Ask HN: What The Hell Does Sharepoint Do?

Re:Ask HN: What The Hell Does Sharepoint Do? by jasonlbaptiste on Wednesday October 14, 2009 @09:04PM (#882518)

why has no one just made a really easy alternative to this? sure there's things like huddle and google sites, but they're still way too difficult. I have shit to share with people in my company and i want to do it simply without tons of bloat or difficulty. In essence:

posterous:blogging :: ???:sharepoint

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Re:Ask HN: What The Hell Does Sharepoint Do? by officemedium on Wednesday October 14, 2009 @09:05PM (#882522)

http://www.officemedium.com

But I might be biased...

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Re:Ask HN: What The Hell Does Sharepoint Do? by jasonlbaptiste on Wednesday October 14, 2009 @09:08PM (#882528)

very cool. i do like it. reminds me of what we wanted to do with Publictivity. Sadly both have way too many features.

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Re:Ask HN: What The Hell Does Sharepoint Do? by officemedium on Wednesday October 14, 2009 @09:15PM (#882536)

Too many? I don't like to sound like I'm "spamming" out my product, but I believe it's designed in such a simple manner than anything included that you aren't interested in using, sits quietly in the background.

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Re:Ask HN: What The Hell Does Sharepoint Do? by Barnabas on Thursday October 15, 2009 @12:05AM (#882749)

Links are nice: http://www.publictivity.com/

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Re:Ask HN: What The Hell Does Sharepoint Do? by thwarted on Wednesday October 14, 2009 @09:38PM (#882561)

Google docs is pretty much just like Sharepoint, except you don't need a massive install of Microsoft Office (read: bloat) to edit the documents. I don't see how Google docs is more difficult than Sharepoint, the interface is the same. You navigate around a list of documents, you click on one, and it spawns the editor for that document type.

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Re:Ask HN: What The Hell Does Sharepoint Do? by ahpeeyem on Thursday October 15, 2009 @07:56AM (#883186)

Maybe it's because with Google Docs you don't get to use Word or Excel, and to anyone who's scared of anything that's not word or Excel that's hard.

Non-technical people don't seem to get to the step of generalising what they know about using computers, i.e. Word->word processor and Excel->spreadsheet, so going to something new like Google docs isn't like "oh this is an online word processor like Word" but instead go "this isn't Word OH MY GOD WHAT DO I DO?"

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Re:Ask HN: What The Hell Does Sharepoint Do? by thwarted on Thursday October 15, 2009 @11:35AM (#883580)

I've experienced that very limitation from people when it comes to online document editing and maintenance. However, my experience with how those kinds of people use Sharepoint is still compatible with Googledocs: create a document with Word or Excel, then upload it into shared storage where the document goes to die because they never edit or use the document again. Google docs supports this workflow, uploading a Microsoft Office document which gets converted. Now that I think about it, can you upload a document to replace the one that is currently there in GD? I'll have to test that. That would negate the I-can-only-learn-one-thing-and-that-one-thing-was-microsoft-office mentality.

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Re:Ask HN: What The Hell Does Sharepoint Do? by ahpeeyem on Thursday October 15, 2009 @12:31PM (#883687)

True, but with Google Docs the uploading step is extra; you can open files and save them right inside the file open/save dialogs in Word and Excel if Sharepoint's setup properly.

If something could map say a "My Google Docs" folder under My Documents it would be the same; so you can just go into Word and open a file up for editing.

Personally I'd rather just open my browser, but hey I've used several word processors as well :P

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Re:Ask HN: What The Hell Does Sharepoint Do? by jodrellblank on Wednesday October 14, 2009 @11:24PM (#882694)

Why has no one just made a really easy collaboration website

You can hardly move on the Internet for 'simple' collaboration websites.

Point to one that also integrates with Active Directory and is backed by SQL Server and hooks document libraries into Outlook and

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Re:Ask HN: What The Hell Does Sharepoint Do? by nwatson on Wednesday October 14, 2009 @10:33PM (#882629)

I'd just use any Wiki that allows hierarchical divisions/namespaces (e.g. 'webs' in TWiki) and file attachments. Check out TWiki (http://twiki.org) or a comparison between wikis (google >wiki comparison matrix< and I think you'll find it).

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Re:Ask HN: What The Hell Does Sharepoint Do? by gcv on Wednesday October 14, 2009 @09:52PM (#882574)

What about network shares?

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Re:Ask HN: What The Hell Does Sharepoint Do? by moonpolysoft on Wednesday October 14, 2009 @09:51PM (#882572)

box.net seems to be squarely targeting sharepoint users.

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Re:Ask HN: What The Hell Does Sharepoint Do? by jasonlbaptiste on Wednesday October 14, 2009 @10:31PM (#882627)

yup: http://sites.box.net/simple/

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Re:Ask HN: What The Hell Does Sharepoint Do? by Wiggio on Wednesday October 14, 2009 @10:30PM (#882625)

check out Wiggio (www.wiggio.com)... very simple!

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