If you are a business that has just implemented Office 365 for the very first time, you will have all the standard apps such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint which will help you to complete your day to day work. You will also have noticed that you have a collaboration tool called Microsoft SharePoint which is included as part of your Office 365 subscription.
In our latest tips and tricks article, we will discuss what Microsoft SharePoint is, what it can do, as well as providing you with 5 of the best tips to get you started with Microsoft SharePoint.
So just what is Microsoft SharePoint?
Microsoft SharePoint is a cloud-based tool that can be used for many things, including team collaboration. Furthermore, it can help to support a wide range of capabilities including:
- The ability to create internal company websites, which can provide easy access to information as well as the ability to be shared between your colleagues.
- A content management system where documentation can be stored and collaborated on.
- Easy integration with existing Office 365 applications such as Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, Flow and many more.
Now you know what SharePoint is and the capabilities that it has, let's provide you with the tips on how to get started with Microsoft SharePoint.
NB: It is important to note that you will need to dedicate time in learning how to do the following in your business as it will provide you with many benefits in the long term.
Tip 1: Build and share site templates
SharePoint can be extremely flexible in the fact that it can allow you to fully customise your sites through the use of lists, workflows, branding and logos. This can be useful if you build a site from scratch as you will have the ability to save it as a template and use it again if you wish to create another site and save you much needed time.
The template that you build can have the basics setup already, including the libraries and even contents if you so wish. Additionally, you can import them into other SharePoint environments, open them in Visual Studio and even share it with other users from within the SharePoint solutions gallery.
Tip 2: Collaborate and co-author Office documents
The great thing about SharePoint is that you can setup all sorts of documents such as Word documents and Excel spreadsheets which can be co-authored. This allows multiple users to work on these documents in real time, as well as the ability to track changes without worrying about treading on each others' toes.
Tip 3: Create a team site with precise permissions
Team sites are one of the best features of Microsoft SharePoint. The creation of one is relatively easy, all you need to do is login into your Office 365 account and then run through the creation wizard's instructions.
Within the creation wizard, you will also get the opportunity to setup group email lists for all the parties that you wish to be able to access the site. You can set this site to be available to everyone in the organisation or provide access to a smaller group of people instead.
Tip 4: Spend time learning how to use SharePoint columns
If you are a fan of spreadsheets, you will love what SharePoint has to offer in terms of being able to group, filter and process complicated sets of data. Furthermore, a SharePoint column has the ability to apply specific criteria to lists and libraries across other SharePoint sites.
Tip 5: Make use of the built-in apps
SharePoint has a number of apps that are built right in that are useful for a lot of your day to day tasks. Here are examples of just a few of them:
- Contacts: This helps to create a list of contacts that can by synced up with Microsoft Outlook. Therefore, if you add a contact to your synced list in Outlook it will automatically be added to your SharePoint site and vice versa.
- Custom list in Datasheet view: This allows you to build a list in a view which is similar to that of Microsoft Excel. From this, you can easily update and make edits to the details of the items in the list in real time.
- Calendar: Create a calendar that can be synced with Microsoft Outlook which can be useful for collating upcoming events, important business deadlines and much more.
If you would like to find out more about Microsoft SharePoint implementation or require any additional SharePoint training, you can get in touch with Advantage where our team of SharePoint experts will be on hand to discuss your specific requirements in greater detail.
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