Creating a SharePoint site can radically transform the way your company manages and shares information. In fact, the Microsoft collaboration platform offers a wide range of tools that simplify the creation of internal websites and document management. Whether you're looking to build a robust corporate intranet, facilitate project management, or optimize workflows, SharePoint is the ideal solution. In this article, in addition to a brief overview of its fundamental characteristics, we will see how to create a SharePoint site, highlighting the best practices and suggestions to make the most of its potential.
Microsoft SharePoint is a collaboration tool from Microsoft used in the workplace for content management, document management, and knowledge sharing. SharePoint is a centralized and secure web platform that allows workgroups to collaborate, manage data, and improve the efficiency of business processes.
Precisely because of its mainly collaborative characteristics, SharePoint is currently used by more than 200,000 companies to create intranets and digital workplaces. In fact, the numerous functionalities of the platform make it much easier for people to work together on ad hoc projects and establish standard business processes for sharing information, publishing documents and recording sensitive data.
SharePoint offers a versatile range of options for creating business sites, each adapted to specific operational needs, making the Microsoft application an essential platform for any organization that wants to better optimize its digital work environments and centralize its operations in a functional, economic and elegant way.
The reasons why a company should implement SharePoint within its digital infrastructures are many and it would be really difficult to list them all. We will therefore limit ourselves in this section to taking a general look at the most important features that distinguish the SharePoint offer and the advantages it can bring to the table for your organization.
First, SharePoint acts as a central hub for all business information. Companies can consolidate documents, data, and processes into a single platform accessible to all team members, regardless of their geographic location.
This not only eliminates the need to navigate between different systems or applications to find information, but it significantly reduces the time spent searching for documents or data. The ability to access a single source of truth, which is always up-to-date and secure, increases operational efficiency and ensures that decisions are based on accurate information.
Another reason is the advanced collaboration that SharePoint facilitates. In an era where remote work and distributed teams are increasingly common, SharePoint provides robust tools for real-time collaboration, and teams can now work together on documents and projects, make simultaneous changes, and see changes in real time, all without having to send emails back and forth.
Security is another fundamental pillar of SharePoint. With the growing importance of data protection and regulatory compliance, SharePoint offers advanced levels of access control and permission management.
Companies can then manage who has access to which documents and data, protecting sensitive information from unauthorized access. In addition, the ability to monitor and track activities on documents and sites ensures that all transactions are transparent and verifiable, an essential aspect for corporate compliance and governance.
SharePoint also stands out for its almost perfect integration with other Microsoft 365 applications and services. This means that companies can take full advantage of tools such as Outlook, Teams, the Power Platform suite tools and OneDrive, creating an interconnected digital ecosystem that supports all business functions.
For example, documents can be shared and edited directly from Teams, or saved to OneDrive and automatically synchronized with SharePoint, thus simplifying workflows and reducing the need to duplicate data.
An added benefit is the flexibility and customization offered by SharePoint. Companies can create tailor-made intranet sites that reflect their corporate culture and specific needs. With SharePoint, it is possible to build customized web pages, develop automated workflows through integration with Power Automate, and integrate third-party apps, without the need for development skills.
This level of personalization allows organizations to adapt SharePoint to their unique needs, thus significantly improving the engagement, operation and satisfaction of their employees.
Finally, the adoption of SharePoint can translate into significant cost savings. By reducing the need for separate software for document management, collaboration, and security, SharePoint allows businesses to consolidate their IT solutions, and with SharePoint Online, organizations can benefit from cloud scalability without having to invest heavily in physical infrastructure.
This not only reduces operating costs, but also offers greater flexibility to grow and adapt to sudden changes in the market and the contemporary technological landscape, also thanks to Microsoft's constant free updates to its collaboration platform.
So, when it comes to Microsoft SharePoint, one of its main strengths, as we have already seen in the previous section, lies in its flexibility to create various types of business websites that meet all needs.
The Microsoft collaboration platform offers three main macro-categories of sites: Team Sites, Communication Sites, and Hub Sites. Each of these types of sites has unique characteristics and responds to specific needs within an organization, improving cooperation between employees and departments, the sharing of information between the various branches of their organization, and the integration of business resources. Let's take a closer look at these three macro-categories.
Team sites are primarily designed to support collaboration within small groups or work teams. These sites serve as dedicated spaces where team members can work together on documents, projects, and activities.
One of the distinctive features of Team sites is their ability to manage dynamic content. For example, team members can upload, edit, and comment on documents in real time, keeping everyone aligned with the latest versions of the files.
These sites are also tightly integrated with Microsoft Teams, allowing for a seamless transition between document management and direct communication. This makes Team sites ideal for collaborative projects, managing daily tasks, and any scenario where synergistic work is necessary.
Communication sites, on the other hand, are focused on disseminating information to a wider audience within the organization. While Team Sites are oriented towards the collaboration of small groups, Communication sites are designed to share announcements, reports and updates that must reach all or a part of the colleagues.
These sites provide a platform for publishing visually appealing and well-structured content, such as news articles, corporate events, and informational resources. Their interface is optimized for mobile viewing, ensuring that employees can access critical information even when they are on the move.
In addition, Communication sites allow extensive customization, allowing companies to align the appearance of the site with their brand identity, thus improving engagement in the organization.
Hub sites represent a higher level of content management and organization than Team sites and Communication sites. They act as collection centers that connect multiple related SharePoint sites, allowing for consistent navigation and a centralized search for information.
Hub sites are especially useful for large organizations that need to organize numerous departmental sites or projects under a single cohesive structure. Through hub sites, it is possible to implement common themes and navigation between affiliated sites, offering a uniform user experience and facilitating the discovery of content.
These sites not only aggregate content from various team and communication sites, but they also make it easier for employees to find relevant resources and information without having to navigate through multiple portals.
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Now that we have clarified what SharePoint is and what its features and its offer are, the time has come to test its capabilities first hand. In this section, we are therefore going to offer you a short and simple tutorial to begin to familiarize yourself with the SharePoint work environment and let the Microsoft cloud collaboration platform speak for itself.
Before starting with the creation of your site, it is essential to carefully plan how it will be structured and what its main functionalities will be.
It is therefore necessary to take into account some key aspects, such as:
To create a site in SharePoint Online, we log in to the Microsoft 365 Portal on portal.office.com and enter our login credentials. In the main dashboard, click on the SharePoint icon to access the main SharePoint Online page.
Once inside SharePoint, you can start creating the new site by finding the option 'Create Site'. Click to start the site creation wizard and choose the type of site we want to create, whether a site dedicated to teams or a communication site.
Let's enter a name for our new site, an optional description, and choose privacy settings (public or private) and a default language for the site.
After configuring the basic settings, click 'Next' to proceed.
Let's enter the email addresses of the team members that we want to add to the site. Keep in mind that you can always add or remove members later if necessary.
After completing the initial configuration, we click on 'Finish' to create the site and SharePoint will take a few moments to generate it.
After creating the site, we will be redirected to its home page. From here, we can start modifying its layout and design as we see fit. At the top right of the page, we'll find the pencil icon. Then click on 'Edit' to enter edit mode and start customizing the page.
SharePoint uses 'web parts' to add functionality and content to pages. You can add web parts such as documents, lists, calendars, news, images, videos, and more. Click on the “+” sign to see the list of available web parts and select the ones we want to add.
The web parts can be arranged as desired by dragging and dropping them into different sections of the page to customize their layout according to your preferences.
Let's click on a web part to view its customization options. For example, you can modify its content, change its appearance, or configure display settings.
Let's configure the web parts to display the contents the way you want. For example, you could configure a web part to show only recent documents or upcoming events.
SharePoint offers a Marketplace of apps that you can add to your site to extend its functionality, and you can search for specific apps such as project management tools or ticketing systems.
Good navigation is essential to ensure that users can easily find the information they need, so work will need to be done on this aspect as well. On the home page of the site, click on the gear icon (settings) at the top right and select 'Site Settings'.
In the 'Appearance' section, we click on 'Navigation'. Here we can add, remove or reorganize navigation links. Click on 'Add Link' to add new items to the navigation menu and enter the URL and name of the link.
As with web parts, links can also be dragged to rearrange them in the desired order and it is also possible to create sub-links to better organize your content. After configuring the navigation, click on 'OK' to save the changes.
Once the changes are complete, we click on 'Save as draft' to save the changes without publishing them, or on 'Publish' to make the changes visible to all members of the site.
As we mentioned earlier, managing permissions is critical to protecting data and ensuring that only authorized users have access to sensitive information. SharePoint offers a flexible permission system that allows you to control who can view, modify, or administer your site. Now let's see how to do it.
On the home page of the site, click on the settings icon and select 'Site Settings'. In the 'Users and Permissions' section, click on 'Site Permissions'. We can add new users by clicking on 'Grant Permissions' and entering their email addresses.
To remove a user, select the name and click on 'Remove user authorizations'. SharePoint offers different permission levels, such as Read, Contribute, and Full Control. Assign appropriate permission levels based on user roles and responsibilities.
SharePoint uses groups to simplify permission management, and you can create customized groups for different departments or teams and assign them specific permissions.
By default, sub-pages and documents inherit permissions from the main site, but it is allowed to break the inheritance and assign specific permissions to individual elements, if necessary.
Let's make sure to configure the document libraries to request approval of the documents and to keep a record of the versions to track the changes made to each of the documents concerned.
Now that the site is configured, it's time to add content and functionality to make the site useful and operational. As an example, we are going to add a list to our page. Then we click on 'Site Contents' and then on 'New' to add a new list.
Enter a name and description for the list. You can also choose a predefined template for common lists such as' Tasks' or 'Events'.
Customize the list by adding columns to collect specific information. For example, you can add a column for the 'Project Manager' or the 'Due Date'.
If, on the other hand, we want to add a document library, we can upload individual or bulk files, and organize them in folders for better management.
Once our page has been created, however, our task will not be finished and the site will be monitored and adjusted according to needs. To do this, we can use the integrated analysis tools provided by SharePoint to monitor site traffic, the most visited pages and user engagement.
With these tools, we will be able to analyze in detail which contents are most useful and which could be improved and which could be improved and remove or update obsolete content to keep the site always relevant and updated for our users.
Another very important task is to ensure that the site is regularly backed up and that there are recovery plans in case of problems or malfunctions to avoid long-term consequences on the efficiency of our web space and speed up the immediate return to full operation.
As far as updates are concerned, don't panic, if you use SharePoint Online, the updates will be carried out automatically by the platform when they are released. Just make sure that the updates do not cause compatibility problems with third-party apps or web parts and, if so, take appropriate countermeasures to avoid any malfunctions.
Finally, let's remember that the administrator is not the only responsible figure in managing the site and it is crucial to provide continuous training even to users who use it on a regular basis in carrying out their work to ensure that they use SharePoint effectively and securely and that they can keep their digital workplace as tidy as possible. Just like in the physical spaces of an office, it's critical that everyone does their part in keeping digital workspaces working and operational.
Creating a SharePoint site may seem like a daunting task, but with careful planning and using the right techniques, you can build a powerful and flexible platform to meet the needs of your organization. Not least, it has been fundamental over the last 23 years in increasing work efficiency within Fortune 500 companies as an intranet platform that crosses all business sectors.
SharePoint offers robust tools for content management, collaboration and internal communication, which can transform the way companies operate and by following the guide offered in this article, you can have direct proof of its potential to revolutionize their corporate digital infrastructures.
Try it to believe it.
To create a SharePoint site, you need to navigate to the SharePoint start page and select "Create site." From there, you can choose between a Team site or a Communication site, depending on your needs.
A Team site in SharePoint is designed for collaboration within a group, offering features like document libraries, task lists, and calendars. A Communication site, on the other hand, is meant for broadcasting information to a wider audience and focuses on news, reports, and content presentation.
Yes, you can customize your SharePoint site's look and feel by changing the theme, logo, header, and navigation options. This allows you to align the site’s appearance with your branding or specific visual requirements.
You can manage permissions for a SharePoint site by going to the site settings and adjusting the permissions for groups or individual users. SharePoint allows you to assign roles such as Full Control, Edit, Contribute, and Read to control access levels.
Yes, SharePoint allows the creation of sub-sites under the main SharePoint site. Sub-sites can inherit permissions and navigation from the parent site or have their own unique settings.
When creating a SharePoint site, you can choose from various templates designed for different purposes, such as Document Center, Enterprise Wiki, Project Site, and more. Each template comes with pre-configured settings and layouts suited to specific needs.
You can add content to your SharePoint site by creating pages, adding web parts, uploading documents, and using lists and libraries. SharePoint offers various tools and integrations to manage and display content effectively.
To set up navigation in a SharePoint site, go to the site settings and customize the top link bar or quick launch. You can add, remove, or reorder links to create a user-friendly navigation structure that suits your site’s hierarchy.
To enable versioning on a SharePoint site, you need to go to the library or list settings and activate versioning. This feature allows you to keep track of changes to documents and list items, making it easier to manage revisions and recover previous versions.
Yes, you can integrate a SharePoint site with Microsoft Teams by adding a SharePoint tab to a team channel. This allows team members to access and collaborate on SharePoint documents directly within Teams.
You can set up alerts in a SharePoint site by going to the list or library where you want to create an alert and selecting "Alert Me." This feature allows you to receive notifications via email when items are changed, added, or deleted.
The storage limits for a SharePoint site depend on your SharePoint Online plan. Typically, each site collection in SharePoint Online is allocated a certain amount of storage, which can be managed and monitored by the site administrator.
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