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HomeHomeOur CommunityOur CommunityGeneral Discuss...General Discuss...Anybody using DNN as an alternative to Sharepoint ??Anybody using DNN as an alternative to Sharepoint ??
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10/2/2008 9:52 AM
 

Hi,

I am interested in document management and workflow and nowadays companies seem to be implementing Sharepoint to do this. While WSS3 is free, MOSS2007 is not and its costs are not insignificant. Now I suspect DNN is not on a par with Sharepoint, but I do envisage that it can offer a subset of its functionality especially with 3rd party modules. For customers with lower budgets it would be great to offer an alternative - A DNN/3rd Party Module solution perhaps..??? Has anyone any experience of this, and if so how successful and what modules are they using?

General views on this subject also appreciated.

Many thanks in advance,

Sam

 
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10/2/2008 10:24 AM
 

Sam,

Saying that DNN is not on par with SharePoint is an understatement. :) Then again, you also looked at the price, and that's a HUGE factor, obviously. Right now my group is using DNN as a Content Management System with pretty good success. Some of the things need to be tweaked and there are always features that you wish were available.

We're using Document Exchange 3 right now. DMX 4 offers webDav functionality, but isn't fully compatible with Windows Vista. Here's a quick rundown of some of the limitations.

With DMX, the file isn't automatically locked when you download for editing. The user has to remember to lock the file they are editing or someone else could decide to edit it for them.

There isn't a good 'workflow' method. I haven't found a way to have person A upload the file and person B is notified it's their turn. There also doesn't seem to be a way to control permissions on a per-user basis. All of the DMX permissions are role controlled.

There isn't an easy way to do a mass download, start clicking files one at a time.

All of that being said, with a little bit of training and attention to detail, there haven't been any major issues regarding using DMX. If the Vista issue gets resolved, or if you can guarantee that Vista won't be used, DMX4 is GREAT, as it allows on-line editing of files (only tried MS Word). I'm not sure to what level you would be using sharepoint, so it's hard to point out what other features you'd need to look at. Hopefully this was helpful.

Rob

 
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10/2/2008 10:42 AM
 

Rob,

Yes very helpful. No I would be avoiding Vista if at all possible, having just played with it this week and experienced some of the hardware incompatibilities - XP is just fine. Also most business customers still use XP I believe.

The document locking issue is important, and probably fixed in DMX4 ??

With regard to workflow, my requirements are more to do with form routing rather than document approval. So in Sharepoint one would typically use a combination of Windows Workflow Foundation and Infopath forms - not sure whether how this would be achieved in the DNN world, however one could write a custom ASCX module which utilitises WWF I suspect...

Thanks again,

Sam

 
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10/2/2008 12:50 PM
 

I think the main disadvantage that DNN has over Sharepoint is the fact that Sharepoint costs £££ and therefore some people think it can't be as good, when in fact it is far more flexible in so many ways :).

Cheers!

Alex



Alex Shirley


 
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10/2/2008 1:03 PM
 

Alex,

Thanks for this.

Could you elaborate on "when in fact it is far more flexible in so many ways".

Thanks,

Sam

 
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HomeHomeOur CommunityOur CommunityGeneral Discuss...General Discuss...Anybody using DNN as an alternative to Sharepoint ??Anybody using DNN as an alternative to Sharepoint ??


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