Sharepoint - Get Free Productivity

By: Jason Neville (General Manager)

Sharepoint is an application that is commonly bundled with Small Business Server, and is also available for free download through Microsoft.

But what is Sharepoint? Sharepoint is an internal company website designed to improve internal communication and collaboration - Essentially a central repository of company data, forms, calenders and other components. When setting it up for our clients, we always make sure it comes up as the default homepage when loading Internet Explorer. This ensures the site is always in ready-view of staff members.

The real beauty of sharepoint is it requires no programming skill at all as the whole admin interface is point and click. This means, with a few hours training, anyone can be setting up particular components in Sharepoint.

Sharepoint has a variety of components which you can add to the site, so I thought I would share some features, as well as give some real world examples of how these have been used by some of our clients...

File Libraries
Allow you to store files in Sharepoint, similar to a normal folder structure in Windows, however it also allows users to check-in and check-out documents (for editing), and also has version control. Examples - many companies use it to store company policies and procedures (due to version tracking), as well as client information

Calenders
Allows you to add calenders which are visible and shared by selected staff. Examples - booking out boardroom, graphic representation which shows staff holidays, in our office we use it to show projects which are booked in for particular dates.

Forums
Users can create topics and discuss issues relating to the business. Examples - social topics such as suggestions for the christmas party, serious topics such as suggesting company improvements

Picture Galleries
Easily create viewable picture galleries. Examples - social club events

Forms
You can create forms which can be filled in on the site, and then configured to take particular actions upon completion. Examples - staff leave forms, company forms with "triggers" that email the form to admin staff.

At R & G, we use our Sharepoint site daily as it stores amongst other things all our staff mobile numbers and emergency contact details, the meeting minutes from our company meeting and customer service meeting, company performance dashboard, employee of the month and company procedures and documentation. In 2009 we turned the corner giving away our long standing Operations Manual which had turned into a thick, bound and printed document in favour of having it all in Sharepoint where it is readily accessible (the biggest issue with an Ops manual is that noone ever refers to it right?).

The opportunities are endless, and given the fact there is minimal cost aside from the labour to set it up, with 2 hours of configuration Sharepoint can easily deliver real value to your business.

Case Studies

IT Support Case Study "Starting out as a husband and wife team and growing to a 2 office business with 13 employees in just over 18 months certainly gave us a few headaches in relation to managing our IT requirements. We received no “service” from our previous IT Company" » Read More

Cloud Solution Case Study "Expanding a services business into new territories is never an easy thing, but R & G’s hosted desktop cloud computing solution let’s easily manage IT costs whilst having the ability to rapidly deploy new offices and equip staff literally anywhere." » Read More