Many people in the U of S community require a way to store documents and share them with others. The PAWS portal has a feature called “PAWS Community Groups” that has been available for several years. ICT has recently launched a SharePoint 2010 service which also offers document sharing and collaboration features. This document compares the two services and suggests the best usage for each.

PAWS Community Groups

PAWS Community Groups is a communications tool.  It is a basic file sharing service that ICT offers to the campus community. The PAWS Community Groups is free and available to any group on campus.

PAWS Community Groups offers the following collaboration features:

• Storage of files, including approval of submitted files by group leaders
• Send e-mail to group members
• Post and read articles or announcements
• Chat room
• Group calendar
• Message board for on-line discussions
• Photo album
• Links page

Limitations

• In order to update a file that has been posted, the file must be downloaded to the local hard drive, changed, and then re-uploaded to PAWS. If more than one person downloads a file and changes it, there is the possibility that one person’s changes will be overwritten by the next person’s upload.
• The group calendar is confined to PAWS; it cannot be viewed in MS Outlook
• A group member has privileges to see all areas in the group; there is no fine-grained security.

PAWS Community Groups collaboration is recommended for people who require a free service. It is adequate as a method to distribute files to a group.  It is not recommended if the group is planning to actively work on the documents and need to control who is currently editing a file, or if the group wishes to keep multiple versions of a file.

SharePoint 2010

SharePoint 2010 is a new document storage and collaboration service that ICT is offering to the campus community starting in fall 2011.  SharePoint offers the same functionality as PAWS Groups (with the exception of the chat room feature) but has additional features for file sharing and editing.

SharePoint is not a free service; please see the following URL for details on the pricing.  It is offered to departments or colleges who require a higher level of service than that offered by PAWS Groups.

http://www.usask.ca/its/services/documents_workflows_collaboration/sharepoint-2010/sharepoint-2010-pricing-and-licencing.php

SharePoint Collaboration additional features:

• Supports Check in/Check out of documents (controls who is allowed to edit a document)
• Changes to a document in a SharePoint library are automatically saved back to SharePoint
• Integration of Office 2010 programs (Office 2007 supported to a lesser extent)
• As many document libraries as needed
• Supports versioning on documents
• More flexible security; can allow a member to view or update some portions of the site but not others
• Ability to add metadata to documents; aids in identifying and locating the documents
• Ability to use workflow to route documents between people for feedback or approvals, or custom workflows to support departmental business processes
• Ability to declare documents as records, thus preventing accidental changes
• Retention rules (automatically move, start a workflow, or delete documents when a specified date has been passed)
• Ability to turn on auditing for specific types of documents (track when the document was opened, edited, checked in or out, moved, copied or deleted)
• Wiki capabilities

SharePoint 2010 is recommended for groups that require one or more of the advanced features listed above.