SharePoint file sharing acts as the basic replacement for the file servers shared folders. You can use it for document storage and it also brings some other features rather than the file server. Further, if you want to easily ship your files around your email systems and the business’s network, then SharePoint should be your best solution.
What are the common SharePoint uses?
Team website
SharePoint team site set up for your business is cost effective, fast and facilitates team communication while creating a website with a professional appearance. The SharePoint team sites contain lots of useful features and you can also personalize your site by changing its appearance and adding some functionality without using any other application or by using any programming.
To set up your website, you only need to select a SharePoint site from the many templates gallery and then customize it as you desire. You can then choose to modify the website pages by adding pictures, text and tables by using your web browser. This task does not need any programming experience. After customizing the web pages you can quickly create a separate site under your main site for projects and individual teams. These sites are ideal for service businesses, knowledge intensive sites and any person in need of a group or team collaboration.
Project management
Whether it’s your sales activities, accounting or marketing processes management, with SharePoint your teams can easily make sites for your business’s projects and also manage them efficiently. Your team can also synchronize these sites with MS project pro or even use project server to integrate them. SharePoint ensures that your employees have accurate and up to date information related to the projects. This feature makes it easier for them to control, share and also reuse any information. Moreover, this enables them to make better business decisions.
The business search engine
By using SharePoint to organize your business’s documents, you will be making it easier for your employees to rapidly find the business’s information which would otherwise remain as inaccessible on your employees’ local computers. SharePoint extends beyond the simple document searches although employees can quickly find other users, announcements, conversations and many more.
Intra/extra/internet
SharePoint also provides you with everything that you require to successfully make and manage an intranet website. Intranet websites are suitable for communicating some significant internal information, which may include announcements, corporate mission, the HR policies and the business’s vision statement. Within a very short time, your users will access your business ideas, conversations, information and schedules around the office and the world.
With SharePoint, you can also create extranet website to allow the external users including suppliers and distributors to access your business’s information and share it with your employees via a monitored and secured system. It also enhances communication with your clients as it may serve as a content management system for your business’s customer facing website. It makes the production of a professional looking website which will appeal to your customers and you can also easily organize and edit the websites content in a jiffy. To do this, you don’t need any programming skill.
Document management
The SharePoint enables you to create some folders called document libraries. The libraries may contain any of the files you wish to upload like PDF and Word documents.
SharePoint deep integration with office programs allows your team to easily share and also create collaborations by using the tools they are familiar with. Some of the ways you can use the office programs with a SharePoint team site include saving documents, editing data and calendar and contact list synchronization.
Benefits of using SharePoint file sharing
• Improved team productivity
With SharePoint, you will easily connect people with the exact information they need. The site users will be able to create team workplaces, organize documents, coordinate calendars, update through alerts and announcement and receive important updates. By using the many templates, they can quickly create wikis and blogs. Furthermore, the mobile users can enjoy the benefit of SharePoint offline synchronization capability. These many features will highly boost the productivity of your team.
• Guaranteed information integrity and safety
SharePoint enhances document management capabilities which facilitate the integrity of all documents stored within the site. It allows users to check out documents before they edit them. It also offers them the ability to view any revisions to documents and also restore the previous session. Moreover, it provides them a chance to set the item level security and set documents.
• The site users will stay up to the speed
SharePoint user interface improvements include menus which simplify the navigation within the sites enhanced views. The sites integration with many familiar productivity tools including office programs makes your users easily get up to the speed faster. A quick example, users are able to create posts and edit documents, they can also create workspaces and they can also view and edit calendars on the sites while using their office programs.
• Solutions updated to your specific needs
The standard work-spaces in SharePoint are very easy to implement. Furthermore, if you need a more customized deployment, you can quickly start with the many application templates which address the processes of your business or the task sets.
• Better information utilization
You don’t have to keep running around your office looking for some information. SharePoint search capability is convenient and will make any document search very easy. A simple query will inform you whether the information you are seeking is readily available within the business’s documentation. If it is not, you will only need to write it and upload it to the SharePoint file sharing for other users to access it.
Conclusion
You can get the best of both worlds by simply combining SharePoint security with the performance and flexibility of external file system. SharePoint offers you a chance of importing any existing file structures although by using it, you will incur some cost. SharePoint stores any file you upload in the same database it runs. You should take this to mean that the hundreds and the potentially thousands of documents have taken the valuable database storage in SharePoint, which may in turn influence SharePoint’s performance. SharePoint file sharing limits the size of the file that you can store and in addition any investment made in existing storage solution turns into waste.