If you are running office 365 across your office network, then are you making the most of all the applications within the suite? In this blog, we are looking at SharePoint and how it could help you get rid of some expensive equipment and save you time and money.
What is SharePoint
SharePoint is part of the Office 365 suite. It is a collaborative space for you to share content, files, media, and ideas across your Team. If you have had ‘Dropbox’ or similar, then you are starting to understand the capabilities. The platform is not on your desktop, you connect via your browser and the information is stored on a server. As you connect via a browser, this means you can also access SharePoint on your smartphone, tablet, or laptop.
Storage solution
At first glance, SharePoint does seem like the ideal storage solution. You can save all your files in one place and give individual access to those files to each team member of your organisation. This is the most often used part of SharePoint, as it starts to negate the need to run a server in your own office.
Websites?
You start by creating websites, or Team sites. For example, you might create one for your finance department, allowing members of that team access to that site. Within that site, you can give each member access to the files they need. You can make as many sites as you need, you can also make subsites if required. If say, you were running several projects in the R & D department, you might make a subsite for each project.
Search
A team member can search completely across their team site or sites if they have access to them. Once a file is located it opens directly in the application on their device. The power to edit, amend or view is set by the administrator. If allowed they can also attach to an email in Outlook.
Insights
Knowing how your team works is a powerful piece of knowledge. It will help you understand workflow, output, and highlight needs. As the site administrator, you can gain insights into when a user has opened, edited, emailed, or deleted a file, this is something that you would not get with everyone working from their own devices.
Online or Server
There are two levels of SharePoint, online, which keeps all the content online. SharePoint server edition, which means you can deploy and manage on-premises. It offers extra features such as Enterprise Content Management, Newsfeed, enterprise search, business intelligence and personal sites.
If you would like to know more about Office 365 and what it could do for your business then chat to us, we are a friendly bunch.
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