What is SharePoint and how can it help my business?

SharePoint is a web-based collaboration platform from Microsoft that is made available to most Microsoft Office 365 subscribers.

In our experience, it is typically used as a document storage and management system, allowing employees to collaboratively work together more easily than by using the typical file/folder structure or emailing files backwards and forwards.

Within SharePoint you can create different web pages for each department within your business. For instance: –

1. Accounts can have a page dedicated to their files, notes, calendars and workflows.
2. HR can have a page dedicated to staff employment processes and forms.
3. Sales can have their own pages designed to highlight their top leads and display sales dashboards – all of which integrate with Microsoft Excel sheets stored online.

SharePoint is very good at enabling documents to be shared between employees by giving them one central website to create and edit documents accessible to other members of the team.

How to use

So,  how do you use SharePoint?

Let’s log into an Office 365 business premium subscription and take a closer look.

Once you log in you will see the SharePoint tile on the main screen, it’s also accessible from the app menu in the top left corner

This is the default SharePoint Team site which is available from new. In the screen shot below you can see on the left-hand panel that there are sections for Notes, Documents and additional pages. In the right-hand section, you can customise what information is displayed. Here its setup to show a newsfeed or chat session and also it shows the document store.

Generally used as somewhere to store files centrally, it allows employees to work collaboratively together.

Summary

SharePoint is a great platform for centrally storing files, notes and calendar entries. It is an often-overlooked  technology which is freely available to Microsoft Office 365 subscribers.

Being able to setup different pages for departments within your business helps keep your business organised *and* more secure.

Talk to one of our friendly experts. 

Keen to learn more? Explore our other resources on Cloud Hosted Telecoms below: 

• Server VS Cloud - Which is best for your business? 
• What is the process of changing to cloud telephony?
• What are the Benefits of a Cloud Hosted VoIP Phone System?
• Office 365 vs Microsoft 365: What's the difference?