Did you know that above 250,000 organizations across the globe use Sharepoint to run a secured and collaborative work environment? Thus, Microsoft has been drastically upgrading new features to enhance and optimize the use of Sharepoint.

Sharepoint is the core collaboration component of Microsoft and is an essential cornerstone for technologies within Microsoft 365. It seamlessly integrates across other Microsoft applications to encourage teamwork amongst your employees.

Let us look at how Sharepoint can work to ease content sharing and create a collaborative work environment.

What Is Sharepoint Online?

Sharepoint Online is an Intranet-based enterprise-level collaboration platform hosted in the cloud. It is a SaaS product with a secure, customizable and easily manageable hybrid environment managed from PowerShell or the admin centre. Sharepoint Online primarily uses Azure cloud.

The Microsoft Sharepoint server is on-premises. Sharepoint Online is its cloud evolution. Sharepoint cloud service enables companies to store, organize and add third-party apps, access information from any device, share with external users and manage content seamlessly across their network and beyond.

Build Sharepoint Sites For Communication

Microsoft will release scenario-based site templates containing pre-populated content and customizable web parts in its next version of Sharepoint. ‘Viva connections’ will be a part of Teams to easily access the Sharepoint site. 

You can create three different site types using Sharepoint.

Team Sites

Sharepoint Team sites are a collaborative workplace for each division, department and project team in your company. 

The team sites

• Allow you to store and share documents
• Enable you to customize lists
• Support workflow integration with Microsoft Flow
• Provide you with file libraries
• Integrate directly with Microsoft Teams

Communication Sites

Communication sites can broadcast information across your entire organization. Anyone in the organization can create these sites from various site template options available on the Sharepoint start page.

• The ‘Topic’ template allows you to share news and events.
• The ‘Showcase’ template allows you to display images of your products, teams and events.
• The ‘Blank’ template provides you with options to create your new design.

You can customize the provided templates by adding dynamic page elements or SharePoint web parts to display various content types like text, images, files and videos.

Hub Sites

Sharepoint hub sites can connect and manage team sites and communication sites. They help you organize your Sharepoint Online, based on regions, divisions, departments and projects etc. 

It makes it easy for you to

• Discover site activities, news and related content.
• Design site structure, navigation and branding across associated sites.  
• Search each site associated with your Intranet.

Plan A Collaboration Environment In Sharepoint

A combination of Sharepoint and Microsoft 365 services allows you to create an easy-to-use collaboration environment that provides required security and auditing controls. If you want to create a successful collaboration experience using Sharepoint sites, you have to enable self-service, create a smooth user experience and protect your intellectual property. 

Sharepoint sites, Microsoft 365 Groups and teams can replace an IT-focused model. You can educate users through emails on your governance policies, data loss prevention tips and using confidential content. Sharepoint avails your favourite user self-service options to create a more effortless experience for your IT staff. Users can even overcome problems by themselves.

Tools To Plan A Safe Collaboration Environment

To meet your governance needs and enable your users to work efficiently, Microsoft 365 provides tools to use in conjunction with Sharepoint to create a safe collaboration environment.

• Use the SharePoint ‘sharing controls’ tool to control external sharing of files by authenticating sites and guests.
• You can make use of the ‘Data loss prevention’ tool to classify and protect information. You can create a series of actions, conditions and exceptions to govern how files are shared and used.
• Use the ‘Device Management’ mechanism to ensure your company’s information is accessible only from apps and devices you trust.
• Make use of the Microsoft ‘Cloud Security’ app to manage data security by monitoring your organization’s risky activities.
• Use the ‘Microsoft defender’ tool to safeguard your Sharepoint teams from the users who upload malicious files.
• You can use the ‘reports’ to check whether your organization meets your governance requirements and monitors your information safety process.

Share Sharepoint Sites, Groups And Teams

Microsoft 365 Group is a single permissions group and each Sharepoint site is a part of it. It connects to various services like a mailbox, a shared calendar and a planner. Members added to the Office 365 Group can access the Sharepoint site and other associated services. You can manage Sharepoint site permissions from the correlated Microsoft 365 Group.

Public Group

Joining a public group does not require the approval of group owners. Anyone in your company can edit the files on its Sharepoint team site. Employees around your organization can participate in broad collaboration scenarios and monitor non-confidential projects.

Private Group

You cannot find private groups through a search. Group member invites you after the group owner approves the invitation. Different project teams working on confidential projects can create private groups to collaborate and work. 

Users of both groups can share individual files with outsiders without inviting them to their group.

Site Access Requests

Sharepoint team site members can independently invite others to join without the owner’s approval. You can change this default setting. 

Data Classification

To enforce a governance workflow, you can classify sites and documents using the ‘Data loss prevention’ sensitivity labels. The automatically added watermark can help your employees to share information safely and maintain your governance policies.

Share Files And Folders

The robust and intuitive nature of Sharepoint reduces the complexity of file sharing. It enables you to manage the accessibility and confidentiality of your office documents. You can share only files and folders without sharing the whole site. Create a sharable link that has permissions to share a particular item. 

Sharepoint provides three types of sharable links.

Anyone Links

Anyone links are transferable as you can forward them to others without authenticating them. You can revoke the access by deleting the link. If you want to share this link with other users, you have to give them the link. Users who have this type of link can access the items present in that link. 

Links Within Your Organization

As the name says, these links work for people working inside your organization. They are similar to ‘Anyone links’ except that guests cannot access ‘people in your organization’ links. Link opens only to a directory member. It helps multiple teams and sites within your company to share files and folders for easy collaboration.

Specific People Links

A ‘Specific people’ link is non-transferable and can be shared only with specific users. You can share these links internally or externally by authenticating the person you share the file with. You can remove the access by deleting the link. The secured file sharing process can completely do away with vulnerability to malware attacks and accidental file deletion.

Guest Sharing And Co-authoring Documents

Guest Sharing is sharing content with people outside the organization, clients, customers, vendors and partners. External sharing features of SharePoint help you to share files and folders with your guests. You can share between licensed Microsoft 365 subscribed users. 

External sharing is turned on by default. You can turn off external sharing for a particular site containing confidential information. If you want to add guests to your directory, site entry and group entry rules are applicable as they are for internal users.

Guests are limited to basic collaboration tasks. You can give them a certain site-based permission level to perform tasks and view other content on the site. If you want your authenticated guests to have extra capabilities, you must assign them an appropriate license.

We are familiar with collaboration features provided by Microsoft 365 Office applications. Co-authoring is one of the collaboration features that includes mentioning the name of the person with @.  Co-authoring works for Word, PowerPoint, OneNote and Visio in both the desktop and web versions. It helps an end-user to open documents from Sharepoint and start working straight away. They receive alerts about changes and comments made by other users.

Want To Build Sharepoint Team Sites?

How well have you been monitoring the collaboration between your employees? The new normal ‘remote working process’ might have made it much trickier for you. 

We recommend you migrate your office environment to Sharepoint and boost your team collaboration and work productivity. We are here to build your modernized connective workplace in Sharepoint Intranet and help your business advance to the next level.