- Why Would an Organization Want to Use SharePoint?
- Sharing, Managing, and Finding Documents Made Easier
- Finding Relevant Information
- Providing Efficiencies for Meetings
- Adding Value by Using Alerts
- Engaging in Online Discussions
- Getting Information from Users
- Informing Users with Announcements and News Items
- Creating Sites to Meet the Needs of the User Community
- Expanding SharePoint by Integrating with Microsoft Office 2003 and Other Applications
- Replacing Corporate Intranets
- Hosting SharePoint Sites on the Internet
- Communicating with Partners and Customers Through a SharePoint Extranet
- Summary
- Best Practices
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Getting Information from Users
Organizations can gather information from employees by creating surveys in Word, printing them, and then putting them in everyone's mailbox with the hope that people will fill them out and turn them back in. Or, an email containing the questions can be sent to all users, and the users can email their responses back to the sender.
There are a few problems associated with these "manual" processes. Using the printed copy method, there is always the possibility that someone will lose the document. For both methods, the results of the survey would need to be manually calculated.
With SharePoint, however, a survey can easily be created, complete with multiple choice responses, numeric or text responses, and date/time responses. The results are tabulated automatically and can be viewed graphically. Important surveys can be placed right on the organization's home page in a prominent position.
Surveys can be used to obtain information such as where to hold the winter holiday party, what time of day to have the party, and which date should be used for the party. The possible answers can be displayed for the users using a drop-down list, radio buttons, or check boxes.