One of the rapidly growing and rampantly used products of Microsoft, SharePoint has become a favorite of a number of fortune 500 organizations. It is a marvelous tool possessing a wide array of capabilities. SharePoint caters to high grade business analysis in order to recognize opportunities and problems, thereby assisting businesses to enhance content collaboration as well as boost access to business intelligence. This web application platform also makes sure that robust data security, auditing processes and compliance are perfectly in place.
However, simply installing and making SharePoint available will not be able to guarantee its successful implementation all through the organization. While there has been considerable increase in the deployment of SharePoint in the business world, empowering users to adopt this platform and sustaining the same with proper security can indeed be a great challenge. Here we bring to you some crucial guidelines that will facilitate SharePoint adoption in your enterprise to reap business benefits from it.
- Analyze your specific needs: Prior to the implementation of SharePoint, it is essential to understand the organizational goals, initiatives and objectives because of the fact that SharePoint comes with a number of features that are compatible with particular business requisites. It is also advisable to have a look at the current application usability, procedure and populace concerned, the problems linked to them and how the platform can address the issues.
- Designed architecture: In order to make the SharePoint environment user-friendly and rich, it is important to have in-depth knowledge of SharePoint design and how the templates can be well defined through leveraging a number of navigation and content types. Lots of organizations go for the development of web pages with inadequate planning and do not consider accessibility by end-users in order to update the content. Maintaining proper flow while building the architecture will pave room for convenient access for end-users who will be able to derive complete benefit from the existing features. Hence, innovation in architectural plan and design offering space for new features and fulfillment of requisites surely assists users to come up with quality output.
- Plan your implementation according to crucial needs: Instead of installing all the SharePoint application features, implementation of crucial features catering to particular needs is much better. Certain essential features include intranets, business intelligence, managing sales, document sharing and tailor-made applications accessible with the help of dashboards.
- It is vital to be proactive: Besides architectural planning and development in line with present business requirements, it is also essential to think proactively and develop templates for future capabilities and requirements. Proactive design meets the needs of end-users, thereby ensuring usability and sustainability.
- Be slow and steady: Doing a lot of things simultaneously is not a good idea. Rather, you should start bit by bit, and plan your implementation steadily with the passage of time. For instance, it is good to first aim at a specific group of capabilities or people, concentrating on particular concerns which people come across, such as accounting, managing sales, sharing of spreadsheets or business planning.
- Customization of end user training: Almost all the companies have the feeling that the SharePoint platform is easy to comprehend and utilize. However, the fact is that without adequate training, it is difficult for users. Although a number of DVDs, books, training institutes and online courses are present, guidance on tailor-made features in SharePoint is rarely available. This calls for arrangement of business-oriented training on the part of organizations before the employees start handling SharePoint. Guiding users on the ease of accessibility of the platform, creation of training manuals, PPTs and notes will definitely enable users to effectively comprehend the application and get motivated to adapt to the change.
- Security through permission levels: Security over the SharePoint platform is made available through a range of default permission levels, which constitute the fundamentals of security for assignment to groups. Group sharing is always better than individual sharing, and afterwards, users can be added within each group to validate all the permission levels prior to providing.
When SharePoint is implemented in an organization in the proper manner following the requisite guidelines and security measures, it indeed makes room for organizational success and can enable one to derive maximum benefit for businesses through leveraging SharePoint development.
We provide custom SharePoint development services. If you would like to know more about our certified SharePoint developers, please get in touch with us at Mindfire Solutions.
SharePoint is a web-oriented tool from Microsoft that enables the user to locate and manage information across the web browser as well as share files in a more efficient manner. It is of immense help to businesses by serving as the central location for the storage of files, projects along with ad hoc information. In fact, SharePoint has the capability of searching the entered information as well as the information within any stored document. This in turn enhances the business productivity and helps in cost control. Let us discuss a few of the prime features of SharePoint before exploring how the perfect SharePoint solution can be built and leveraged for businesses.
Key features of SharePoint
- Document Management: This web tool facilitates several functions like check-in or check-out and also approvals.
- Discussions: The discussion board of SharePoint can remarkably trim down the time that is spent in meetings. An interesting feature is that the entire information related to the discussions lies centrally, is properly documented, has a back up, and can also be conveniently searched.
- Wikis: Internal knowledge bases can be easily developed with the help of SharePoint wikis. In this manner crucial information regarding the business operations is documented and retained within the business.
- Workflows: With the assistance of SharePoint you will be able to generate workflows focused on your business processes. This facilitates the replication of the same result every time there is execution of the process. Hence, a convenient means of tracking information flow is available, thereby leading to consistent results.
Techniques to Derive the Perfect SharePoint Solution
- All emails should be stored on a centralized and secure website to facilitate seamless archive.
- A centralized task location needs to be maintained in order to assign task to each team member. The tasks are automatically displayed on the To-Do List of Outlook 2007 and are linked to projects, thereby enabling one to identify the tasks that have not been closed.
- Large events should be organized and the relevant documents and assigned tasks should be stored, while posting whatever is linked to events. Integration of all this stuff with Outlook offers increased efficiency.
- So far as the documents are concerned, constant collaboration with every team member is a must in order to have a thorough understanding of each person’s tasks.
- On assignment of tasks to team members, there should be automatic notification to inform regarding the assigned task. Moreover, alerts are best to inform about updates.
- SharePoint should be used as a robust yet uncomplicated project management tool for the team or organization enabling management of documents and tasks within a single location.
- Document management should be done with the help of check-in and check-out tools.
- The content approval feature or the approval workflows should be properly leveraged for increased control over the organization’s documents.
- Training materials ought to be provided to partners, clients and teams within a website that is password protected and is accessible from anywhere across the globe.
- Documents as well as other information should be shared with partners or clients within a private and secure place.
- It is best to operate and access data through mobile devices having internet facility for increased convenience during travel or client meeting held away from the office.
- Brainstorming sessions and enhanced team communication should be practiced. Moreover, centralization should be done with regard to posting of announcements so that everyone is notified through mobile phone or email, irrespective of the place.
- All team discussions, projects tasks, centralized calendars, company contacts, files and team blogs should be taken offline and then the updated information should be synchronized.
- Central documents should be created to enable all stake holders to avail and modify the same document and access the update at the click of a button. All modifications can be synchronized with the single document.
- It is advisable to develop a project dashboard wherein common project elements like project tasks, project issues, project documents, project milestones, and so on can be viewed and filtered on a single page.
SharePoint comes with a range of features to facilitate and streamline business processes. Following the above-mentioned techniques can enable one to derive maximum benefit for businesses through leveraging SharePoint development.
We provide SharePoint migration services. If you would like to know more about our expert SharePoint developers, please get in touch with us at Mindfire Solutions.
