Microsoft SharePoint has emerged as a prominent enterprise solution for collaboration, document storage, and intercommunication. It works fluently with other Microsoft services such as Teams, Power Analytics, and similar business tools. Many organizations have adopted SharePoint as their intranet but do not use it beyond the usual functions.
This blog talks about nine things you can do on SharePoint you didn’t even know! Keep reading to learn about some of the excellent functions you can perform while using SharePoint at your organization.
Create Wiki Sites
There’s a lot of organizational and work-related information that we cannot remember or would want to double-check. There needs to be a reliable source to retrieve such information without depending on someone’s presence or human memory.
That is why Wiki sites exist. Wiki sites hold extensive information on a particular topic, field, or organization, for that matter which users can access readily. SharePoint offers this feature out-of-the-box. Users can quickly create Wiki sites on any topic relevant to the organization and invite other users to contribute to it. This helps form an authentic center for valuable information which administrators can regulate, while only the desired people (with proper clearance) can view it.
Set up Automated Workflows
No one can downplay the importance and utility of automation in day-to-day operations. Automation handles mundane tasks and allows users to exercise their cognitive abilities and contribute positively to their organization.
SharePoint comes with five workflow automation options, including publishing approval, feedback collection, signature collection, task approval, and three-state workflows. Additionally, users can design automated workflows according to the nature of their work. Easy automation tools certainly make SharePoint valuable as an intranet!
Make Documents Accessible
SharePoint is well known for enabling collaboration on documents within the organization. However, it can also be used to share documents outside the organization.
This feature becomes very useful while interacting with clients, vendors, and other third-party members who are not directly associated with your organization but need specific documents.
Users can create folders to manage permissions for people opening the files, including viewing or editing access and password protection. SharePoint users can effectively collaborate both within and outside the organization with ease and security.
Maintain Older Versions of Documents
Collaboration is essential in many tasks performed in organizations today. It also leads to specific problems arising from many users working on the same documents. Often, users experience this issue that the file they were editing/reviewing has been tampered with or been all changes they made have been removed. Since many users are collaborating in real-time, applications can make such errors which can cause critical data loss.
SharePoint has a saving grace solution for such issues. It allows users to access older versions of files they have created. This included files last saved by users and the ones the system autosaves while we are hard at work. SharePoint enables users to retrieve the version that is closest to what they require.
From a security standpoint, this feature is twice as valuable. In the case of auditing files, reviewing which user made the last edits and when can be pretty handy, and it is difficult to get away with illegal tampering of official documents.
Manage Inventories
Incorporating financial operations can undoubtedly be made easier if you start managing inventories within your SharePoint intranet. The inventory information could be stored in a secure location, and relevant users could access it whenever needed.
Microsoft SharePoint features can help you manage your inventories adequately by integrating Microsoft Lists and Power Automate features. Users can import the data they enter on Microsoft Lists to their intranet and use Power Automate functions to set up automatic tasks for import to sort the information into the correct folders. Inventory information will be readily updated this way without the concern for duplicating data.
Log Invoices
Another handy financial tool is processing invoices from clients. Invoices hold critical data that organizations need to store for financial audits and analyze to gain insights for growth. Organizations can add these invoices directly to their intranet for convenient import of data and secure storage.
Invoices designed on Microsoft Forms collect information which users can integrate with SharePoint to quickly fetch the info and store it directly on the intranet.
Synchronize schedules
SharePoint users on the same intranet can view each other’s shared calendars. This is one of the standout features of the platform, which makes collaboration so easy. If users regularly add their schedules to the calendar they can let their coworkers know when they are free to meet or set up shared meetings to focus on a task.
Synchronizing over SharePoint is fast and intuitive thanks to the calendar feature.
Welcome New Employees
HR managers are closely involved in managing and creating content on the intranet for their organization. They can also use SharePoint to initiate new employees and provide them an online orientation within the intranet.
By integrating SharePoint with Microsoft Forms and Power Automate, new employees can be given all the relevant information regarding the organizations, HR policies, as well as their role and the particular department they work for.
The entire process is predesigned and automated so users can guide themselves through the orientation and can review all the relevant materials provided to them by HR. This allows for faster hiring and gives new employees some autonomy in getting to know the organization at their own pace.
Link to Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams is another popular communication tool among modern organizations. There are huge benefits of integrating Teams and SharePoint.
While Teams becomes the resident application for communication and meetings in the organization, SharePoint excels at storing and managing content. SharePoint’s integration with Teams allows users to easily share their stored documents directly in Teams Chats, and also edit within the Teams windows, for quicker access.
Users can also collaborate on documents real-time, while the files are frequently saved automatically on the shared server, in the desired location on the organization’s intranet. This integration is the true essence of convenient and effective collaboration.
Conclusion
There’s many more features within the vast capabilities of Microsoft SharePoint Features that you can explore yourself. If there’s a particular task that you want SharePoint to perform, but the native version does not offer it, many more functions are possible through custom development as well.
Xavor provides premium SharePoint services and custom development to enable organizations to make the most of their SharePoint Intranet. Contact us now to boost your SharePoint’s capabilities.