Better than SharePoint?
June 28, 2018 5:37 PM Subscribe
What does what SharePoint 2010 can do, particularly with InfoPath forms, but better? That has native Mac support? That would maybe allow a person to fill out and submit an InfoPath/PowerApps-like form from an iPhone?
I <3 SharePoint. I can't stop talking about it. But maybe there's something better?
I heard a rumor that we would lose SharePoint in the coming MS Office upgrade, because it gets very little use at my large multinational company. Maybe so, but my department (120+ people) uses the shit out of it. You can't get the time of day from us, until you submit the appropriate InfoPath form. But there are a lot of Mac users in my department too, skewing towards the upper ranks, who either (a) stay in their Windows partitions all day long, or (b) refuse to install a virtual machine at all, and have to ask somebody to pull the data they want from SharePoint. Could this be our chance to get something even better than SharePoint?
Needs:
I <3 SharePoint. I can't stop talking about it. But maybe there's something better?
I heard a rumor that we would lose SharePoint in the coming MS Office upgrade, because it gets very little use at my large multinational company. Maybe so, but my department (120+ people) uses the shit out of it. You can't get the time of day from us, until you submit the appropriate InfoPath form. But there are a lot of Mac users in my department too, skewing towards the upper ranks, who either (a) stay in their Windows partitions all day long, or (b) refuse to install a virtual machine at all, and have to ask somebody to pull the data they want from SharePoint. Could this be our chance to get something even better than SharePoint?
Needs:
- InfoPath-like customizable forms that save their data to a SharePoint list-like database. I hear PowerApps is the new InfoPath, but I don't know what it can and cannot do.
- Native OSX and iOS support.
- Accessibility from anywhere in the world.
- The regular stuff like lists, libraries, workflows, calendars, search, customizable permission levels, fully-HTML-customizable pages.
Best answer: I heard a rumor that we would lose SharePoint in the coming MS Office upgrade
If your company is going to O365, that's not impossible, but I would say unlikely, as the way the licensing works if you get access to the whole suite for the same price. Now, they may decide to switch some functionalities off, or not offer them, but that would be an inhouse decision, not financial.
Nhing hilaryjade on most of this stuff. Also,if you like sharepoint 2010, I think you'll probably really like "Sharepoint online" (or 2016 whatever). It preserves a lot of the functionality but gives it a much more usable skin and it integrates with other MS applications way better.
posted by smoke at 8:31 PM on June 28, 2018
If your company is going to O365, that's not impossible, but I would say unlikely, as the way the licensing works if you get access to the whole suite for the same price. Now, they may decide to switch some functionalities off, or not offer them, but that would be an inhouse decision, not financial.
Nhing hilaryjade on most of this stuff. Also,if you like sharepoint 2010, I think you'll probably really like "Sharepoint online" (or 2016 whatever). It preserves a lot of the functionality but gives it a much more usable skin and it integrates with other MS applications way better.
posted by smoke at 8:31 PM on June 28, 2018
Response by poster: Well, I talked to the head desktop support guy today, who told me, "Not to worry, we're upgrading to Office 365 later this year, so you'll have SharePoint Online. For more info, though, you should talk to the SharePoint/Box guy."
Yay!
So I talked to the SharePoint/Box guy, and he said, "That's what they're saying now... but I have heard that some senior executives say we don't actually need SharePoint, now that we have Box."
"Hahahaha yeah, right, buddy."
"I know. But most departments that use SharePoint at all, just store files there, and Box is fine for that. No one uses it like you guys do, with InfoPath and whatnot. I strongly suggest that users who need SharePoint make sure that our CIO understands their use-case."
OK! So it falls to me to defend SharePoint after all. SharePoint Online is cool af and still supports InfoPath, which will give us some time to rebuild everything in PowerApps. Which as hilaryjade points out has an app!
O SharePoint my love, how could anything ever be cooler than you!
posted by pH Indicating Socks at 11:42 PM on June 29, 2018 [1 favorite]
Yay!
So I talked to the SharePoint/Box guy, and he said, "That's what they're saying now... but I have heard that some senior executives say we don't actually need SharePoint, now that we have Box."
"Hahahaha yeah, right, buddy."
"I know. But most departments that use SharePoint at all, just store files there, and Box is fine for that. No one uses it like you guys do, with InfoPath and whatnot. I strongly suggest that users who need SharePoint make sure that our CIO understands their use-case."
OK! So it falls to me to defend SharePoint after all. SharePoint Online is cool af and still supports InfoPath, which will give us some time to rebuild everything in PowerApps. Which as hilaryjade points out has an app!
O SharePoint my love, how could anything ever be cooler than you!
posted by pH Indicating Socks at 11:42 PM on June 29, 2018 [1 favorite]
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PowerApps is getting there - new functionality added all the time - BUT you are going to need Office Online subscriptions for everyone who will be designing or using those apps!
You can submit data from PowerApps all kind of places - lists, databases, an Excel file on OneDrive. You can send data to MS Flow (which is light years better than SharePoint designer workflows) and both of theses products are amazingly flexible.
PowerApps has a nice app for iOS devices. You can also use apps in the browser.
With InfoPath deprecated, it really is one of the best paths forward at this time. But if your current forms are super complex, you may have to rethink some things to translate them to Apps AND if your company isn’t already using Office 365, you’ll have to convince them to budget for it.
posted by hilaryjade at 7:05 PM on June 28, 2018 [1 favorite]