SharePoint awaits future update

SharePoint+awaits+future+update

Zehra Hussain, junior, stares at her computer screen on a school night. She sighs as her browser displays “cannot find server.” This isn’t the first time she has seen this message when trying to access the school’s SharePoint site.

“It’s frustrating,” Hussain said. “I have to wake up early to do my homework.”

Students have complained of problems with SharePoint. However, the administration has been unable to identify a problem thus far.

“We will get concerns brought to our attention that [SharePoint] doesn’t work at night, but nobody can ever tell us with any regularity the time or the specifics,” said William Walsh, assistant principal for operations.

Walsh also said that SharePoint is not a portal that limits capacity. In other words, there should not be a limit on the number of students who are able to access the site at a given time.

However, there are plans to change SharePoint in the future. The district is thinking about upgrading SharePoint from its current 2007 version to a newer 2013 version. The district has previously used the 2001, 2003, and 2007 versions. The 2010 version was never used because of frustrations and because the upgrade wasn’t a massive improvement.  The 2013 version of SharePoint has better organization and managing features.

“One of the things we’ve learned going from [the 2003 version] to [2007’s] is that without a firm understanding of the changes that took place, it created more problems. So, rather than just jumping to 2013 we want to make sure 2013 will work in an appropriate manner and be user friendly for both students and staff,” Walsh said.

The district hopes to implement this change for the next school year.