When I first start­ed using Share­Point, I have to admit that I was not impressed.

The user inter­face felt unin­spired. Some soft­ware user inter­faces draw you in. For me, Share­Point was­n’t one of them. I remem­ber won­der­ing, “Why would I want to use this?”

I’ve changed my tune. After learn­ing more about Share­Point’s ben­e­fits and using it at sev­er­al client sites, I rec­og­nize that it offers a num­ber of ben­e­fits to tech­ni­cal writers:

* Share­Point pro­vides a basic Con­tent Man­age­ment Sys­tem (CMS). Peo­ple use a CMS to pub­lish, edit, and man­age con­tent, such as doc­u­ments. A full-blown CMS is expen­sive where­as Share­Point is fre­quent­ly already installed in larg­er orga­ni­za­tions. Tech­ni­cal writ­ers can use it to gain con­trol over their doc­u­ments at the file level.

* Share­Point Foun­da­tion 2010 is free. Share­Point 2010 is avail­able in two flavours: Share­Point Serv­er 2010 and Share­Point Foun­da­tion. Share­Point Serv­er offers more fea­tures than Share­Point Foun­da­tion but the lat­ter is free.

* You can use meta­da­ta to tag your files. If you are work­ing on a lot of con­tent, adding meta­da­ta to your files may be a worth­while invest­ment because it helps group your con­tent into cat­e­gories. Meta­da­ta is a col­lec­tion of cen­tral­ly man­aged terms that you can define and then use as attrib­ut­es for a file. Then, after you have tagged your con­tent, oth­er writ­ers can search for doc­u­ments using the same categories—content is eas­i­er to find and update.

* Source con­trol. Share­Point requires you to check out files before you edit them and offers ver­sion con­trol of the file. Ver­sion con­trol essen­tial­ly keeps a his­to­ry of the file. If for some rea­son you want to res­ur­rect an ear­li­er ver­sion of a doc­u­ment, Share­Point makes it easy.

* Col­lab­o­ra­tion. Share­Point enables teams to col­lab­o­rate on files. If you are work­ing with anoth­er per­son on a file, each writer can work on the con­tent con­cur­rent­ly and the lat­est ver­sion is then uploaded to the Share­Point site.

* Doc­u­ment con­trol. Share­Point makes it pos­si­ble to restrict users at the site lev­el. Best prac­tices sug­gest assign­ing employ­ees or con­trac­tors to user groups.

* Work­flows. In Share­Point, you can auto­mate the review process. As a writer, you can cre­ate a list of review­ers and add dead­lines. Share­Point then sends e‑mails to SMEs and sends you an e‑mail when they have reviewed the document.

* Trans­la­tion work­flows. If you need to trans­late your con­tent, Share­Point can assist with the process by remind­ing exter­nal stake­hold­ers to per­form tasks by cer­tain dates, and e‑mails you when all of the work is complete.

* Easy to use. Share­Point has a sim­i­lar look and feel to oth­er Microsoft Office prod­ucts. It sports the famil­iar Microsoft rib­bon and the tasks are pret­ty straight­for­ward (for tech­ni­cal writ­ers, at least).

* Lots of sup­port con­tent. There are many books, web sites, and blogs about Share­Point. For exam­ple, check out these online train­ing courses.

The bot­tom line: Share­Point is a worth­while tool if col­lab­o­ra­tion is impor­tant and you need con­trol over your source files. Sounds like a good fit for most tech­ni­cal writers.