Quantcast
Channel: Insource » SharePoint
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 10

Share More with SharePoint

0
0

Now that it is November, and Thanksgiving season is upon us, we at Insource have been thinking a lot about sharing. We will be sharing a meal together the week before Thanksgiving; we will be sharing laughs, exchanging recipes, and showing one another gratitude.

As you begin to think about what you will be sharing this season, don’t limit it to the stereotypical November shareables (although those are nice too). Now is as great a time as any to think about how your company shares documents and information.

What is SharePoint?

SharePoint is a Microsoft Product that organizations use to create websites. You can use it as a secure place to store, organize, share, and access information from almost any device.

Businesses have found that their people are more productive when they are able to access all of the necessary resources and knowledge, regardless of where they are and what device they have accessible. SharePoint increases efficiency, quality of information, and ability to collaborate, while decreasing redundancy, manually intensive processes, and data loss. Simply put, paper gets lost. Files stored on SharePoint do not.

SharePoint functionality is divided into four broad categories: Sites, Search, Content, and Applications.

Sites

Sites are used within SharePoint to organize content. They may be created quickly and easily using predefined site templates and then organized hierarchically into site collections. Site collections are made up of one top-level site and all sites below it, creating a structure that sorts sites by their commonalities. Within these sites, everything is accessed by a URL, and authentication and security are linked to Active Directory users or groups.

SharePoint 2013 supports two types of site collections: host-named site collections and path-based site collections. Users can quickly pull up site pages from any mobile device on any browser.

Search

Microsoft has fully incorporated the fast-search technology into its core enterprise search. This provides the ability to preview visualizations of content, suggestions, and other features that are typically found in major search engines. The new continuous crawl constantly looks for new content within the site, keeping the search feature current.

Content is indexed by metadata and internal document contents. Both SharePoint and non-SharePoint content sources (e.g. file shares, MS Exchange store, Web sites) can be crawled.

Keep in mind that the security of the original content is maintained while using the search feature.

Content

Content consists of documents and structured data that is managed using lists and document libraries. This content is classified and organized using metadata (descriptive columns). Users are able to access external content (data stored outside SharePoint) via BDC (Business Data Connectivity) and Business Intelligence features. Microsoft makes it easy for users to manage content by keeping SharePoint tightly integrated with Microsoft Office.

Microsoft has extended the product to make it much easier and simpler to customize the look and feel of SharePoint sites to meet branding guidelines and improve its ability to implement externally facing websites for organizations with built-in content management capability. They have enhanced the records management capabilities to improve the process for eDiscovery and created search-driven publishing to consolidate content for presentation.

Applications

SharePoint provides a robust platform for building Web-based business applications, ideal for document retention and business intelligence. Like a Swiss Army knife, SharePoint includes nearly every tool imaginable, from business intelligence to social sharing. SharePoint can solve countless business issues.

Power users can create complex Web-based applications without writing custom code. There is a rich developer API for creation of both client- and server-based applications.

Microsoft has developed a whole new app paradigm for SharePoint that allows you to design and deploy applications that can either be purchased through the SharePoint marketplace or developed in house. One of the advantages of the new application model is that you have complete control over the environment, which is used to run your application. It can run on top of SharePoint, essentially, without messing with the server itself.

We hope you all have a wonderful and thankful November full of sharing good things. If you’re interested in a new document retention solution or looking for new ways to collaborate online, let us know!


Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 10

Latest Images

Trending Articles





Latest Images