SharePoint vs. Public Folders. And the Winner Is... (continued)

Usability and interface

As public folders reside on an Exchange server, users are able to access these folders and their contents directly through their Outlook interface. As a result, public folders can be mail enabled. This means that a public folder can be associated with a particular e-mail address, and users can update the contents of this folder by sending an e-mail to that address.

Alternatively, ensuring that public folders are being used properly requires you to train employees and apply the appropriate permissions to your folders. The lack of user knowledge on the appropriate use of public folders may result in unintended and undesirable consequences. For example, if a user sends a message to all of his contacts and his contact list includes public folder e-mail addresses, his message would also be posted to that folder which will clutter up the folders with inappropriate content and significantly increase the folder file sizes. On the other hand, users might delete content from public folders as they would do with the content of their Inbox, without realizing that it will impact other users.

Windows SharePoint Services allows users to create team workspaces, helping teams communicate and collaborate by providing easy access to people, documents and information. Although you can't post to your SharePoint site through Outlook, you can set alerts to be sent to you any time an update to a folder or document is posted, keeping you and your users informed as new files associated with specific projects are updated or uploaded. You can also access the contents of your SharePoint site through Outlook while offline by synchronizing your Outlook client with SharePoint.

Pre-Installed Workflow Application Templates

SharePoint contains a number of pre-installed application templates that provide customer scenarios for building workflows on the SharePoint platform to address specific business processes or sets of tasks. These templates are customized to meet your specific requirements, and include such sites as competitive analysis, business performance rating, event planning, integrated marketing campaign tracking, sales lead pipeline, etc. They provide businesses with a variety of ways to use SharePoint in their particular environment and, at the same time, eliminate the need for manual customization and involvement from IT personnel.

Workflow applications similar to the ones available in SharePoint are not present in public folders which are limited to the generic folder architecture interface which limits the flexibility of the application itself.

When selecting your collaboration solution, you need to consider volume of the data you are going to store and how it will be used. Overall, public folders are suitable for storing static documents, and SharePoint is a better solution for documents that are continuously updated. SharePoint also offers a wide range of tools to enhance collaboration within teams or across the organization, such as support for lists, wikis and blogs. As SharePoint users are able to access and modify files from any Internet-connected computer their productivity is dramatically increased at the office, at home, and on the road. If you currently use public folders, deploying SharePoint as a hosted service is a quick and simple process and will enable to you to take advantage of SharePoint's enhanced information sharing and collaboration resources.

Continue reading