by Kendall Lougheed, President

The word “SharePoint” can be heard every time you go near IT people these days. Just in case you don’t know what it is, Microsoft SharePoint is a web-enabled portal that acts as a repository for your corporate information.  Just as Windows is the interface to the applications and files on your computer, SharePoint is the window to your corporate applications and data.

But SharePoint has become a kind of Holy Grail. Microsoft touts it as being the most successful software for many years with many millions of licenses sold.  Everybody who doesn’t have SharePoint feels lacking and wants it.  Executives want to say they have SharePoint just like they wanted email and web sites on their business cards when the web was first popularised.

And SharePoint can do so many things.  Open up the box and you will immediately see a nice web site with a folder system for storing documents, a list of upcoming events, a list of contacts, a search box, news items, social networking, and dozens of other “web parts”. Rather like a large hardware store with so many tools. 

Great, we’re all excited and we’re all on board but what does it do? And there’s the rub.   SharePoint does everything and nothing.  At the Montreal Summit that ended yesterday (April 8, 2009), we heard presenters, architects, developers, and corporate users talk about what I shall call “re-purposing SharePoint.”  And it sounds just like the early days of the World Wide Web when the excitement of a single static page captivated our imaginations. But just for a while.   Now everybody is clamouring to build the next version, this time with a clear purpose.

As a corporate intranet, many users threw together a site with a little corporate information, HR policies, and maybe a travel claims form or two.  All static, nothing comprehensive, and nothing central to the information worker’s day-to-day life . “Build it and they will come” said many – a common mistake.   Well, maybe people came, but they didn’t come back.   It was like the old days of silent movies with Fatty Arbuckle and his crew playing baseball all day until somebody got an idea for the next scene.

Communities of practice, communities of interest, workgroups, collaboration groups, idea building.  All great notions and I am loyal still to these concepts from my early days studying Communications at University.  Many collaboration initiatives are not that active.  Adoption is a big problem, and people are concerned.   Often collaboration initiatives are like a membership to a health club. You know it’s good for you and you pony up your membership, but in the end you never seem to get the time.

The good news at the conference is the re-awakening of everybody who has been involved for at least one full iteration.  The Summit revealed new thinking on this that is deeply concerned with adoption, introducing best practice document management, analysing and implementing workflows, and aggregating data from the financial and CRM systems.  And there are many tools being developed to help overcome the limitations of SharePoint and to help integrate more information from more applications. 

And the best news is we are starting to see best practices emerge.  These best practices are looking well outside the developer world and into the worlds of business analysis, IT strategy, visioning, communications, library science, and document management.  The studies have always shown great potential for considerably improved productivity.  Just like the movies, we are in the age of talkies and colour.  We know we can do great technical production, but most importantly we know that we need a good script. 

Kendall.Lougheed@MicroWorks.ca