Comments on: Arrow-Tip #43 Outlook vs SharePoint: Where to Put What? – Part I

By: robin

robin — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 16:43:46 +0000

re – calendaring

We have recently been moved onto our institution’s exchange server and are finally able to utilize the outlook-sharepoint power.

We previously used oracle for calendaring, which automatically placed an event/appt on any invited participant regardless of their acceptance of the meeting or not (if not accepted – a red “x” was shown). This was helpful, because if the participant’s schedule changed, they could then revert to accepting. Is there a way to do this within the sharepoint-outlook system?

Also, I have not figured out how to merge sharepoint calendars into one on the “home-page” sharepoint site. Best scenario – automatic updating occurs when a sharepoint calendar is changed.

Wow – great questions, Robin! I haven’t used the calendar in quite the way you are suggesting above, although I have sent meeting requests from the calendar to users that hits their Outlook inbox. Depending on how they have configured their inbox to respond to meeting requests, these invitations are going to automatically show up on their Outlook calendar even if they have not accepted.

Regarding your second question, I’m not quite sure what you mean. Do you want a calendar web part on the site webpage the consolidates several other calendars for the entire site?

Misty

By: Kristian Kalsing

Kristian Kalsing — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 03:27:52 +0000

Interesting to read your experiences. The SharePoint versus Outlook/Exchange puzzle can at times be tricky. One main point to emphasise though is that the two products complement each other and are increasingly designed to do so. Outlook is first of all for personal productivity and communication whereas SharePoint is more of a team/department/organsation-level solution.
Another aspect to keep in mind is that Outlook is also an offline client for SharePoint. By connecting SharePoint lists and libraries to Outlook you can take that content with you offline in a managed environment.

Thanks for your comment, Kiristian – great insights! Misty

By: AmyGeek

AmyGeek — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 02:12:34 +0000

SharePoint lets you have institutional knowledge, which is really important as your team grows. When new folks join or in the future, when new folks go to work on a similar project, they can refer to this site and catch up or learn from your experience.

If information is stored in user’s mailboxes, it’s only available to those people. And trying to pull it all together to give to someone new is sketchy at best. And down the road, if your mail is purged for legal or other reasons or if everyone who was involved in the project from soup to nuts is no longer at the company, that information is no longer available for future reference.

Thus, my belief that anything that’s shared and associated with the project should be posted in SharePoint rather than email. (Just me $.02 though!)

Awesome input, Amy – thanks so much! Misty