[thechat] Cloudy Collaboration Apps

[Luther, Ron]

S.M.German had some things to say:


>>Oh, you are not alone.  I'm about 20 months into a new position with a group with 2 SharePoint sites.  When the old SP was updated, not all the content could be 
>>automatically ported over, and of course no one took the lead on making a manual move happen.  ...


Hi Sean!

You know?  If there isn't already a special place in hell for the perpetrators of SharePoint ... I would most gladly contribute to a Kickstarter project to create one!   ;-)


>>If something to be accessed by the group requires an email address or account credentials, use group credentials.  

I like it.  Great suggestion!  (As long, of course, as I am allowed to cattleprod anyone who sets that account up as a 'no-reply'!   Grrrrr.)


>>Google Docs, Dropbox, etc.  If your email/user directory folks can make exceptions to corporate password policy (if you have a service that needs domain 
>>credentials, you're not changing the PW for that account every 90 days, are you?) request an exception made for your group account. 

Interesting point!  I was rudely interrupted during a conference call yesterday by an "urgent" email from IT demanding that I change my laptop password "RIGHT NOW!"  I have no idea what our google doc policies are.  {But I am pretty confident that the people who set them haven't talked to the people who set the other policies.  I just sent a nastygram to an internal group yesterday because the software they want me to use demands that I use IE instead of Chrome ... when other software other internal groups want me to use demand that I use Chrome instead of IE.  Hello?  Is anyone driving this bus?}


>>- For things SharePoint sites, document repositories, libraries, network shares, include time for and insist on documentation.  [...] Assume some things, such as link rot, are inevitable.  

I dunno.  I've always thought that it couldn't be that hard to set up an internal corporate version of 'tinyurl';  you enter the link to the document and a description of what it is, date, creater, maybe some 'category', 'keyword', or 'project' fields, etc.  The system generates a tinyurl for you to share to access the document ... and logs the link and description in a searchable database so people can find it again years from now.


>>Also assume all documents are instantly out of date.  

Yep.  Org charts.  Status updates.  User requirements.  Time Line commitments for project interlocks.    ;-)

Not to mention the 'telephone game' of how information and requirements get warped and twisted as they get rewritten and re-summarized from one spreadsheet to the next.  Which, if your company is large enough, gets to be even more fun as the joys of cross-cultural, cross-timezone communication hazards are thrown in.  I just love my official communications from IT telling me some system is "suffering from data timeliness".  Whoa!  Better fix that immediately.  I want that system back to being untimely as quickly as possible.


Cheers,
RonL.