Feature Comparison

Here is a list of differentiators between MetaShare and standard SharePoint online:

1. User interface:
   • MetaShare has a much more user friendly and intuitive user interface than SharePoint.
   • MetaShare has a more robust and responsive interface than SharePoint where elements do not move and change places on the screen.
   • MetaShare is faster than SharePoint with fewer clicks to perform different actions.
2. Metadata tagging:
   • MetaShare enforces documents to follow rules regarding mandatory and optional tags, in standard SharePoint documents can be uploaded without any tags.
   • Metadata filtering is easier in MetaShare as opposed to standard SharePoint. MetaShare filtering works similarly to how users drill down in a folder structure.
   • In MetaShare Metadata is prefilled, based on applied filters, when creating/uploading documents. This feature is not available in standard SharePoint.
   • MetaShare uses metadata to automate processes such as automatic document reviewal, based on columns such as review date and document owner. This feature is not available in standard SharePoint.
   • In MetaShare, a tags’ description is shown when hovering over it. This feature is not available in standard SharePoint.
   • Free-text search can be combined with document filters, still presenting documents in a list view. In standard SharePoint, after having conducted a free-text search, within a document library, you cannot any longer use document filters.
   • In MetaShare documents and workspaces are tagged the with in the same method, in SharePoint workspaces cannot be tagged.
3. Document templates:
   • In MetaShare, document templates are stored and maintained in a central location, also possible to access from Office applications (if the templates library is defined as an organizational asset), these are accessible from all workspaces. In SharePoint templates need to be assigned individually to each document library.
   • Creating documents, based on document templates is easy and they are also tagged and stored in the right place in a single operation.
4. Document flows:
   • In MetaShare it is easy to send a document for approval, this functionality is available out of the box. In standard SharePoint, document approval flows need to be designed and created in each document library.
5. Maintainability:
   • In MetaShare workspaces are provisioned, ready to use, without any manual steps. In Standard SharePoint, a lot of manual steps need to be performed before a document library can be used with metadata navigation/tagging.
   • In MetaShare changes in information structure are provisioned to all effected workspaces automatically, in SharePoint this needs to manually be done on each of the document libraries.
   • In MetaShare normal business users can customize the workspace configurations (which filters, views & suggested templates to show/use). In Standard SharePoint this is a bit more complicated and requires more training.
6. Implementation/cost
   • MetaShare is an out-of-the-box solution (no coding needed) that quickly and easily can be deployed and used by end-users. Deploying something similar, in standard SharePoint would be much more difficult and expensive.

In this table we show some of these differences in a different format: