SharePoint vs. Public Folders. And the Winner Is...

Finding the best ways to collaborate can be your key to corporate productivity and efficiency and, as a result, increased profitability and success. Among the leading corporate collaboration tools, Windows SharePoint Services and Microsoft Exchange Server public folders have become the most popular. In this article, we will discuss some of the differences between Windows SharePoint Services and public folders.

Many companies that use hosted or in-house Microsoft Exchange Server also utilize Exchange public folders for collaboration on documents and files. However, according to Microsoft, public folders may not be included in the next major release of Exchange, which means that businesses currently relying on public folders will need to re-evaluate their collaboration solution in the future. There are many advantages in moving to hosted Windows SharePoint Services for your collaboration, content management and business process needs. This article will help you understand the benefits and strengths of SharePoint as well as public folders, and equip you with information to consider when selecting the collaboration solution that is best for you.

Document storage and management

Generally, public folders were not designed for document sharing and collaboration. They were developed as a central repository for static data or file storage. For example, a company can utilize public folders to store a set of administrative documents such as paid time off requests, expense reports etc., and have employees access the files, and print them out or save them to their local machines without making any changes in the public version. Marketing collateral, sales presentation templates, corporate logos and images, and training materials that might be needed by your employees can also be included. However, in order to access the documents, employees need to access the files from either their office PC or VPN in to their office from another location.

Windows SharePoint Services, on the other hand, provides your users with many document management features such as version control, check-in and check-out functionality, and automatic notifications of content changes. It is a superior solution for environments where files are accessed by multiple users who wish to contribute to documents and make changes frequently. Rather than using a collection of hierarchically structured folders as with public folders, SharePoint relies on a document library, allowing users to perform keyword searches within the file name or content to locate the necessary documents, which is very important if you use SharePoint to store multiple files that are frequently accessed by your employees. After locating a document, users can choose to just view or modify it. In order to make changes to any document, they are able to check it out and after the changes are made, check it back in. This prevents other users from modifying this document while you are working on it, which is important when editing files that have multiple contributors to their content. You can see whether the document is checked out by another user directly from your team workspace, whereas if you are using public folders, you must first open the document in order to be notified that it is being modified by someone else.

As a SharePoint site can be accessed from any web browser, users can access documents from any Internet-enabled computer, which also makes it easy for mobile employees who need to make quick updates to the documents while on the go, and can do it without having to VPN in to the office.

Another feature of SharePoint which is not available with public folders is versioning. When a document is modified, the previous version is not overwritten; it cannot be seen by the viewer but is still retained within the library. If someone wishes to revert back to an earlier version of the document, they can review the document's history to retrieve a previous version.

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