SharePoint 101: How Does SharePoint Work?

What’s the first thing that comes
to mind when you think of SharePoint? Microsoft, probably. But what is it,
exactly? SharePoint is an online tool to help businesses stay connected and
productive by storing documents, creating calendar events, tracking tasks, and
sharing resources with the people they work with daily. While it may be
similar to other cloud-based collaboration tools, such as Google Drive or
Dropbox, SharePoint has many benefits that might make it better suited to your business needs. Read on to learn how SharePoint works and how to get started today!

Introducing SharePoint

SharePoint is a powerful
collaboration tool that organizes and stores documents in one location.
It’s a great solution for offices, schools, and even families who want to work
together on projects from any device. The best way to understand how SharePoint
works is by reading the following sections:

With Office 365 and SharePoint
Online, you can share information with people inside or outside your
organization. You can create blogs or wikis where everyone can contribute ideas
and edits to team-based documents. You can also use site templates with
built-in lists, charts, calendars, social networking integration, and discussion
boards for public conversations about topics that matter most to you as an
organization. You don’t have to spend time configuring all these tools
individually; it’s all available right out of the box.

Finally: SharePoint is
a robust content management system which provides a platform where people
inside or outside an organization can work collaboratively on tasks such as
creating blogs or wikis where everyone can contribute ideas and edits to
team-based documents.

Sites vs Lists vs Libraries

I’m sure you’ve heard of the term
cloud a lot lately. But what is it really? A cloud is just someone else’s
computer that has access to your data and that you can access remotely. There
are many ways to access information remotely, but Cloud Computing is one of the most popular options today. 

SharePoint is
Microsoft’s version of Cloud Computing. It allows users to share files and
collaborate on projects with other people from all over the world. One cool
thing about SharePoint is how easy it is to create sites, lists, or libraries
to store and organize your files. You can create an unlimited number
of sites in just a few minutes! Lists allow you to track things like meeting
notes or tasks for a project. 

Sites are similar to blogs, where you can publish
content or status updates and make them available publicly. Libraries are
similar to file folders that let you store multiple files, documents,
spreadsheets, and photos. SharePoint offers a ton of tools for managing content
too. For example, metadata lets you categorize and tag content so
it will show up easier when someone searches for it later. And the Publishing
Manager lets authors edit their posts before publishing, so they don’t
have to worry about typos!

Creating a Site

The first step is to create a
site. Think of this as your new website. First, you will need to log in to
SharePoint with an account that has proper permissions for the task. Once
logged in, select the Site tab at the top of the screen and click on Create
Site. On the next screen, you will be prompted to give your site a name. You
can also choose whether or not you want other users to be able to see this site
(you can hide it from specific groups), which type of server access is needed
(you may need more than one type depending on how many people are editing and
sharing files), and what kind of template you want your site based off of.
-Site Owner -Allows you to share site content only with yourself

-Limited Access -Allows multiple
users to view but prevents them from making changes

-Team Site -Default setting;
allows multiple users to edit documents but not collaborate with each other
unless they have access rights

-Blogs -Creates blogs within your
site where people can post updates and comments

Adding Items to your Site

For the purposes of our demonstration,
let’s say you’re a writer and you want to share your latest blog post with
everyone on your team. To do so, open a browser window and navigate to your
SharePoint site.

1. Click on Site Contents in the
left-hand navigation pane and then click the plus sign next to New Document. 2.
Select Blogs from the list of options that appears, type in a title for your
blog post, and then click Create. 3. You’ll see a new window pop up which will
allow you to upload an existing file or enter content manually. Select one of
these options, enter your text into the appropriate field and then click Save
& Close. Your blog post is now available for anyone who has access to this
site.

4. Your document should now be
live on the web; if not, refresh your browser until it does appear in your
left-hand navigation pane under Recent Documents. 5. Now, go back to Site
Contents and click on Page Templates; there are several pre-built templates
available for use if you don’t want to start from scratch. 6. Click Add Page Template
and select the template that best matches what you need your page to look like;
rename it if necessary before saving it by clicking Create Page Template again.

Structured vs. Unstructured
data

SharePoint is a software system
used by many organizations to manage and share data. There are two types of
data in the world, structured and unstructured. Structured data is organized
and can be found in databases or spreadsheets, for example. Unstructured data
is not organized and can be found in emails or word documents, for example. A
significant part of SharePoint’s design is to organize unstructured data so
that it will be easier for people to find what they need when they need it. The
most important parts of SharePoint are the Content Library (where you store all
your files), Document Libraries (where you store all your Word and Excel files)
and Team Sites (where you store all your team information).

Sharing your site

A site is a collection of pages,
lists, libraries and other items. A site can be secured to control who has
access to it. You can also share a site with others without giving them
permission to edit the site. There are two ways to share sites: by sending an
e-mail invitation or from the Site Settings page on the Site Actions menu. To
send an email invitation, you need the address for your recipient’s inbox (like
Gmail or Outlook). When you open a SharePoint document in Word 2010 and save it
as Web Page (.mht), then open this .mht file in any browser, you can create
hyperlinks in your document that will open up the linked item in its native
application. The name of each hyperlinked item is displayed at the bottom left
corner of its icon. Clicking on one brings up a dialog box where you can set
whether clicking opens the link in this window (default) or closes this window
after opening the linked item

Working with documents in
SharePoint

One of the key features of
SharePoint is that it can enable people to work together on documents,
regardless of their location. Let’s say you’re working on a document and need
to share your progress with someone else. In order to do this, you would go
into the Documents section in the left-hand navigation bar and select one of
the folders. From there, click on New Document. This will bring up a new window
that gives you two options for how you want to upload your document. The first
option is if you want to upload the document as an attachment or by copying it
into Microsoft Office OneNote (you have to have Office OneNote installed) and
then uploading it from there. The second option is if you want to publish the
document so others can edit it too.

In order to publish the document,
make sure that you create a new folder where you will store all your published
files; then make sure that anyone who wants to edit this document knows what
folder they should be looking at! To publish a file, simply click on Publish in
the toolbar menu and follow the prompts from there.

When adding a comment about what
needs improvement about this blog post, don’t forget to mention SharePoint!

Understanding Permissions

There are four types of
permissions. The first is Read, which allows a user to see what is in the
folder or document, but doesn’t allow them to modify or delete anything. This
permission can be assigned to an individual user or group. The next type is
Edit, which allows a user to modify and delete content in the shared folder or
document. It also includes Create and Delete permissions for folders. The third
permission is called Full Control, which offers all the previous permissions
plus it can also change who has access to the shared item and manage any access
control list (ACL) on it. The final permission is called Co-owner, which grants
the person who created the document with full control over it while giving
another co-owner read and edit privileges.