, 1/15th finished "portals" and the random Project Server templates for the pilot project that got the SharePoint instance installed lol.
This is where Microsoft is killing it on a services front though. They give you some SharePoint resources and you can pay a consulting firm to develop a front page and not have to worry about it.
Most of my SMB clients use the hosted SharePoint for three purposes - it is a syncing point for getting files to/from their tablets or phone, Lync Meetings and dumping random documents someplace where they can get indexed. It it not the "real" purpose but it seems to serve a need. E.g., the OneNote Metro App will sync to your SharePoint Online account.