Microsoft SharePoint

Over the last 15 years, SharePoint has emerged as a platform for which Microsoft has created a foundation for both innovation in its own client applications, as well as integration with other 3rd party apps. In the latest move to Office 365, SharePoint has demonstrated its foundational strength in 2 ways. Let's dig in!

If you are familiar with SharePoint at all, you know there are foundational elements of content management, permissions structuring, lists and libraries that have changed the folder paradigm to rich metadata experiences that are also approachable, and a presentation layer that is mostly citizen in the citizen-developer realm. Anyone can figure out how to operate smoothly in SharePoint with a little practice. Those basic foundational elements allow Microsoft Office programs to flex their common DNA and create a more holistic approach to collaboration than simple co-located storage. What does that mean?

SharePoint has moved us collectively to a more mature collaboration model. We had file shares, then common servers, then websites, then those sites (when SharePoint-based) started to allow the content to tell us something about itself rather than just being buried in folders. From there, it started telling us something about the processes that the content was involved in as a true collaboration hub. At the point where we are able to use the environment itself, with rich metadata, to help the content tell a story and be useful - to drive process - we have matured our collaboration models quite a bit. But there's more!

Enter Microsoft Teams. While you may or may not be totally familiar with Teams, the underlying foundation is still SharePoint. SharePoint has allowed platforms like Teams to create a newer front-end experience with the same principled approach of SharePoint. That said, we know how to collaborate in a SharePoint site and we can now turn that experience into a more active collaboration environment via Teams. That takes the collaboration maturity up another step - from passive collaboration to active collaboration. So where should I focus my efforts with all of this?

SharePoint is still the most accessible part of Microsoft's overall ecosystem for collaboration. Some of the new tools in the Office 365 kit are more developer on the citizen-developer scale. SharePoint remains accessible to the masses as the foundational element to the mix. If you will, it is the closest you will get to understanding the heart of how Office 365 / Microsoft thinks. If you understand SharePoint, the rest of the Microsoft Office 365 environment, while sometimes looking a bit different on the surface, will most always have a foundational underpinning in SharePoint. That said - if I had to teach my admins, executive assistants, power users, developers, team leads, interns, and executives one platform to connect them all - it would hands-down be SharePoint. It's an easy win that creates the competitive advantage of matured collaboration models for a long time thereafter.

We are using SharePoint for both faculty and student resources sites. We have tried our best to make these behave like a "website". In addition, we are leveraging other technologies and integrations. I wished SharePoint had two things:
1. A richer "website" like experience. It has limitations and to do what we want I need to get programmers and coders and our institution is to restrictive around settings and security.
2. A better integration with all their Office apps. For example, use of PowerApps that provides a more "native" experience. Same for Microsoft Teams or even Microsoft Bookings.

In short, it has great potential and I hope Microsoft invest some more time and energy in this technology.

Sharepoint has allowed me to be more efficient in different ways, with many of its functionalities, I generally hope that one of them will allow me to make a process more collaborative, controlled and at the same time automated.
Currently the entire organization has access to use the software, in the same way the introduction and migration to Sharepoint from local servers has been gradual, mostly due to people's resistance to something new and unknown. In my department specifically, has been a greater acceptance, integration and discovery by constant learning by some team members who are not exploiting all the advantages of the software yet.

I have been using SharePoint since 2006 and it gives you a platform from which you design and build anything from lists, libraries, collaboration platforms to small systems.