SharePoint is at the heart of Microsoft’s productivity and collaboration suite, and there’s a lot that’s hidden beneath the surface.
As an intuitive part of the Microsoft ecosystem, SharePoint makes it easy to get started — but there may be more features that your office may not be leveraging.
1. Begin with good processes in place. Make templates for SharePoint and set up business processes regarding when data is added to SharePoint. Educate employees on the use of SharePoint and encourage them to ask questions.
2. Create teams to organize your SharePoint data and documents. Teams make it easy to distribute information only to those who need it, letting them focus specifically on the documents that they’re working on.
3. Organize your corporate data. SharePoint sites should serve as a corporate intranet and a focus of a lot of your company’s knowledge. Build as much core documentation as possible to acclimate your new employees.
4. Set up alerts. Alerts on SharePoint will automatically notify you when specific documents are changed, making it easier for you to track the information that you need. Alerts can also be used on high priority documents to make sure changes are validated.
5. Leverage a shared calendar. A shared SharePoint calendar system is one of the most in-demand features for SharePoint, as it makes it easier for everyone within a Microsoft team to work easily together.
6. Keep a consistent look and feel. Templates aren’t just there to customize a project. Consistency matters when it comes to productivity and efficiency. As new pages and sites are added to SharePoint, they should be audited to make sure that they follow the company’s style guide. Any deviation makes it harder to find information.
7. Avoid reducing mobile-friendliness. Some of the modifications you can make to SharePoint can make it more difficult to use on mobile devices. Always test on mobile devices first and avoid introducing any integration or changes that could make it more difficult for mobile users: people are working on-the-go more often than ever.
8. Create ambassadors for SharePoint use. Make sure that certain critical users are able to go to seminars and are updated on productivity and collaboration features within SharePoint. These ambassadors can then be used to train other users on the use of these new features and functionality, thereby improving collaboration in an on-going, continuous way.
9. Integrate with other Microsoft tools. MS Teams, Yammer, and other Microsoft ecosystem technology can integrate well with SharePoint, making it a central hub for all of the user data. While SharePoint provides superb collaboration and document management features, Yammer and MS Teams make it easier to communicate one-on-one and in groups: using them together gets the best of both worlds.
10. Add daily content to the front page. If you add daily updates to the front page of SharePoint, users will be more likely to log in and start their day on the intranet. This ensures that users will always get the updates and announcements that they need right away, while also emphasizing the importance of SharePoint to their work. Often, using SharePoint for productivity relates directly to making sure employees are using the platform.
Those are only a few of the most important productivity and collaboration hacks that you can use next time you’re using SharePoint. For more information about the advantages of this collaboration solution, feel free to contact us.