SharePoint - anyone used it?

I'm dealing with some foreign customers and trying to make effective progress via confrence calls isn't working. Its hard to do that with native English speakers but doubly difficult if English is a second language

I know I can share files on SharePoint, but can I do things "live" (mark up drawings, show presentations, etc.) like I can with NetMeeting?

I can't use NetMeeting as there are concerns here about letting them through our firewall

Thanks

Thought Sharepoint was usually inside your firewall in most cases as you usually set up a server to run it

We are experimenting with it for some stuff at work but it is all meant to be internal to our VPN.

Seen another thing called OCS which does same sort of thing as net meeting but is usually used internally as well


Sorry if it's not much help

[flymo]

Originally Posted by Tris

I'm dealing with some foreign customers and trying to make effective progress via confrence calls isn't working. Its hard to do that with native English speakers but doubly difficult if English is a second language

I know I can share files on SharePoint, but can I do things "live" (mark up drawings, show presentations, etc.) like I can with NetMeeting?

I can't use NetMeeting as there are concerns here about letting them through our firewall

Thanks

Sharepoint itself doesnt provide this, but does provide a whole lot of other functionality.

The capability you need is web conferencing. There are piles of solutions out there to do this but to name a few;

Microsoft LiveMeeting
Webex
Adobe

We use LiveMeeting and it does the job nicely. All the servers are hosted by Microsoft so you have nothing to manage internally.

Why do you expect your customers to speak English?

[flymo]

Originally Posted by Ed

Why do you expect your customers to speak English?

everybody should speak English, its the law ask any Air Traffic Controller

Originally Posted by Ed

Why do you expect your customers to speak English?

I'm not sure that I "expect" them to speak English but the international business language "tends" to be English which puts me in an easy position!

However, they do all speak English but it tends to be Swenglish (Sweden), Gerenglish(Germany), etc, etc. which tends to make things difficult, but is still significantly better than my non-existant Swedish & schoolboy German, etc!

The bigger issue is the conference call itself. They aren't a very effective way of doing business I find even if everyone is a native English speaker. The question on SharePoint is to attempt to get everyone on the same page

Thanks for the info & comments though

[timwilky]

We tend to use net meeting in conjuction with our normal video conference facilities (Picturetel). Then to application share power point presentations. That way both sites are looking at projected power point.

So a couple of big TVs showing the video conference and then presentations done using Netmeeting/Powerpoint.

Working for a Global enterprise. even though we are French owned. The international language is English. however, if you are the only brit sat in a meeting in Paris, Don't expect them to talk in english, Except where they need to ensure you understand. In other words. you (I) are expected to at least know some French. Fun is when we have French, Swiss, Swedish, Italian, German, Chinese, Indian etc. all in the same meeting.


As for sharepoint. It might well be a way of collaborating. but is expensive to set up and use effectively, when you may already have such tools already deployed. The portal server is a nightmare

[flymo]

Originally Posted by timwilky

We tend to use net meeting in conjuction with our normal video conference facilities (Picturetel). Then to application share power point presentations. That way both sites are looking at projected power point.

So a couple of big TVs showing the video conference and then presentations done using Netmeeting/Powerpoint.

Working for a Global enterprise. even though we are French owned. The international language is English. however, if you are the only brit sat in a meeting in Paris, Don't expect them to talk in english, Except where they need to ensure you understand. In other words. you (I) are expected to at least know some French. Fun is when we have French, Swiss, Swedish, Italian, German, Chinese, Indian etc. all in the same meeting.


As for sharepoint. It might well be a way of collaborating. but is expensive to set up and use effectively, when you may already have such tools already deployed. The portal server is a nightmare

I think the LiveMeeting, Webex type solutions offer a better range of functionality then NetMeeting. One particular area is that you can easily cater for users that might be outside of your corporate network, and may not even work for you. So collaboration between your users and partners from other organisations becomes easier.

Our organisation actually states that English will be the preferred language of choice for meetings when more than one nationaility is present which is handy We currently use LiveMeeting for 150,000 potential users.