Collaboration is the key to improving business processes and making them more efficient and productive. Whether you are a small startup or a giant organization, you cannot excel as an organization if you cannot collaborate and communicate among teams.
That is where SharePoint comes into the picture. SharePoint has been the most preferred platform among teams worldwide for collaboration, storing data, building intranet sites, and sharing files within the organization.
SharePoint is a Microsoft-enabled informational portal system that helps enterprises and organizations to work with sheer efficiency and productivity. There are plenty of benefits of using SharePoint in your organization.
Apart from being a document storage platform, SharePoint serves another organization’s goal. It helps to create websites to manage different processes and business operations. Once you are familiar with SharePoint and its features, you will streamline and simplify processes.
If you are a SharePoint beginner, this post is for you. In this post, we will discuss the features and benefits of SharePoint and also discuss some tips to use it professionally. It is a highly secure platform where you can store, share, and access files from anywhere at any given time.
Let’s check out some of the benefits of SharePoint that you need to know.
Built-in Multi-Purpose Functionality
One of the best things about SharePoint is its ability to create internal websites. For example, you can create an intranet to share files, schedule tasks, make contacts, and access data.
Here, SharePoint also allows the admin to assign permissions to users based on the organizational hierarchy. You can access multiple features such as document sharing, social media networking, file management, and many more.
Centralized Administration
SharePoint serves one major goal that is also a pain point for many organizations. It makes management of all processes simple, quick, and hassle-free. SharePoint Online for beginnersallows you to access different features such as security settings, backup sites, privileges updates, and many more on a single dashboard.
It is highly customizable.
Yes, this is a huge benefit of SharePoint. It allows you to customize features and functionalities as per your business needs and requirements. Tailoring them as per your business needs can help answer many pain points. For example, you can build custom elements, customize the user interface for your business, use third-party plugins and apps to improve functionalities, and add drag and drop functions to improve user experience.
Document Management and Collaboration
This is also a game-changer benefit of using SharePoint. Teams can work to their best potential by easily accessing, storing, sharing, and editing files and documents. You can have a streamlined flow of information within the organization where users with permissions can access documents from anywhere. Also, SharePoint allows you to access data on your smartphones as well. When your employees are information-rich, they can make better decisions, collaborate well, and meet deadlines. Mobility is one of the greatest things you can offer your employees, and SharePoint makes it possible.
Integration with other applications
If you have an existing CRM application or ERP model, you can easily and seamlessly integrate these applications with Microsoft SharePoint. Compatibility is the greatest tool that SharePoint offers to its users. Whether it is any third-party tool or Microsoft Office Suite, integrate it with your SharePoint platform and keep working to improve efficiency and productivity. Also, it works well with all modern, advanced web browsers.
Security Is Not an Issue with SharePoint
SharePoint understands the importance of data safety and security, and hence, they have incorporated advanced security features to avoid any data breaches and unauthorized access incidents. SharePoint’s advanced security features are workflow updates, authentication enhancements, and access privileges. SharePoint has offered many configurations to avoid sensitive and highly confidential data security concerns. Some of these settings are control shareability: storage, and data auditing as per the industry’s regulatory and compliance requirements.
Ease of Use
SharePoint is an easy-to-use document management and collaboration platform. You don’t need to hire a team of developers to make websites, as SharePoint offers solutions that meet your business needs perfectly. SharePoint Online has different application programming interfaces to create websites that serve your core business goals. You can cut costs to a great extent by using these APIs.
Tips for using SharePoint Online
Now that you are familiar with plenty of benefits of SharePoint, let’s discuss some SharePoint tips for beginners to improve efficiency and productivity and collaborate in a better way within the organization.
Building and Sharing Site Templates
You don’t need external websites to build the intranet to suit your needs. Furthermore, you can integrate these websites with different site templates such as lists, workflows, logos, and many more. These SharePoint templates are highly advanced with features such as libraries, documents, and contents. You can use these SharePoint templates to create more sites for better collaboration and communication.
Collaborating and Sharing Office Documents
Collaboration is the primary thing you wish to achieve with SharePoint. It can do wonders for you if done correctly. SharePoint makes it possible by availing you to collaborate and co-author documents within the organization.
Here, you can set permissions for users, create a single document that can be accessed and authored by multiple users, and check out changes made by them. The whole process becomes seamless as SharePoint allows multiple users to work on the document simultaneously without clashing.
Building a Team Site
To understand SharePoint functionalities and features in detail, you need to build a team website. Creating a team website will give you hands-on experience to sign-up for your account and follow the instructions shared by the platform. During the creation of the team site, you also will be able to set up group email lists and make them accessible to other users.
Learning to use SharePoint columns
Once you learn how to use SharePoint columns, you can perform various activities for various purposes. Also, it helps you locate and access data quickly and effortlessly.
You can set up different columns by name, region, and other parameters here. Once you make such columns, you will not have to work hard the next time you check out details.
Adding Files to SharePoint
You can use SharePoint Online and SharePoint On-premises both simultaneously. Also, SharePoint allows you to easily upload files and various documents from your computer to the SharePoint cloud. For example, if you use Microsoft’s Edge, you can easily upload folders and big documents.
Use Built-in Applications
You can use various built-in applications in SharePoint to perform some regular tasks. For example, Contacts can help you create contacts. The next time you add a contact to your Outlook list, it will be automatically added to your SharePoint website. Also, there are other applications such as SharePoint View, Calendar, Custom List, etc.
Wrapping Up
SharePoint can brilliantly address all your pain points by giving you a platform to collaborate and communicate within the teams to improve efficiency. It can make your processes much more streamlined and simple, make file sharing secure and effortless, and help teams meet deadlines by working in collaboration. Using SharePoint is not rocket science. You can easily learn it even if you are a SharePoint beginner. Using SharePoint can help reduce your time and improve your organization’s workflows.