Elevating Team Collaboration with SharePoint: What You Need to Know

Collaboration is the cornerstone of success in this age. Effective collaboration in the workplace brings together different perspectives and experiences to help teams achieve common goals. It allows organizations to solve problems effectively and foster a strong work culture. Most businesses understand this. This is why they look for tools that enable their employees to work together easily. Microsoft SharePoint is a widely used solution that has transformed workplace collaboration and teamwork.

SharePoint is an enterprise-level platform that simplifies document management. People use SharePoint to store documents on the cloud and share them within or outside their teams. The platform provides a centralized location where anyone can access the latest version of a file or folder. Also, many users can concurrently work on the same document. Such features help streamline teamwork and keep things organized.

Let’s have a look at the key features of SharePoint that make it a sought-after collaboration tool.

6 Essential Features of Microsoft SharePoint

Document Management

Document management is a core functionality of Microsoft SharePoint. Users count on SharePoint to keep their Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents in one location. They can easily access and edit these documents whenever needed. It is also possible to organize these documents into libraries. As a result, the time spent finding a file or folder is greatly reduced.

When it comes to document management in SharePoint, two features deserve special mention: co-authoring and version control. Co-authoring allows multiple users to simultaneously make changes to a document. This saves time spent editing documents. Co-authoring also eliminates confusion. This is because everyone can see the document getting updated in real time.

Version control enables users to track the changes made to a document. This makes sure everyone is working on its most up-to-date version. Additionally, since all the versions of a document are safely stored on SharePoint, users are able to revert to an older version. This helps preserve the integrity of important data.

Integration with Microsoft 365 Applications

While SharePoint has many powerful features, integrating it with other Microsoft 365 applications further extends its capabilities. It is easy to connect SharePoint with Teams, and access, share, and edit files from within the Teams interface.

SharePoint also integrates with Power Automate to streamline routine tasks. This boosts efficiency and makes sure tasks are completed in a timely manner. Likewise, integration with Power BI lets users create visualizations from the data stored in SharePoint libraries. These visualizations provide data-driven insights to help teams make informed decisions.

Team Sites

Not many know that SharePoint provides dedicated spaces for users to collaborate and share resources. These spaces, called team sites, have several useful features that enable effective communication among the members of a team.

In a team site, all members are content authors, which means everyone can create and edit content. As authors, these members might add task lists to the site and share them with others. They also facilitate open communication through discussion boards.

Users might also add necessary documents or their links to the site. All this amps up productivity and allows team members to seamlessly access the required resources.

Advanced Search

Microsoft SharePoint comes with powerful search functionality that allows users to locate information across files, folders, libraries, and sites. SharePoint indexes everything that’s added to it. So, it is possible for anyone to easily search for content using keywords, author name, or file type. Users are also able to filter their search results using criteria such as creation date.

Interestingly, SharePoint’s built-in AI also takes into account a user’s recent activity when a search query is made. So, more relevant files are likely to show up higher in the search results.

Also, SharePoint’s search capabilities have evolved significantly over the years. Today, it is possible to retrieve information even from SQL databases and websites from within the platform.

Lists

Lists in SharePoint are a way of storing and displaying data in the form of rows and columns, similar to an Excel spreadsheet. Many users prefer lists to Excel sheets for managing structured information in SharePoint. This is mainly due to the flexibility lists offer in terms of formatting and access controls.

SharePoint lists are incredibly easy to create and manage. Users might create a list from scratch or import one from Excel or other data sources. Then there are several ready-made templates to cover various categories of lists (e.g. budget trackers, content schedulers).

Also, lists allow users to have a high degree of control over who can read or edit a row, column, or cell. This means an individual may be permitted to edit say only a certain column within a list. Such granular control helps protect data and prevents information from being overwritten.

Workflows

In the context of SharePoint, workflows are described as the automated movement of documents or items through a series of actions related to a business process. Using workflows, many common processes are automated. This minimizes the time and effort spent on these processes and eliminates duplication of efforts.

SharePoint comes with many built-in workflows pertaining to common business scenarios such as approval, feedback collection, and signature collection. These workflows are tailored to meet the specific needs of a team or organization.

So, when a user adds a workflow to a library or a list, they get to customize the task lists that store information about the workflow. At the same time, it’s also easy to create workflows from scratch for specific processes.

Wrapping up

So, that’s a rundown on the key features of Microsoft SharePoint that enhance collaboration and productivity within teams and organizations. Today, SharePoint has emerged as a potent tool for businesses that seek to optimize information storage and management.

But to make the most of this platform, these businesses require the expertise of a Microsoft SharePoint development specialist. By collaborating with an experienced SharePoint development solutions provider, they can implement custom solutions to leverage its advanced capabilities and take their operations to the next level.