The Ultimate Guide to SharePoint Online
When an enterprise is in its primary phase of development, the workforce can easily handle most of the business operations like manually controlling excel sheets, pivot trackers, notifications, and email approvals. However, when the business grows, working with multiple manual processes eventually leads to unstructured business workflows.
To overcome this challenge, organizations require a business process automation tool that provides a rich collaboration environment for the workforce to resolve both internal and external issues effectively. SharePoint is one such tool that supports collaboration and data exchange across the organization. Besides, organizations can automate several business processes through SharePoint’s built-in workflow elements. The SharePoint platform comes in two different versions namely SharePoint Server and SharePoint Online. Both versions offer features that help businesses meet their objectives.
Introduction to SharePoint Online
SharePoint Online is a Microsoft-supported web-based application that makes it easy for enterprises to store, share and organize digital information from any device. Simply put, it is the cloud version of the SharePoint tool. Similar to SharePoint Server, SharePoint Online allows users to build an intranet (or internal internet system) that functions like a website. Through this secure and centralized intranet space, business users can collaboratively share, access, and edit documents. To build a modern intranet system, businesses can hire experts from the right SharePoint development solution provider and enhance collaboration and communication among teams.
Some other features of SharePoint Online include:
- Application Integration – Integrating SharePoint Online with other Microsoft Office 365 applications such as Yammer and Outlook help businesses improve workforce productivity and lessen IT costs.
- Collaboration Tools – SharePoint Online allows users to create document libraries to store and collaborate on documents in real-time. Besides, the platform offers team sites, task lists, and calendars that help employees to work effectively on projects and share data from anywhere through any device.
- Multi-Functionality – Besides streamlining collaboration and document management, SharePoint Online can function as a company intranet offering updates and announcements on company information.
- Security – SharePoint Online offers advanced security features that help teams maintain data integrity and prevent unauthorized access to mission-critical information.
- Mobility – Remote and field workers can access SharePoint Online through mobile devices, PC, or laptops.
Business Benefits of SharePoint Online Implementation
Smooth Integration
Several Microsoft apps and systems can be seamlessly integrated with SharePoint Online with the help of SharePoint Connector. This Connector provides better connectivity to the whole collection of Microsoft Office products. If businesses use Microsoft Excel, Word, Outlook, or PowerPoint regularly in their workplace, they can find an easy option to export or import documents from the SharePoint list into other applications by incorporating SharePoint Connector.
Experts from the right custom SharePoint development company can help implement connectors and allow users to streamline processes and build seamless communication across disparate databases, applications, services, and systems. With the help of SharePoint Connector, it’s easy for enterprises to form connectivity to Microsoft SharePoint so that all modifications to SharePoint content including applications, documents, and resources get updated automatically.
Improved Data Security
With an effective document management system like SharePoint Online, organizations can securely store critical documents by monitoring user accessibility. SharePoint Online’s Multi-Factor Authentication functionality also introduces an extra layer of security by allowing the owner to monitor the user access over audits. Restriction of unauthorized user access is a beneficial way for businesses to keep their content safe.
Besides, through digitization on the cloud, most of the manual, cumbersome paperwork can be reduced, and physical space can be saved by organizations. SharePoint Online ensures proper retention policy and backup. Therefore, the risks of data loss or faults can also be alleviated. It also assures proper data control at every stage through the security and compliance center.
Better Document Management Among Teams
As stated before, SharePoint Online makes it easy for teams to collaborate online. For instance, saving documents in SharePoint Online allows team members to share documents with several associates and gives them access to real-time editing thus keeping the content updated. Businesses that have a different team or people working on the same spreadsheet or proposal from multiple locations can highly benefit from SharePoint Online implementation. SharePoint allows managers to track changes and see the edited portions.
Moreover, SharePoint Online automatically generates replicated versions of all the saved documents, so no business information gets lost. If a file is mistakenly erased or overwrites occur, SharePoint Online can restore the document to the previous version, so that information can be recovered without loss of content.
Centralized Storage
One of the key benefits of SharePoint Online is that it’s a cloud platform, business users or teams can access information stored on this platform anywhere, at any time. It also works as a centralized hub for managing business-sensitive files or information in one easy-to-access location. Therefore, managers or team members no longer need to find information or documents from a large depository. Instead, they can easily search for particular info or document instantly through the SharePoint hub site.
Wrapping Up
SharePoint Online is ideal for business process automation, especially for enterprises that are already subscribed to Office 365 or SharePoint. With SharePoint Online implementation, businesses can have better file management, document sharing, social networking, and streamline every day-to-day operation.
