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New to SharePoint? Learn Everything You Need to Know with Our Blog Series:
- What Is SharePoint? A Guide For Beginners
- How Does SharePoint Work?
- 7 Helpful Office 365, SharePoint Customization Best Practices
- 4 Essential Content Management Tips for SharePoint Online
SharePoint Server 2019 has just been released and there’s a bunch to talk about. This latest release represents a whole new generation of SharePoint; it is indeed the hybrid experience of SharePoint Online and SharePoint On-Prem that we’ve all been waiting for.
Though many people are excited to learn about the new capabilities of the latest version, there are many more that are new to the industry and are just getting started. With that in mind, we decided to cover the whole of SharePoint in a comprehensive blog series. This includes everything from the basics to the exciting new possibilities that were recently unveiled in SharePoint Server 2019.
What is SharePoint?
We covered this topic in a prior post titled “What is SharePoint,” but we’ll offer a brief summary here. SharePoint is a web-based collaboration platform. It consists of columns, lists, libraries, documents, chat, and other features that make it easy to not only store documents, but also search, offer context and organize in a way that makes sense for your business.
Looking for a comprehensive overview of all of SharePoint's collaborative features? Check out this article: Click To TweetWhat is a SharePoint Team Site?
A team site is a place where you and your colleagues store content, information, and apps that people utilize on a regular basis. Here at AvePoint, we break up our team sites by company department. We communicate, collaborate, and share the files we all need to do our best work.
In the rest of this post, we will show you around a modern team site and teach you about the most popular features.
Site Header
At the top of the team site, you will see that site logo and name of the site, this is a site header. It can help differentiate main sites from sub-sites and team sites.
Site Search
Site search is one of the many key features that make SharePoint a valuable collaboration tool. Search allows you to quickly surface relevant content and documents that would otherwise be hidden if they were living on people’s individual hard drives.
Quick Links
Quick Links are navigational links you can add to your SharePoint site to make it easier for users to work their way through the site and find what they need. You should follow good web design UX principles when you select categories for your navigation. It is critical to organize categories in a way that will make sense to most of your users.
If you have permission to edit the site, you will also see a “+New” drop down that allows you to add lists, libraries, pages, posts, links, and apps.
SharePoint Lists & Libraries
SharePoint Lists & Libraries are the building blocks of every SharePoint site. There are a variety of templatized SharePoint lists and libraries available to select and Set up.
SharePoint lists are like excel lists. They consist of rows and columns of data that members of the team site are able to add and edit. SharePoint lists have a variety of uses, however, they are most often used for task & issue tracking. At AvePoint, we use SharePoint lists to submit work requests to other departments. We complete a request form, attach useful documents, assign them, and from that point on receive notifications about the status of our requests.
SharePoint Libraries are areas of SharePoint sites where things are stored. SharePoint libraries can be set up to store documents, pictures, site assets, site pages, and more. They’re an especially great feature of SharePoint because they display critical information about the documents being stored, such as who the last person to modify a file was.
There is a variety of out of the box, ready to use library apps you can add to your site that make setup a breeze. Each of them is customizable, so you can control how documents are viewed, managed, created, and tracked.
Custom Views are another great SharePoint feature. You can create custom views for both SharePoint lists and libraries. You can configure views in ways that allow filtering and sorting. You can also create personal views or public views if you know what information a certain group of people will be looking to find.
Sign up for a free copy of the SharePoint Server 2019 handbook here!
What are Items & Documents?
Items are calendar entries, tasks, or contacts. Items typically have associated metadata-like locations, start dates, end dates, calendar entries, names or phone numbers.
Documents are usually files such as Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, Excel sheets, PDF’s, videos, and music files. Documents can also contain metadata such as contributors, language, and format.
What is a SharePoint Column?
A SharePoint column is a list of files that all contain the same type of meta tag. SharePoint columns enable users to present important information. They help with categorization and sorting and make working with SharePoint lists very straightforward and easy.
Each SharePoint version offers a variety of powerful functions and features, and each new version has also become progressively more powerful than the last. As a platform, SharePoint is relatively easy to learn, understand and use. If things start feeling too complicated too fast, step back and re-evaluate the basics. Good foundational knowledge is key to mastery.
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