SharePoint Addiction

Tuesday, August 13, 2024

The following are three key features of SharePoint Online that can significantly enhance productivity and collaboration:

Team Sites: SharePoint Online allows one to create team sites quickly. These sites are connected to Office 365 groups, providing a shared inbox, calendar, OneNote notebook, and a document library. Such integration helps teams collaborate by centralizing communication and resources.
Customization and Branding: One can customize the look and feel of needed SharePoint sites to reflect the organization’s brand. This includes adjusting site headers, footers, and themes. Custom site designs and themes can be utilized to standardize the appearance and functionality across multiple sites.
External Sharing: SharePoint Online supports external sharing, and this is important for organizations that need to collaborate with clients, vendors, or partners. This feature allows one to share documents and collaborate with people outside the organization securely.

The following are the top three types of SharePoint Online sites:

With Microsoft 365 Group: Such a site is designed for team collaboration, allowing one to share documents, manage projects, and communicate effectively. This setup is integrated with other Microsoft 365 apps such as MS Teams, Planner, and Outlook.
Without Microsoft 365 Group: Similar to the above but such a setup doesn’t have the integration with other Microsoft 365 apps.

Such sites use a modern format and are used for broadcasting information to a wide audience. They are good for sharing news, reports, and other important information within an organization. Typically such a site is just a one way communication source.

Such sites are the traditional SharePoint sites which include classic web parts, blog pages, and wiki pages. In the future classic sites are likely to be deprecated in favor of modern sites.

The following are three aspects of SharePoint Online that make it a powerful tool for collaboration and productivity:

Cloud-Based Flexibility: SharePoint Online functions in the cloud, providing flexibility and accessibility. This allows access and collaborate on information from anywhere, at any time, as long as one has an internet connection. It integrates seamlessly with other Microsoft Office 365 tools such as MS Teams, OneDrive, and Office applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc).
Enhanced Collaboration Tools: SharePoint Online offers robust collaboration features, which include document sharing and co-authoring, team sites, and communication sites. Such tools help teams work together more efficiently by providing a centralized platform for sharing information, managing tasks, and communicating.
Advanced Security Measures: Security is a top priority for SharePoint Online. It includes features such as data protection, compliance tools, customizable security settings, advanced threat protection, and secure sharing capabilities. Such measures ensure that data is safe and that it’s controled who has access to it.

The following are three Agile Release Trains (ARTs) that can be utilized with SharePoint Online:

These ARTs include multiple agile teams (may include 50-125 people) whom work together towards a shared business and technology mission. They plan, commit, develop, and deploy to ensure that the team goals work with cohesiveness.

Lean-Agile ARTs deliver value via continuous improvement and lean principles. It emphasizes reducing waste, optimizing processes, and ensuring that teams adapt to needed changes.

Integrate DevOps practices to enhance the delivery pipeline. This uses continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD), to ensure that SharePoint Online projects are delivered efficiently and with a high quality.

The top three key figures to measure user engagement and effectiveness in SharePoint Online:

Site Visits: The metric shows how many times users visit a site. It helps to gauge overall interest and engagement with the content.
Unique Viewers: The figure represents the number of distinct users who have accessed a site. It’s useful for understanding the reach and impact of the site.
Document Downloads: The tracking of how often documents are downloaded is insightful for knowing which content is most valuable to users. This helps to identify popular resources and areas where it’s needed to provide more support or information.

The following are the top three attachment options in SharePoint Online:

SharePoint allows one to attach files directly to individual list items. Example if one has an issue tracking list, it’s possible to attach screenshots or documents to items in the list.

Enable a drag-and-drop experience for attachments directly from the list form.
Such attachments are stored in a separate “List Attachments” library.
This library would then act as a lookup column for the list, displaying the file names, last modified dates, and the last person to modify the file.

Provides a seamless integration with email clients and tools such as Outlook and MS Teams.

The following are the top three ways to measure user engagement and gather useful statistics in SharePoint Online:

Microsoft Clarity: Microsoft Clarity is a user behavior analytics tool which integrates directly with SharePoint Online. It provides insights into user interactions, including heatmaps, session recordings, and more. One can use the tool to know how users engage with a site in order to improve the experience.
SharePoint Analytics: SharePoint Online has a built-in analytics features. One can track page views, unique visitors, and other metrics. By analyzing this data, one can gain information into user engagement, popular content, and areas for improvement.
Visual Charts and Graphs: It’s possible to enhance a SharePoint site by adding visual charts and graphs. One can create dynamic charts using Excel data and embed them directly into SharePoint pages. Such visuals help with engagement.