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Benefits of document collaboration using SharePoint vs. a network drive?

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Using a SharePoint team site for document collaboration doesn’t seem to be any more productive than reviewing a document on a network drive. So, what’s the benefit of using SharePoint for document collaboration versus a shared network drive?

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Clarifications

In reply to Benefits of document collaboration using SharePoint vs. a network drive?

Clarifications

Easy to track

In reply to Benefits of document collaboration using SharePoint vs. a network drive?

From my personal experience, the benefit is now you can have a “version control” ability, so you when and who updated the documents and you can restore them when needed. It’s better than shadow copy in network drives. Also, you can have “flow control” on a file, and share files with your customers rather than using ftp server etc.

Security Meta data and cross department collaboration

In reply to Easy to track

In a small one folder situation there is probably no benefit. If you’re housing a larger company’s entire document library it’s huge. You section off into department sites, assign permissions,create document libraries, you can setup lists and views, you can add apps to pull data from various sources similar to crystal.

A huge benefit with dealing with extremely large quanties of documents is security. In Sharepoint if you don’t have the permissions you can’t even see the document or know it even exists…

Theres much much more to it than this. Look up Sharepoint on the microsoft site and read up on it.

It is not either or

In reply to Benefits of document collaboration using SharePoint vs. a network drive?

It is not an either or situation. SharePoint has the downside of being server based and complex, hence expensive to manage. One can try simple web based document management systems like HyperOffice (http://www.hyperoffice.com/online-project-management/). They’re very easy to set up, and bring SharePoint functionality from any web browser.

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