SharePoint Document Management

As a consultant, you have to travel a bit. Even if you don't travel, I have found that the convenience, and portability of laptops trumps the added power of a desktop. I do have a desktop at home with giant displays and full size keyboard, mouse, audio process whatever - but - my main workhorse machine, is a laptop. My laptop is a Dell, 17" (1920X1200), T7500 CPU, Santa Rosa, 160G 7200RPM HDD, 3G RAM, High finish display card machine. The only place it sucks is in an airplane stool - other than that it rocks. Later down the road I will put in a second SSD HDD, so I can virtualize machines on the SSD HDD. You would note that I have 3Gs of RAM, not 4. 4Gs of RAM IMO is waste of $. The extra 300K that you get (Laptops cannot address full 4Gs), is not worth the additional $400.

Interest in SharePoint for Document Management

At first glance, the idea of using SharePoint for document management appeals to plenty of organisations. SharePoint 2007 has native document management capability – its document libraries can be used to store all types of files; SharePoint supports Check In / Check Out, Version History and Retention Policies. SharePoint document libraries can store additional classificatory or meta-data related to the files and provide an intuitive means of viewing and working with that meta-data. SharePoint offers Search functionality and of
work SharePoint is web-based, which opens up the prospect of simpler remote access to and sharing of documents and files with key clients and business partners.
News of these document management features in SharePoint is motivating plenty of organisations to look to SharePoint as a way of improving on existing File Shares (e.g. G: or P: drive) for managing their documents and files.
SharePoint is relatively inexpensive; it's other potential applications beyond document management (such as maintaining the intranet and collaborating on project-related data) and SharePoint allows users to continue with the familiar approach of naming files and choosing a location for them as they are saved (which helps to reduce the cost of re-training staff who are accustomed to storing their files on File Shares).
These cost-of-ownership factors are even leading some organisations that have licenced a traditional DM system (such as Hummingbird DM or Interwoven Worksite) to consider whether they should be replacing their traditional Document Management systems with SharePoint.

A Common Mistake – Reproducing the Folder Hierarchy

The SharePoint document libraries can contain folders and SharePoint 2007 supports a hierarchy of folders in a document library. This leads to a common error as organizations move from your file shares to SharePoint - reproducing the tree structure of folders that was present in the G: or P: drive with a
folder tree in a single document library in SharePoint. Migration of existing documents is easy because SharePoint allows you to cut and paste from Explorer in Vista or when a document library is opened in Internet Explorer.
However, this approach to reproduce the share folders of files with SharePoint folders leads to frustration on the track with the search and handling volume. The folder names can not be used to refine a search in SharePoint. To leverage the capabilities of SharePoint is a preferable approach is to use meta-data columns, which are defined in the document library (instead of the folder) level. Storage of large volumes of documents is best done with a tree of sites, instead of a folder tree into a single document library. For these reasons folders are used sparingly in the best environments for the practice of SharePoint document management.

Third-Party Add-ons To Address this Weakness

Recognized the volume & the potential grandness of email messages is not surprising that there's a quantity of aftermarket add-ons for SharePoint that improve integration with Outlook & streamline the saving of emails to SharePoint, along with the meta-data. These include products from Colligo, Lake & Knowledge MacroView.
Message from the wisdom of walking in Outlook & MacroView capture meta-data in realtime as messages are stored in SharePoint. WISDOM message allows the user to drag & drop "to save email messages to people | positions
SharePoint. It also offers excellent handling of attachments (both incoming & outgoing) & avoid repeating copies of emails in SharePoint.