What is Microsoft SharePoint Online? A Guide to Implementing it in your Business

Microsoft’s Office 365 suite of applications has been the cornerstone of offices worldwide for decades. The suite consists of 365 mighty tools that you can use to enhance your workplace – including Microsoft SharePoint.

SharePoint Online — the newest version of SharePoint — is a powerful collaboration platform that can be used throughout the workplace for various projects and purposes. From simple file sharing and collaboration to team communications, SharePoint can help your entire organisation stay connected and unified.

In this article, we will explore the ins and outs of SharePoint Online, and detail exactly how you can use the tool within your organisation to help your business reach its full potential.

What is SharePoint Online?

SharePoint Online is a cloud-based collaboration and data exchange platform created by Microsoft. Originally launched in 2001, SharePoint Online is powered by the top-of-the-industry technology that has been infused into all of Microsoft’s 365 cloud offerings. It can be used for many distinct aspects of your organisation —

• Build Your Intranet: SharePoint Online can be used to create an intranet system to enable your team to easily communicate and collaborate.
• File Storage and Sharing: SharePoint Online can be used to create document libraries for easy and convenient file sharing and storage throughout your team.
• Project Collaboration: You can easily use SharePoint Online as a basis for whole-project team collaboration in a formal setting. The tool is built to enable communication and productivity throughout your organisation.

Many businesses and organisations around the world use SharePoint Online as a simple communication solution to ensure that essential information is accessible and available to those within their organisation. However, SharePoint Online is a very flexible and capable tool for multiple aspects of any organisation.

SharePoint Online Features

Collaboration

SharePoint Online allows you to create a document library and share documents and files within your team with ease. It makes collaboration much simpler, promoting productivity and efficiency in the workplace.

It also allows you to collaborate externally with Outlook Integrated SharePoint, with easy tools to secure and authenticate access to the systems and files that are being shared with SharePoint Online.

Inform Employees

SharePoint Online also allows you to create detailed and useful intranets to be able to inform your employees about essential information being changed at an institution-wide level.

Using tools such as SharePoint News, you can easily create news digests to keep your team in the loop about happenings within your business. You can also notify your team when new files are uploaded and create detailed alerts when files and folders are changed within SharePoint.

Microsoft 365 Integration

SharePoint Online also integrates easily with other Microsoft 365 tools and applications, such as Word, PowerPoint, and Excel, unlocking powerful innovative solutions within your organisation.

With no-code Microsoft Teams implementations, the more informal collaboration capabilities of Teams and formal collaboration capabilities of SharePoint can easily unite to fully boost workplace productivity.

Mobile Application

For any modern business, being flexible with the devices used to work is vital. With full mobile integration, creating responsive and accessible mobile content in SharePoint Online is simple.

SharePoint Online lets you access all dashboards, content, news, images, lists, business data, and so much more from your mobile device, meaning that you can work on important files on the go.

SharePoint Online Use Cases

Document Management

SharePoint Online can be used to manage documents throughout your organisation with ease.

With its robust document management UI (User Interface) and file management settings and capabilities, SharePoint Online is a great way to ensure that files throughout a project or throughout your organisation are easily accessible.

Content Management

You can use SharePoint Online to store and manage enterprise content — known as enterprise content management (ECM). You can easily create and publish web content using tools within SharePoint, ensuring that your content is uniform.

SharePoint Online has capabilities to manage content that both uses file metadata and content with wider ECM capabilities — whether it be audiovisual content or written content, you can use SharePoint Online to ensure that it is stored in an organised and accessible manner.

Knowledge Management

Knowledge management — the ability to connect the nodes of ‘knowledge providers’ and ‘knowledge seekers’ — is key to ensuring that everyone within your organisation can easily access the information that they need.

SharePoint is fully capable of enabling knowledge management in your system — its file exploration and search capabilities were designed with efficiency and ease in mind.

Project Management

With full collaboration and team connection tools, creating and managing projects in SharePoint Online is simple.

Rather than having to use different tools to collaborate, SharePoint Online is a robust collaboration tool that also can be fully integrated with other 365 tools, meaning that you can fully take advantage of SharePoint Online’s collaborative power.

How To Get Started with Extech Cloud

Microsoft SharePoint Online is a powerful collaboration and file management tool, that fully enables your organisation’s communications, file storage, and collaboration to reach its full potential. With so many different applications and integrations, implementing SharePoint into your organisation’s infrastructure is an easy decision.

If you are looking to implement Microsoft 365 and SharePoint Online into your organisation, reach out to us today. At Extech Cloud our experts offer far more than support, we can plan and implement your SharePoint system from conception to completion and will be there throughout your organisation’s entire Microsoft 365 journey.

Contact us or book a consultation now to see how we can help you.