Upgrade StorageZotero as Doc Management System Replacement for Sharepoint?
I work on a research team for a large tech company. We currently use Sharepoint to manage team research docs and share those docs with our business partners. There are many reasons to not like Sharepoint. I love Zotero and use it as a doc management system for personal items. But I'm wondering, to what extent could Zotero replace Sharepoint as my team's doc management system? Here is our wishlist of functionality and how Zotero may or may not meet each wish:
1. Central, internal repo for team research (could put Zotero on a central team webdav server)
2. Read/write access for all team members (could create a group library and manage this through settings)
3. Read access only for business partners (same 2)
4. No syncing with Zotero servers (infosec absolutely will not allow us to put our info on Zotero servers. But this shouldn't be an issue if we use the set-up from 1)
5. Partial read access for business partners (we'd like to make only selected research available to our business partners. But it appears that to grant a business partner access to our team library, they'd get to see the entire library. The only solution at this time seems to be to create separate libraries: ForSharing, NotForSharing. That's not ideal)
6. Tagging, virtual collections, attaching materials, etc. (Yup, that's all the stuff I love about Zotero)
7. Integration with company permission groups (This could be the major blocker for my team's adoption of Zotero as a doc management replacement for Sharepoint. If we want to grant access to a business partner, they need to sign up for an account through Zotero before getting access. Seems simple enough. You'd think. Not in practice. We might be able to create a special business partner e-mail list and give them access through that. But I think that's starting to get hacky)
Has anyone's corporate team used Zotero in the way I suggest? If so, what's the experience been?
1. Central, internal repo for team research (could put Zotero on a central team webdav server)
2. Read/write access for all team members (could create a group library and manage this through settings)
3. Read access only for business partners (same 2)
4. No syncing with Zotero servers (infosec absolutely will not allow us to put our info on Zotero servers. But this shouldn't be an issue if we use the set-up from 1)
5. Partial read access for business partners (we'd like to make only selected research available to our business partners. But it appears that to grant a business partner access to our team library, they'd get to see the entire library. The only solution at this time seems to be to create separate libraries: ForSharing, NotForSharing. That's not ideal)
6. Tagging, virtual collections, attaching materials, etc. (Yup, that's all the stuff I love about Zotero)
7. Integration with company permission groups (This could be the major blocker for my team's adoption of Zotero as a doc management replacement for Sharepoint. If we want to grant access to a business partner, they need to sign up for an account through Zotero before getting access. Seems simple enough. You'd think. Not in practice. We might be able to create a special business partner e-mail list and give them access through that. But I think that's starting to get hacky)
Has anyone's corporate team used Zotero in the way I suggest? If so, what's the experience been?
Running such a sync server, you could probably get most of what you want regarding read/write access. I’m not sure how possible it would be to get a read system set up for clients without their installing the Zotero program, though.
Probably most important, though, Zotero is missing some key features of doc management systems, such as versioning. If these features of Sharepoint are needed, Zotero really won’t work for you.
In sum, Zotero isn’t really set up to fill this role. While you could possibly make it work, it would require a lot of setup and maintenance. If the main features you want are tags and collections, there are other doc management systems available that include those, as well as are set up better for your other needs out of the box.
1. Do you know if Zotero has plans to develop these sort of features in the near-future?
2. You alluded to other doc management systems. What are those?
2. I’ve worked with several corporate DMS systems, and all of them seems to have tags at least. I’m sorry tha I don’t know specific names. Here, though, is a discussion on using tags in Sharepoint: http://sharepointmaven.com/top-5-best-practices-document-management-sharepoint/
How do I link my Zotero library to sharepoint? I am able to link an individual file, however, I am unable to link the entire library
http://sharepoint/sites/yours/library/filename.pdf
This should work as well I think:
http://sharepoint/sites/yours/library
You'll get the default view of this library.