Is Office.com Valuable or a Gimmick?

[Branden]

Hey all!

So, I've been playing around on Office.com, using my Outlook.com email I created for fun.

As I'm looking around and uploading test documents, I'm curious if anyone has made this work for them in SM world.

I have worked corporate contracts, where there's a big old shared server and everyone is editing excel documents in the application together, and I love the functionality of this. I've been obsessed for the past 14 months or so with figuring out how to get this high form functionality into freelance theatre.

I don't mind Google Sheets, but the formatting options are limited; and I can't make sortable tables, which is my bread and butter. And in Dropbox, excel files that are edited frequently end up with conflicted copies.

I know Dropbox is releasing a more collaborative in-application system, but until that comes I need a high functional way for multiple users to edit one document at the same time.

Has anyone had success with Office.com? Or is it glitchy and gimmicky?

(Sorry for the rambly post)

[KMC]

Giving this a bump in hopes we can get some feedback on Office.com. 

[Branden]

It seems like not enough people even use Office.com to make it worth the thread.

Just my two cents;
If project harmony for dropbox is released to the general public soon, it will kill office.com. I'd rather use Dropbox anyway...

[SamanthaR]

We do not use office.com but we have a Microsoft SharePoint Server and it works well for what we do.  Our performance reports are able to be edited by many users and thus no one is waiting around for one user/department to be done with the document.  We have been having issues with excel files though, a permission trip up.  Once that gets cleared up I think SharePoint will be a fabulous tool, adding entrances and exits to a plot with multiple rooms running and the chat option with in the document, etc. 

I will have to play with office.com and see what it does.   

disclosure - We are a resident company with company computers and a team of 5 all able to access the company server. 

[KMC]

We do not use office.com but we have a Microsoft SharePoint Server and it works well for what we do.

Sharepoint is an absolutely fabulous tool, and very underrated.  In addition to the uses you've described, it's also great for archival data storage.

[Samazon]

I have been using Office 365 for my Microsoft Office platform since getting my new computer recently. I don't use the online document access frequently but it is helpful if I want to access my paperwork on other devices.  Because of this, I can't speak to the ease of editing devices using this system but it is nice to have access to documents without having to remember to upload the update to Dropbox, as when I save the document in my computer files, it also saves to the website.

[MatthewShiner]

You may also eventually deal with a GM/Producer that is more real world office base, and this may come into play.

Not my current producer, but a film/theater producer used Office.com for remote workers.