The Microsoft SharePoint Training Series: What Is SharePoint And What Is It Used For?

More than two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies are currently using SharePoint, increasing the need for SharePoint training all over the world. According to Microsoft, from 2006 to 2011, the company sold 36.5 million user licenses for the platform. 

In this blog post, we will cover the basics and introduce SharePoint to users who have recently come to know about this platform and want to know about its capabilities.

SharePoint is not just a software program, it is a platform that is home to different programs. It can integrate all the cell phones and computers of your employees so that they can communicate in an effective manner. One of the reasons why companies get SharePoint is that they want to make sure that all their employees can easily coordinate with each other and have the same level of agility, no matter where they are located geographically.

Besides promoting coordination between users, SharePoint has the following capabilities:

It Allows You to Store Information in a Centralized Location

This helps employees quickly retrieve all the information that they can from one place and get updates in real time. SharePoint is very simple to use, and all you have to do is simply share a message and anyone can get access from there. Gone are the days when you would send an email to every employee, because now you can simply post updates on SharePoint. Furthermore, you can grant different levels of access to different people in order to ensure better data security.

Collaboration

SharePoint makes collaboration extremely easy, which is why it is used by multi-national organizations. SharePoint provides people with a forum where they can easily stay connected, no matter where they are located. This is great for companies that have geographically diverse offices because easy collaboration will help them to be more productive. For example, if you have five people working on a project from five different companies, they can have the same level of access to a file they are working on, and that file can be placed in a secure folder on SharePoint where no one else has access to it.  

You Can Manage Websites With SharePoint

SharePoint can help you manage websites as well. You can sign in to SharePoint and make changes in the content, add new images, add new pages, and update information to your website.

Intranet

Thanks to SharePoint, you can easily customize the dashboard according to the different departments as well as the level of access granted to the different tiers of employees from interns to the CEO. The platform also makes it easy to set up company wikis and social networking platforms. The intranet you can create will serve as a meeting space for all the employees where they can stay updated about what is happening in the company.

Extranet

SharePoint training courses can help you to build a website with an outside business that you are working with. Whether the business is a third party you have hired or a vendor, you can easily give them all the information that you want to share about your company and ask them to tell you about their company through SharePoint.

Business Intelligence

SharePoint makes it possible for you to use information so that you can make great decisions. You can easily look for the data you are in search of as well as see the trends of different inputs with the passage of time.

Some Challenges Related to Microsoft SharePoint

While implementing and using SharePoint shouldn’t be an issue, you may be subject to some regulatory requirements for record keeping. For example, some organizations are bound by law to store data within the geographical confines of a certain state or country. However, with SharePoint, you are putting your data on a remote server in one of Microsoft’s many data centers. Unless you know exactly which data center is being used to store your data, you cannot be sure if you are in compliance with the regulatory requirements pertaining your data.

Another challenge some companies face is customizing SharePoint according to their specific requirements. However, this challenge can easily be addressed through some good old fashioned SharePoint training.