Are You Ready for Microsoft SharePoint 2013?
Microsoft SharePoint is an incredibly powerful platform that delivers huge benefits to various facets of the business. There is much new and exciting functionality and out of those many, here are some of Microsoft SharePoint 2013 features which will help people to get there.
Business User Benefits
1. Access anywhere anytime – People can access contents through any browser or smartphone and even on iOS devices anytime provided you are connected to the internet. You can also sync content onto a device and work on the same offline and sync back again.
2. Add & Share Content with ease – People can drag and drop contents straight into any browser window and then share a document with your colleagues by simply clicking the Share link.
3. Aggregated Task Management – People can view tasks on project sites and can easily edit them in the browser window. These are then rolled up into the MySite section to show users a combined list of tasks (including personal tasks) that have been added/modified in Microsoft SharePoint and in Exchange 2013.
4. Robust Search – People can search for colleagues, content, videos, and reports, sites and get into the details both via text values and visual refiners to easily find information to reuse. In a preview pane, Users can use Documents preview including drilling down into the detail of the document. Users can also retrieve information easily based on historical search behavior.
5. Effective Content Collaboration with others – People can work on the content concurrently as their colleagues are. This is useful when you are working on meetings notes via OneNote and putting together large documents or presentations where your colleagues are also working on the part of the content they are responsible for. This makes it swifter to combine content.
6. Integration with Exchange Server – People can work with all team based communication from a Microsoft SharePoint site (i.e. from a single location). These emails will be stored in an Exchange mailbox so are also fully functional from within the mail client (i.e. MS Outlook etc.)
7. Expert Advice – People can use Community Sites to enquire their queries/doubts to the specialists and discuss items with peers. People can also search for experts based on items they have been working on as well as information they have entered.
8. The pool of Apps – With the introduction of Apps and the Marketplace in Microsoft SharePoint 2013, the apps for Microsoft SharePoint are an easy way to add functionality to a particular Microsoft SharePoint site (may include applications running outside of Microsoft SharePoint).
This makes it a lot easier to configure a site for a specific purpose without sound technical knowledge.
Portal Governance Benefits
1. Microsoft SharePoint site policies can be used to define suitable actions to occur when a site owner closes a particular site. After closure, that site/s can be archived or other necessary actions can be performed automatically.
2. An Organization can have a Controlled Application Store to control and apply security over which applications can be installed by site owners and includes an interface for requesting and managing licenses. These can be internal applications or applications that are purchased and/or run externally to the organization.
3. Microsoft Office 365 has the similar functionality (in the majority of features) as of on-premise installation. For an Intranet portal, people can choose to run the same on a cloud without loss of functionality or performance (here, the onus is on Microsoft to manage and maintain the Office 365 service). A Cross environment can also be created where Microsoft SharePoint search can be designed to be self-managing to support reporting and rights management and provide an integrated user experience across cloud and on-premise environments.