​Pamela Flora

Pamela Flora, Innovative-e, Inc.

My company’s public website is built on SharePoint 2010, and I am part of the team that updates content. I am not particularly technical and I’m certainly not a web designer, but SharePoint makes it easy to add and update content to our website to achieve professional results with minimal fuss. Using SharePoint 2010 to add content to our website is as easy as cutting-and-pasting content or uploading files, and then using the same formatting tools that I... THERE'S MORE am already familiar with from using other Microsoft products. Anyone familiar with Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and other Microsoft products will experience a similar look and feel when he or she uses SharePoint to create or manage content. We also use SharePoint for our company’s internal website, which facilitates access to documents, forms, and other company-specific content that we all use every day. Using SharePoint has reduced the number of email attachments flying around the office, and we don’t have messy, out-of-control network shares and document versioning issues. All our shared content is located on one well-organized site that helps us keep our content properly versioned and accessible at all times to anyone who needs to see it. I need to be able to easily update my company’s external and internal sites – without worrying about breaking something. That’s why I use SharePoint.

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Katie Dawson, Point8020 Limited

My company creates training courseware which involves robust review processes. The processes rely on a lot of people filling different roles, such as multiple authors, testers, technical reviewers, editors, legal experts and more. Documents and other courseware assets are, therefore, created, edited and approved at many different stages by many different users. Before we used SharePoint, all of our courses were stored as files in traditional file shares.... THERE'S MORE The lack of source control meant that we often wasted time redoing intensive work when documents were modified inappropriately. We also had to rely on a complicated system of manual emails for notifying the next person in the process that the documents were ready for their input. This led to clogged-up inboxes, and a complex but fragile system for getting courseware to completion. The source control features of SharePoint 2010 Document Libraries and the built-in approval workflows enable us to be sure everyone is working on the correct versions of each document. By using SharePoint, our source control problems have disappeared, our processes have been streamlined and automated, and our users can access their documents remotely very easily. I need to keep our courseware creation on course. That’s why I use SharePoint.

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Rick Taylor, Perficient, Inc. But more importantly, Dad.

I collaborate a lot with co-workers and clients, so SharePoint is great for me because I don’t have to attach large files to emails. I simply send them a link to a SharePoint site and we can collaborate. I also use SharePoint at home to track my kids’ school assignments and progress. At each kid’s respective schools, their textbooks and materials can be found online – either at external sites or the publishers’ sites. I set up a Document Library for... THERE'S MORE each child, and import their materials into those libraries, where there is a workflow that watches for changes. At our house, we have a rule that homework and chores have to be done before kids can play, watch TV or go over to friends’ houses, so the workflow lets me monitor progress when I’m travelling. When I get the alert that their work is done, I check the homework and correct any mistakes, which send an alert to them to check and see if it is ‘APPROVED’. If so, it’s done and they get to have fun. I need to track progress on major projects and reports – both mine and my kids’. That’s why I use SharePoint.

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Cory Rethford, Indiana University

I manage a departmental website for the Indiana University Student Enrollment Services. Previous to SharePoint a large number of documents were not accessible from abroad either because staff didn’t have Office 2010 client installed or used mobile devices. Since we started using SharePoint 2010 staff now has a secured web interface to access these documents from anywhere using Microsoft Office Web Apps. They can now create, view, and edit any Word,... THERE'S MORE Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote from their laptop or mobile PC browser. Previous to SharePoint this was not possible. Content when and where we want it. That’s why we use SharePoint.

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Sadie Van Buren, BlueMetal Architects, Inc.

I’ve been using SharePoint for nine years, and at this point I have a hard time imagining working without it. My favorite SharePoint feature is the platform’s ability to pull so many different kinds of information together on a single page. It gives me the ability to add context around what I’m working on. For any topic or project, I can associate people, links, documents, events, news (both internal and external), images, video, maps, and many other... THERE'S MORE kinds of content. When a whole team is contributing to and collaborating on the same topic or project in this manner, we’re all getting a much broader picture. I really rely on SharePoint as the “one-stop shop.” From my experience with clients, I know that they too really get excited about this ability to bring information together when they’ve been used to working across separate sources of information. SharePoint is a blank page on which you can write the story of your business. (It’s also the pen.) That’s why I use SharePoint.

​Charlene Burks

Charlene Burks, Miami-Dade County Public Schools

I manage the Attendance Services department for Miami-Dade County Public Schools. At the end of every school year, we deliver grade book results to each school in my district for archival purposes. We previously produced these on CDs and mailed them out, making the process both time-consuming and costly. Since we started using SharePoint, we use a document workspace to create individual school folders where we store the end-of-year results. Our staff can... THERE'S MORE securely share information – such as grades, attendance or class information –with only the users they want. This new process saves us the cost of CDs and staff time while securely storing this important information. Archiving records shouldn’t feel like homework. That’s why I use SharePoint.