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Since its launch in 2001 SharePoint has evolved from a simple file management and collaboration tool to a sophisticated solution integrating conventionally separate applications such as intranet, workflow management, content management, business intelligence, and enterprise social networking.

SharePoint was available as an on-premises platform for a decade until 2011, when Microsoft released Office 365 and SharePoint Online. SharePoint Online first appeared as the cloud version of SharePoint On-Premises but has now several critical differences between them, including licensing and ownership models, feature sets, maintenance and customization approaches. While SharePoint on-premises platform provides direct control over the organization’s data and compliance standards, SharePoint Online automatically relies on Microsoft’s industry-specific security standards, by using the cloud environment hosted by Microsoft.

SharePoint Online for collaboration

SharePoint Online provides a rich collaboration environment where people inside and outside your organization can work together, coauthor documents. By taking full advantage of SharePoint-powered file storage, you can enjoy multiple benefits like, access to your files from everywhere, enterprise-grade, secure internal and external sharing, real-time collaboration, file versioning and intelligence that helps users discover files. Moreover, SharePoint Online is integrated with a variety of other services to provide a much richer experience, among others it is the file management and collaboration platform behind other solutions like Teams and OneDrive for Business providing the same rich functionalities for the users of those services.

Content Management in SharePoint Online

Microsoft SharePoint offers a wide variety of options and tools to create intranet sites for your organization, that can be used as employee engagement and corporate communication platform. Microsoft created a SharePoint Online look book, that is a set of downloadable templates providing you a variety of examples about how to include news, events, resources, and personalized content in SharePoint sites. The look book templates come with pre-configured pages loaded with webparts, customized layouts, and visual design. Once a template is deployed to your site you can customize the look even farther by changing the colors to match your corporate branding, deleting and adding webparts, and changing the placement of webparts on the pages. Using a template from the SharePoint look book does not limit your ability to customize SharePoint, but rather gives you a solid starting point for the visual design and layout of your Intranet. Starting to use SharePoint as an Intranet and corporate communication site, you need to be a tenant administrator, or more likely ask a SharePoint modernization expert company to implement and customize SharePoint Online to your needs. Our experts can support you with best practices on implementation and customization on SharePoint Online’s content management and intranet solutions.

Knowledge Management in SharePoint Online

As your SharePoint Online accumulates more and more documents on a daily basis, an organizational system eventually becomes a no-brainer. Knowledge Management typically refers to the storing and sharing of knowledge within an organization for internal objectives, such as improving productivity and knowledge-sharing. Without a taxonomy, an organization cannot build nor maintain a successful information management program. SharePoint provides easy implementation of rules like information governance, managed metadata and a hierarchy of folders. When you use SharePoint, you can manage the metadata centrally which means you can organize the metadata in a way that makes sense in your business and use the metadata to make it easier to find what you want.

When your company has developed an organized and effective taxonomy for SharePoint, you are enabling your end users to find the documents they need faster. A taxonomy that is implemented with managed metadata shows information in a clean, user-friendly structure. End users are able to understand how to search for the documents they need, meaning speedier results.

The benefits of SharePoint Online

SharePoint Online is designed to improve collaboration and boost productivity. It seamlessly integrates with other Microsoft business applications and it is compatible with various web browsers. SharePoint Online has a wide variety of functions and is highly flexible. As you could read above, it can be used as an internal website for publishing company information and announcements, scheduling and organizing projects, managing documents, and sharing files. Microsoft safely stores SharePoint Online and ensures high data availability and recovery in the event of a disaster or an accidental deletion. SharePoint Online comes with advanced security features and regular updates as and when they become available.

How can we support your SharePoint modernization project?

Softline has deep experience in SharePoint implementations and custom developments. We help your company with best practices to utilize all the possibilities SharePoint can offer.

We organize discovery workshops to understand your business needs and challenges, after which we provide you a recommended roadmap for the most efficient SharePoint modernization. During and after the implementation you can leverage our knowledge transfer through coaching sessions, trainings and webinars.

Contact us and ask our SharePoint experts’ consultancy.

SharePoint taken to the next level

Microsoft has realized the importance of knowledge management an employer experience and launched Microsoft Viva and SharePoint Syntex solutions. SharePoint Syntex uses advanced AI and machine teaching to amplify human expertise, automate content processing, and transform content into knowledge. Microsoft Viva is a new employee experience platform, includes standard features like access to internal communications built on integrations with SharePoint, Yammer and other Microsoft tools, also offers access to team analytics and an integration with LinkedIn Learning and other training content providers, as well as what Microsoft calls Viva Topics for knowledge sharing within a company. If you are interested in SharePoint Syntex or Microsoft Viva contact us and our experts will introduce you these solutions.