I began this series by mentioning that over 18,000 (and climbing) people type "what is SharePoint?" into Google's search box. I then went on to spend my first couple of entries sketching out many of the areas I wanted to explore in the course of this quest to arrive at a crisp definition of SharePoint, and requesting your feedback . Among the responses I've received thus far was the following:
I think that it's more important to describe SharePoint using ordinary terms and concepts even if it takes several sentences or even paragraphs, than to try to cramp everything into a single, complex, run-on sentence. Your goal (aka measure of success) is user understanding, not brevity or inclusiveness, right?
That's valuable feedback, and very much appreciated. My initial reaction was that I was still inclined to arrive at a crisp (ideally single sentence) description of SharePoint, but I can't argue with the validity of the suggested approach either. By the time I wrap this series up, it's entirely possible that I'll have arrived at a conclusion which supports both views - a crisp definition, supplemented by additional/supporting information more suitable to capturing the breadth of what SharePoint is.
(I think this is called having your cake and eating it too.)
Anyway, the sharing of the feedback above was actually a tangent - I'd intended to move straight from referencing Google to taking a look at the top-ranked Google result to the "what is SharePoint?" question, and see how the question is addressed therein. I figured that doing so would allow me to get a sense of how "Google-approved" others approach the question, and would also allow me to check out the "competition."
The topmost Google result is Definitions of SharePoint on the Web, and actually reroutes to the search results for "define : SharePoint." The results of this search are, predictably, a grab bag of sites offering definitions, including, of course, the elephant in the room ... no, not Microsoft, but Wikipedia.
Wikipedia's capsule definition reads:
Microsoft SharePoint, also known as Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies, is a collection of products and software elements that includes, amongst a growing selection of components, Internet Explorer based collaboration functions, process management modules, search modules and a document-management platform.[1] SharePoint can be used to host web sites that access shared workspaces, information stores and documents, as well as host defined applications such as wikis and blogs. All users can manipulate proprietary controls called "web parts" or interact with pieces of content such as lists and document libraries.
A solid approach, to be sure. Three sentences, the first telling you what SharePoint is, the second telling you what SharePoint can do, and the third introducing tantalizing additional concepts. It gives a sense of what SharePoint is and, being a wiki, features contextual hyperlinks embedded throughout which provide further information on included topics. (By the way, am I alone in thinking it's cosmically meta that one of the words hyperlinked in the Wikipedia definition is "wikis"?)
The second Definitions of SharePoint on the Web result doesn't strike me as being particularly germane, so I'm going to disregard that one. The third result appears on the Ed Tech Glossary page of the Teaching Excellence Network, and reads:
Microsoft's content management system. It allows groups to set up a centralized, password protected space for document sharing. Documents can be stored, downloaded and edited, then uploaded for continued sharing. See groupware
Now that's what I call crisp! It does point out a singular failing of the overly crisp definition, however, in that it certainly seems to leave a lot out, doesn't it?
The final Definitions of SharePoint on the Web entry seems to be a protected WordPress blog which it doesn't appear that I'm able to access. Oh well.
So what have we learned today? That approaches to defining SharePoint can range from the very crisp (which, on consideration, may be too crisp) to the more nuanced - and that both are perfectly valid approaches. Gee, it's almost as if I planned that finding in advance given the reader feedback I shared earlier. (I swear that I didn't plan it in advance though!)
I should mention that this will be my last column for a little while, as vacation beckons. Any thoughts you'd care to contribute on the topic in my absence would be much appreciated, so please, don't be shy.
Catch up on the entire "What is SharePoint?" series:
Posted
Jul 24 2009, 03:45 PM
by
John Anderson
John Anderson joined Bamboo Solutions as Manager of Content & Syndication in May 2008 after a 12-year career at AOL. New to SharePoint at the time of his hiring, John was tasked with creating a new blog for the just-launched Bamboo Nation community in which he would document his daily SharePoint learning process. Thus was born the end user-centric SharePoint Blank, for which John authored 200 posts within a year, and which he continues to write today. Today, John writes SharePoint Blank in addition to his responsibilities as Managing Editor at Bamboo and, while he learned much about SharePoint in his first two years, he gleefully celebrates the release of SharePoint 2010 and the reset button that the new platform represents for SharePoint Blank.