Microsoft's new SharePoint Server 2010 has just been released and we've been working hard to suss out the changes from prior versions and what benefits it offers nonprofits and libraries.

Have you used SharePoint? How? Will you take the plunge to upgrade to the 2010 version?

Share your thoughts on it here.

Hi Becky,

I was the Sharepoint admin for a prior employer and we got Sharepoint just as it came out. The learning curve was too steep for some of our users, and our advanced users found it too locked down to really do some of the things that they wanted. But, this was when it first came out, and since then, I have been hearing a lot of good things about it. I would love to play with it and see the changes they have made.

Layal

Thanks for the feedback, Layal. I'd love to hear what others' experiences with it have been as well. I was trained on some parts of it last summer, but haven't actually used it in daily work, so I'm pretty rusty. I used the 2007 version.

For anyone interested in the 2010 versions, our own Chris Peters has penned SharePoint 2010 for Nonprofits and Libraries as well as a companion blog post that details some resources for learning whether it's the right tool for your organization and how to learn/implement it.

Hopefully, there are a bevvy of useful resources in those two items that could help most anyone investigate whether MOSS 2010 will suit their needs and some to help learn how to use it.

Great information – thank you!

Just found this SharePoint 2010 based Association Management Software called “SharePoint AMS.” 

http://SharePointAMS.com

I really like this concept b/c it makes sense to consider maximizing your investment in SharePoint by affordably adding membership management capabilities to an already extremely powerful platform.

Has anyone had any experience with this SharePoint-based solution?

http://OrniPoint.com

It is currently being marketed primarily to the Life Sciences industry, but I can see it becoming very advantageous to nonprofits and libraries as well.

From Chris Peters's SharePoint 2010 for Nonprofits and Libraries article:

"Increasingly, nonprofits are faced with the challenge of managing large amounts of data across multiple systems internally, while at the same time providing external users with a seamless, integrated experience across different applications and devices."

This can be challenging indeed. OrniPoint offers a solution to this by providing an "Omni-Connector" tool that will connect SharePoint to multiple repositories across multiple systems or file shares like eRoom, Documentum, Lotus Notes, SQL Server, etc. This could be very helpful in aiding the implementation of an "integrated knowledge management platform" without having to migrate all of the information directly to a centralized SharePoint Server.

In addition, OrniPoint expands SharePoint's out of the box features to allow Autofiling and Autonaming of documents based upon user-defined properties. These documents are stored in customizable SharePoint libraries which users can set to be automatically created based on information they provide.

I have had the opportunity to view a demo of the product about a month ago and it seemed like it could become a very powerful solution to expand SharePoint's already enticing platform. Has anyone had the chance to view this product or use it in action?