SharePoint is giving me a tan.

Over the last few weeks, I have been dabbled with questions on SharePoint from students and friends, thus I thought I pen down some thoughts on it and start with a layman introduction that helped me when I was first introduced to it.

?Many organisations and mostly those in public service have embarked on the journey, SharePoint, a customizable Cloud-based content collaboration and management platform has seen its benefits shoot up, especially during the pandemic where it enabled teams to operate and work remotely, work together, breakdown silos and boost efficiency. Known popularly as a content management platform that enables collaboration and the ability for me to work seamlessly with my team while I am sipping “ice teh manis” on a beach in Bali just like in the pic above!!!

Let's have a Pina Colada at the beach for you or your team

To further define its features and the why Sharepoint is gonna make you and your team enjoy a beach day, Share point is gonna make work easy for you if you and your team

• work remotely and/or operate in various locations globally
• work on the go in Starbucks or client locations and/ or need to have access to your company content remotely
• work on multiple devices and /or ?need to share documents within the org or with clients
• are currently using thumb drives (seriously still?) or 3rd party transfer apps like WeTransfer, Google drive etc. and /or have challenges accessing content, information, and marketing collateral.
• and need to manage all your company content, access your intranets, keep your team updated on the cool stuff and fun stuff happening in the office as well as automate tasks so the team can spend quality time doing the effective work and not the mundane then SharePoint is going to help. With inbuilt features that are integrated with the office 365 features, using SharePoint has for me, made co-creating (in real-time) and searchability (with tagging) a breeze and an awesome tan, not to mention the sweet smell of the sea and the feel of sand between my toes.

While in my previous organisation, we had SharePoint, it was just another platform and we did not fully exploit the features, maybe because we were still in the process of dragging our feet to the office daily and did not have remote work as an option. So we fell in the group that had SharePoint but don’t fully use SharePoint. So why my sudden craving now to explore SharePoint now?

Secured Space

The benefits of a secured platform, it's Microsoft after all. nevertheless, it has built-in security features, like the ability to limit who outside your organization can see your content, set access internally, the ability to track who changed what and when and of course remove full access when one leaves the organisation.

"OUR" space

Collaboration, needless to share in SharePoint means an enhanced collaboration environment and experience, paired with Teams, office 365. What we have is a virtual workspace for OUR team without borders, for us all to meet, chat, collaborate, track and best of all input automation to do some of our work.

AI-enabled

Automation, one of my biggest excitement about SharePoint is that I have stopped using my former tools like Trello, google calendar and stopped my Zoom subscription. Because I have it all in one now with a planner, teams, one-note and outlook calendar. Embarking on SharePoint Workflows also has saved me much time and effort with automation. Also, I don’t miss meetings with pop up and need not ask people to send me the link again because I can’t find the email.

The Sweetest part of it

Overall, its been a breeze, I must add, I was one of those who was reluctant because I was super familiar with the different apps I had on my desktop, but as I embarked on it, I can only say, sweet convenience, which results in my time being used effectively and efficiently, savings minutes searching and logging on, can add up to a stroll on the beach and of course, my cuppa Ice Teh Manis (sweet iced tea). This resonates with my efforts to better manage knowledge, KM should be a stroll on the beach and not seen as a task that drags one down. Overall, optimising SharePoint is going to help make KM seamlessly become part of the sweet part of one's contribution to growing the organisation.