Reviews written by birstein
Administration
Security explorer makes it worth the money
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0 of 0 people found the following review helpful
Site Administrator for SharePoint runs within the Quest Management Console for SharePoint, and is one of a suite of five products Quest provides for SharePoint. It includes four tools: a site browser, a report manager (the reports are not very useful), a policy manager (very few people use this) and a recently added Security Explorer.
The site browser is the core of the product. It allows you to browse through all of your SharePoint sites and the objects they contain, via a treeview control on the left. Right-clicking on any object in the treeview provides a submenu of various tasks. For instance, right-clicking on a document library gives you several options, one of which is "Customize". Choosing "Customize" brings the document library's settings page into the right pane of the management console. Being able to access and act upon all of your SharePoint sites and objects from one console like this is a real timesaver.
The "Security Explorer", which allows you to control all users and permissions for all of your SharePoint sites plus perform powerful filtered searches for users, groups and/or permission type, is a big plus. It's inclusion makes Site Administrator worth the price tag.
Product Reviews
| Pros | Full featured product that includes a powerful security tool. See description. |
| Cons | Uses SQL Server Report Services, which makes it a bit hard to install. Because Site Administrator makes use of SQL Server Reporting Services for reporting, you need to own a copy of SQL Server 2005 and install SSRS (not always an easy task). You can create custom reports but only on the SharePoint data that Site Administrator exposes, which is not much. Also, the Security Explorer uses a "Script Logic" web service for some reason that kept giving me login errors when I tried to browse my SharePoint sites but I managed to get around it by putting my sites manually into the "Favorites" list. Since the Security Explorer was a purchased product which Quest just slipped into their SharePoint console, it seems that it's not completely integrated yet. |
| Version Reviewed | 3.0 |
| Reviewed By | Kathryn Birstein |
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Permissions
DeliverPoint Useful But Not What I Want
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
I have a client who was desperate for a tool to administer SharePoint's confusing security settings. Since SharePoint can only display it's hierarchial security structure in flat-file views, the most critical requirement is for a security tool to allow the admin to see users and their site permissions in a treeview structure, allowing the admin to move up and down among nested sites easily.
Unfortunately, this is EXACTLY where DeliverPoint falls down. In order to see usernames and permissions, the admin has to leave their very useful treeview and go into a application, "Discover Site Permissions" which will only show that particular sub-sites users in a flat-file-like display. To see another site's users, one needs to go back to the "DeliveryPoint 2007" application (a separate option on the Site Actions menu) and move to another site, then open "Discover Site Permissions" again, etc.
If we could have seen the users and permissions from within the "DeliverPoint 2007" app we would probably have purchased but it was decided that the product was too expensive too put up with the clumsy interface.
Product Reviews
| Pros | Accessible from site actions menu. Simple to use. Treeview shows what objects have inherited permissions with easy-to-understand icons. |
| Cons | Have to go into a separate applications, "Discover Site Permissions" every time you want to see actual user names and their permissions. Can only see the permissions in this application for one site at a time, i.e. there is no treeview that allows you to drill down to sub-sites. |
| Version Reviewed | DeliverPoint 2007 |
| Reviewed By | Kathryn Birstein |
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