Do you use a SharePoint intranet for Planning? - Public forum - Planning Advisory Service (PAS)

Hi, We've just started using SharePoint for planning and the HCA's local investment plan process. We're using it across the housing market area (four local authorities) and it's helping with the sharing of documents and data that would be too big to share over email. We're in the early stages of using it, so there are some teething problems, but I think it's an excellent data sharing and storage tool and there's huge potential with the discussion and meeting/events facilities too. It can be difficult to navigate, but I think we're slowly learning how to get around the site! So far we're using it just as officers, to varying degrees, but it would be great if we could get members signed up too. I can see potential for using SharePoint to circulate meeting papers and agendas etc. Harriet

SharePoint can be a great way of sharing information among colleagues working together, I have used it for project libraries, However..... It can still end up as a useless bin full of documents, just like a shared drive, unless some rigour is applied to the set up, and a common standard is communicated to all authors and enforced. When heavily loaded performance issues can make SharePoint unuseable. MS are looking at ways of making it go faster by default, but you may need to engage your local IT infrastructure specialist to "tune it".

Agree with Ian here. Sharepoint can be a great tool for file sharing, within and across departments. We experienced teething problems in the first 12 months. The main issue for me wasthe unavailability of systems - which became quite tedious as we were advised to store data on Sharepoint opposed to our personal drives. The speed of retrieving or searching for files has also been an issue in the past. My advice; If you are working on large or time sensitive documents, always save a personal copy should systems fail. Also, ensure that a good filing system is brought in from an early stage to aviod duplications and irreverent file storage.

If you are putting large files into sharepoint (A0 scans, multi-Mb PDF's), then it is probably worthwhile having a chat with your IT manager, as the bottlenecks on servicing small numbers of Large files, is different to servicing lots of requests for small files. If you are having a particular problem with response times, then one option is to ask IT to put your documents somewhere that they have their own drive heads (i.e. not shared with other applicaitons, OS, or users), this may have a cost associated to it.

Hi All, We're considering SharePoint for Intranet and possibly Extranet use across the planning service. Our online service is currently provided by FTP folders and a web app in lieu of an ECM/EDRMS system. My question therefore is how do you relate or consolidate the two sets of documents, for example a planning application? Will SharePoint allow pulling files from across networks of different types i.e. an internet server and an internal document server? Thanks in advance, Andy.

Hi Andy! I was responsible for rolling out SharePoint corporately at Mendip with some considerable success and set up an extranet site for members. Documents were made available on the extranet site that could not be sourced from the planning web search facility. Mendip do not give access to Members on their internal SharePoint site. Nigel Mines is now managing this at Mendip and if you would like his number let me know and I can provide it. Jenny