SharePoint has launched a revolution in the workplace. Thanks to its easy-to-use collaborative features all employees can now publish information about their projects, initiatives and skills onto the corporate intranet. We hear stories of blogging CEOs; departmental wikis that allow everyone to post the solution to their problem; forums buzzing with activity. Its like Facebook, YouTube and Wikipedia all rolled into one. Oh, and dont forget Google.
Sadly, reality in most companies doesnt look like this. A typical SharePoint intranet is made up of many, many pages containing poor quality content. Theres an abundance of uploaded Office documents with filenames that tell you very little about the contents (do you really want to click on pm_update.ppt to find out what its about?). The countless forums you come across contain one or two obviously planted (and unanswered) posts from last year. Content that you do take the time to read is poorly laid out, badly written and boring. Images are either massive and take an age to download or they have been distorted and shrunk beyond recognition. Jo User is poorly served.