SharePoint – A powerful collaboration tool
Historically, Microsoft’s suite of Office programs revolved around the basic apps, Word, Excel and such, but now in a ever more connected world, collaboration and team efforts take centre stage in efficient and productive business.
What was needed was a central area to exchange information and help people work together and Microsoft delivered the appropriately named “SharePoint”.
SharePoint ( Online ) is a web-based collaboration platform. It helps organisations manage and share content to enable teamwork, find information, and collaborate easily across the organisation. Keeping all your data and work in a central system helps to reduce confusion for example working on different copies of the same file, and since SharePoint is online with its cloud based storage, your data is safe even if your office burns down.
The point of sharing with SharePoint
I wanted to bring attention to the powerful and complete control SharePoint offers when managing data access. SharePoint allows for both group and individual based access to files and sites etc. Also total granular access can be given for just a single file, an individual folder or set of folders without giving access to the entire directory that it sits under. This simply means you can assign access to many persons quickly, or if preferred to give access specifically to one person only, and not worry about who might gain access later.
It is also possible to open up sharing to users outside the organisation, again using any level of access from single file read-only, to editable folders and more.
If you run a smaller business it does not mean you cannot benefit from SharePoint. You may only have a few files that you share regularly at the moment but the secure nature of SharePoint keeps your data safe and allows for greater management in the future when it is needed, helping you plan projects, assign tasks and organise your information.
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Ben Parker – byline and other articles
