SharePoint for Dummies
Many of our institutions use Microsoft SharePoint implementations to increase collaboration, manage projects, share documents, use group calendering, etc… Over the years, I have worked with some with similar (but NOT as fully featured) inexpensive/free Web-based products such as the 37Signals products – Basecamp and Backpack or some of the Google Apps like Google Docs and Presentations. These services are great but SharePoint has better integration and team collaboration features.
Today, I signed up for the new Google App called Google Sites. Using the former wiki service, JotSpot, Google has increased its capacity to compete with Microsoft Heavyweight SharePoint in terms of integration and team collaboration. The most obvious feature to me is how easy it is to use Google Sites. SharePoint has a much steeper learning curve due to the amount of flexibility available on the platform.
Using your work e-mail, Google Apps will create a landing page named after your domain (in my case uab.edu). If someone on your e-mail domain has already logged in, you will see a list of people that have logged in using the same e-mail domain you used. From the landing page (see the picture below), you can create Google sites (similar to Web Part Pages in SharePoint) that are accessible to everyone in your e-mail domain or only people that you invite. Other Google Apps already integrated into the landing page named after your domain are Docs, Calendar, and Chat.
With the addition of Google Sites, the Google application suite now closely mirrors all of Microsoft SharePoint’s most popular features.