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April 13, 2015

The Main Features of SharePoint 2013 and How to Implement Them Successfully

By TMCnet Special Guest
Sergey Protchenko, senior developer, Itransition

See also: Ten Advantages of Using SharePoint 2013 Collaboration and Social Computing Tools for Better Customer Service



According to Microsoft (News - Alert) market research, around 80 percent of Fortune 500 companies are SharePoint users. Being mostly used as an intranet and server for public facing websites, document collaboration and business intelligence tool, many SharePoint features are overlooked.  In the meantime, it is estimated that information overload cost businesses $997 billion in 2012, and if companies start looking at SharePoint’s underused features, they can save a lot of money and time while utilizing information more efficiently. Below are five SharePoint 2013 features that can help increase productivity without requiring much technical skill. 

1.Newsfeeds

One of the best SharePoint 2013 social tools for gaining competitive advantage in business is the ability to use newsfeeds. Staying current and trendy is a prerequisite for business success, and newsfeeds help enterprise professionals keep up-to-date on niche news, expert advice, business offers, promotions, sales and deals. News bits can be easily updated and are targeted to users depending on the data with which they are associated. Users only get news they need, which keeps time and effort losses to a minimum.

2.My Sites

My Site pages are great tools for enterprise purposes, brand building and customer feedback. SharePoint user personal sites are landing points for all users –  a space where they can store documents, update statuses, post blog entries, interact with others, sign up for news and follow knowledgeable users, as well as documents and sites. A short profile and expertise list allows users to see which sites they should follow to gather relevant news bits. User-friendly UI, easier drag and drop features and simpler sharing of content helps enterprise users exchange huge amounts of information almost in real time.

3.Microblogging

SharePoint microblogging possibilities allow influencers and experts to share their wisdom about news, offers and deals in the most efficient way. Half of enterprises use microblogging as a tool for large companies, inundated with information but desperate to keep communications organized and centralized in order to achieve common goals. Thanks to microblogging, experts in different areas can shout out news, reviews of new technologies, product updates, warnings on glitches and bugs, customer preferences, etc.

4.Community Sites and Community Portals

Communities play a large role in business, and knowing them well helps enterprises study their target audiences more closely. Social features allow for creating communities and sharing relevant content, as well as saving documents locally and following them. Community portals are directories of sites that help users discover new places to share and exchange news and interests; they are a great way to contribute information and ask for help.

5.Utilizing Effective Tags and Sharing Important Documents

Searching for content takes up to 10 percent of work hours on an average business day. Without good search tools, a lot of time is wasted and results can be poor. SharePoint 2013 solves that problem by allowing users to target content with the help of item tagging features, tag (News - Alert) following, trending tags and so on. Tags can be added to pages, documents, profiles and blog posts, organizing information into relevant categories and facilitating search. According to Gartner, Microsoft is a leader in enterprise search, and SharePoint 2013 incorporates FAST (News - Alert) and Bing capabilities, adding better crawling and indexing where user-relevant content is discovered immediately on dynamic search-driven pages. Tagging helps not only to search for data but also to share relevant documents effectively to a specific target audience.

What You Need to Succeed with SharePoint

70 percent of IT-dominated social media initiatives efforts fail. Despite its embedded intuitive social capabilities as well as better mobile and browser support, SharePoint 2013 is still just a tool that has the potential to open up new enterprise possibilities. To fulfill its promise, one has to plan and strategize, hire data and knowledge professionals, and drive effective administrative action to implement and control those efforts. Here are three steps to successfully utilize SharePoint 2013 features:

  • Implement – Data experts should implement chosen strategies, report to management and work with all staff.
  • Control implementation – Make sure all users in the company maximize their communication and collaboration efforts.
  • Control knowledge dissemination – Controlling retention of updates, new policy documents and reports ensures no collaboration effort is wasted.

Besides the features mentioned above, SharePoint can also be used for project management; automated workflows; application development; task management, rollup and aggregation. Despite its popularity and wide use, SharePoint has many surprises in store for enterprises that strive to ease access to information, increase efficiency, manage data overload and automate their daily work. It is a tool that is here to stay and develop with the increasing demands of better information sharing and enterprise collaboration.

About the Author: Sergey Protchenko is a senior developer with Itransition. His professional area of interest is in MS SharePoint, and he was certified as aMicrosoft (News  - Alert) Certified Technology Specialist in SharePoint 2010. He also works with ASP.NETASP.NET MVC and MS SQL Server 2005/2008. Currently, he works on creating apps with the help of such libraries and tools as EXT JS, Telerik RAD Controls for ASP.NET Ajax, jQuery, Aspose, BCL.easyConverter, Open XML, HtmlAgilityPack, log4net, NHibernate, Entity Framework, MigratorDotNet, Quartz.NET (News - Alert), Unity, Camlex.NET and The SharePoint Guidance Library. Sergey graduated from Belarusian State University ofInformatics (News - Alert) and Radioelectronics with a specialty in Computers and Networks. 




Edited by Stefania Viscusi
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