SharePoint – Nitpicking

Let me say first off that I really think the new SharePoint is amazing. It’s incredible what you can do with it straight out of the box, and it’s incredible how you can extend it and how it interacts with other office products. The user experience has also been considerably improved.

Reason enough to get into some nitpicking, I think. There’s just a bunch of little things in there that do get in the way of working with SharePoint every now and then. They’re minor but after all, that’s what’s nitpicking is for (note: I should point out that most of this is from the German version so I’m curious to know if there are differences between the different releases):

• The drop down on the top link bar doesn’t always work. Sometimes I have to click on one of the other top links to get at the links in the drop down list.
• Delete a site and the only way to get back to the rest of your SharePoint is either by browser back button or by changing the link in the address bar. Why is there no link on the page where deletion is confirmed?
• “Edit datasheet” is a great feature but filtering can be a pain. When you open a drop down list for one of the columns in your list, you HAVE TO select something. It won’t let you just decide you didn’t mean that particular column and simply move on to another. This can be particularly irritating if you hit on a column that SharePoint won’t let you filter in the first place because – you’ve guessed it – you HAVE TO select something but can’t. All you’l get is that irritating error sound. Way out? Select a different application, then go back to your browser… 
• Two classics concerning webparts and views: One, SharePoint doesn’t show you which view is currently in use for a particular webpart (it only says “<Current View>”). Two, if you select a view in a webpart, then go and change the view in the list or library settings you have to select it in the webpart AGAIN. Why doesn’t it the webpart directly adapt these changes, say, the way a webpage would with CSS? I’m assuming there’s simply a different approach at work here. I’ve just found it to get in the way of my work at times.
• Getting all the attributes in place for a whole stack of freshly uploaded documents can be a nuisance. Yes, you can speed things up by using datasheet view (courtesy of Copy & Paste) but you still have to single-handedly check in every document! Why can’t you simply select several documents that have mostly the same attributes, select the attributes for all of them once and then check them all in at the same time? Please tell me I’ve missed something here.

I think that will do for now. Have these things been bothering you as well or have you never encountered these problems? Any nitpicking on your part that I didn’t cover?