TallyFox Searches for you: Why do SharePoint users hate SharePoint?

“Knowledge management at the moment is influenced by IT people who are building solutions users don’t need. Instead of creating a knowledge sharing culture, we’re destroying it by the systems being put in place. Sharepoint is an example of that. It’s not dynamic and adaptive enough. Everything it does in terms of communities can be better done by social media.” said Dave Snowden in his interview for our blog. 

 

And he is not alone to think this way.

 

If you search Google for “why SharePoint fails” or “problems with Microsoft SharePoint” you’ll get hundreds of thousands of blog posts, articles or discussions where people share their SharePoint pain stories.

However, with Microsoft claiming the company is seeing 20,000 new SharePoint users added every day (it may be more in 2017), it is safe to say that SharePoint is not going anywhere. 

A recent study by AIIM concludes user adoption remains an issue for 58% of survey respondents, who consistently complain about poor or ineffective training and lack of management support. 

 

The study is also quick to blame the users themselves. “This is an indication of human deficiency, rather than technological deficiency. It is not the technology that is failing the organisation in as much as it is the organisation failing the technology," specifically citing inadequately developed business strategies as barriers to SharePoint adoption.

 

And many SharePoint users agree. Apart from many blog posts, users tend to seek support from their fellow peers on community websites such as Reddit, and there’s a SharePoint thread where you can see unfiltered opinions of actual users and it’s really telling.

 

“I think most people's point is they don't need something so heavy-handed as SharePoint. I imagine if SharePoint was designed properly I bet it would be beautiful. We use hosted SharePoint at work and it's nice, but we're only using 3% of it. We have 3 hosted sites with a few files on it.”

 

“At a former job, Sharepoint went in at the insistence of the CFO (who was golf buddies with our country's Microsoft boss) and the staff revolted. Beforehand, we had a perfectly functioning mix of Drupal and public folders, and we were primarily a Solaris/Debian environment.

The major gripes with Sharepoint were: From a sysadmin point of view it took up between 3 to 10 times the server-count (depending on the size of each office).

And from a user point of view, Sharepoint added a layer of micro-managing to document restrictions. Managers started creating silos of documents that they'd strictly control. This prevented people from working, because where they once had public folder level access to files, instead they would try to open a document (after spending half the morning finding it), they'd be told that they weren't allowed access, then they'd hit the button to request permission, and they'd sit on their hands all day”

 

“Last week I spent about 10 hours trying to figure out why datasheet view wasn't working on a new laptop I had given to a user. It worked for everybody else, and the laptop was fully updated. Turns out that datasheet view only works with 32-bit Internet Explorer. And guess what? The task bar shortcut to Internet Explorer is a shortcut to 64-bit Internet Explorer.”

 

“My present hell involves half a dozen wikis, a few SharePoint sites and a "who knows what's going on here" public folder system. If I search for documentation on a support process for a client, I get concerned when the documentation I do find is dated 2008 or something like that. Is newer documentation somewhere else? Where, then?”

Many SharePoint consultants say that Sharepoint 2016 has done wonders for UX and adoption, but many organisations still use SharePoint 2013 edition.

The survey AIIM study mentioned above states that more than 25% of those surveyed are still using the ancient SharePoint 2010, 2% went with SharePoint 2016 and 19% have adopted SharePoint Office 365.

Many of survey respondents are not even sure what Sharepoint 2016 offers, so it is fair to say that users will not get the latest UX and adoption wonders advertised just yet. 

 

The key here is planning.

 

It’s not fair to label SharePoint as bad because it certainly has its uses, but it doesn’t mean it should be used in EVERY organisation. 

 

In order to properly apply technology, there must be a vision, followed by clearly defined goals and identified pain points. Once this is accomplished, an organisation should determine how technology will address these pain points, support business goals and align with the corporate vision. Next step is vendor evaluation and software shopping.