Top 3 SharePoint Online Features for Collaboration and Streamlining Workflow

The following are three SharePoint Online features for collaboration and streamline workflow:

• Create a SharePoint Team Site in Seconds:
• With Office 365, one can create group-connected SharePoint team sites in seconds. These sites come with a shared inbox, calendar, OneNote notebook, and a default place for files (the team site document library).
• The modern team site has pages, lists, libraries, and team news, allowing a group to collaborate, and communicate more efficiently.
• Customize Your Site’s Look and Branding:
• Quickly and easily customize the appearance of a SharePoint site to reflect the professional style and brand.
• Choose from default SharePoint themes, customize them as needed, or utilize company-approved branding.
• Adjust site headers (layout, logo, background) and footers (logo, text, links) to create a site to fit one’s needs.
• External Sharing for Collaboration:
• If an organization collaborates with vendors, clients, or customers, SharePoint Online allows one to share content securely with external parties.
• One can control permissions, set expiration dates, and collaborate seamlessly across organizational boundaries.

3 Key Points of SharePoint Online Regarding Large Data

The following are three key SharePoint Online points regarding large data in lists and libraries:

• List and Library Size:
• SharePoint can hold up to 30 million items in a single list or library.
• While the default threshold for displaying items in a view is by default 5000, it’s possible to work with larger lists by planning ahead and applying filtering and sorting techniques.
• Using the modern experience, improves the functionality and  time aspects compared to the classic experience.
• Myths Debunked:
• Treating a list as a database is fine for power users, and lists with more than 5000 items can indeed work.
• As a site owner, one can be proactive in managing lists and libraries to avoid hitting the threshold.
• Cautionary Tale:
• Plan carefully, so that end-users and power-users do not encounter issues when the threshold is exceeded.
• The threshold affects the view presentation, not the actual data stored in the list or library.

Top 3 Features and Best Practices Related to SharePoint Online

The following are the top three features and best practices related to SharePoint Online:

1. Cloud-Based Flexibility: SharePoint Online operates in the cloud, providing flexibility and accessibility. It allows one to collaborate, store files, and manage content from anywhere.
2. Content Management: SharePoint Online offers robust content management capabilities. One can organize documents, create libraries, and set permissions to control access.
3. Collaboration and AI: Leverage SharePoint for team based collaboration, document co-authoring, and integrating AI features within Microsoft 365.

Top 3 SharePoint Online Usage Reports

The following are three SharePoint Online reports to track search usage and identify popular queries:

• Modern Site Reports:
• Navigate to Site settings > Site collection administration > Microsoft Search > Configure search settings > Insights.
• Aspects shown are graphs and tables generated from searches executed on modern sites. Reports show the past 31 days (daily or monthly for the previous year).
• Key reports include:
• Query Volume: Shows the number of search queries performed, helping one to identify trends.
• Top Queries: Shows the most popular search queries (searched at least three times with clicks on results).
• Abandoned Queries: Shows popular queries with low click-through rates.
• No Results Queries: Highlights queries that returned zero results.
• Impression Distribution: Shows impressions over time in regard to result types.
• Microsoft Search Usage Report:
• Report provides the top 10 most popular search queries along with the top three clicked results for each query. This helps in understanding user search behavior and result performance.
• Tenant-Level Usage Analytics:
• Reports (example: top queries, abandoned queries, no result queries, and query volume) aggregate data over Bing, SharePoint home, and Office.com which are Microsoft Search entry points.

3 Ways in SharePoint Online to Kick Users Out of a File

The following are three ways in SharePoint Online,to kick users out of a file or ensure exclusive access during major changes:

1. Check Out Files: If one wants to make changes to a file and ensure no one else can edit it simultaneously, one can check out the file. When the file is checked out, one can edit it online or offline, saving it multiple times if needed. Once finish editing, check the file back into the library, allowing others to see the changes.
2. Versioning: Turn on versioning for the library. This way, if someone makes a mistake later, one can restore an earlier version of the document.
3. Communication: While not a direct “kick,” effective communication is key. Inform users about upcoming changes, request that they log out, and coordinate the timing of major updates. Clear communication helps to prevent conflicts and ensures a beneficial collaboration experience.

Top 3 SharePoint Gotchas and their Remedies

The following are three SharePoint gotchas and their remedies:

1. Column Naming: When working with lists or list items, ensure one uses the correct column name—either external or internal. Internal column names remain invariant once created, and SharePoint encodes special characters differently.
2. Lookup Columns: If one’s list template includes a lookup column, be cautious when creating a new list from it. Lookup columns reference lists within the same site collection. If one creates a child list in a different site collection, the referenced list won’t exist. To fix, recreate the referenced list in the other site collection and update the lookup column accordingly.
3. Workflow Troubleshooting: If one’s custom workflow activity isn’t triggering, consider these factors:
• Workflows will not trigger if the action was performed by the System Account. Impersonation or running under a service account may be necessary when triggering workflows from a timer job.
• Ensure the client application running the object model has appropriate permissions.

Top 3 SharePoint Gotchas

The following are the top three gotchas of SharePoint Online:

         Modern List Attachments:

List attachments do not have robust management controls and collaborative features such as versioning and co-authoring.

List attachments don’t have a drag and drop aspect.

Customization Challenges:

SharePoint has extensive customization options, but what is available via best practices is ever changing and not always documented.

Be aware of customizations that might impact performance, security, or scalability. 

Anchors in Modern SharePoint Pages:

Anchors allow one to link directly to specific sections within a page. However, when working with anchors in the SharePoint Framework code, this can be difficult.