Frank Fischer explained in his blog that he’s a searching guy. It was in a article about taking the common “desktop environment” to the web and whether it’s a good idea.

But then he said something about common ways to organize your work. Talking about files on your computer you could sort everything in thousands of different folders. You also could put everything in one folder and let the environment search for you.

What is the flipside of letting the computer search for you? Perhaps it does not find everything. That’s the main reason why I don’t like sharepoint portal server. During my training on the job I had to write a document about the project I worked on. It was a ZVT 700 cash card terminal interface. I put that document in a sharepoint portal server and forgot about it.

About one and a half year later someone needed that document. Well, I knew about the auther of that document (obviously I checked it in), I knew the title of that document and well – the worst thing happened: Even as I tried to list ALL documents checked in by me (and that was not a lot) exactly THAT document I looked for was not listet. I looked through the whole structure of the sharepoint server for about 4 hours to find that document. Guess what? I never used that server again.

So what if you are searching for something special and it is not listed when your computer searches?
If you have a rough structure of folders and stick to a naming scheme of your documents that will make things easier. There is nothing that hinders you to let your mashine do the search work for you, but if it fails, then you helped yourself to find it by yourself a lot faster.