SharePoint: Where Servers and Staff Come Together

You liked the first 14 tips in our SharePoint Success series, we thought we'd bring you 7 more. Keep in mind, though – these 21 tips, even when you add in the one-shot entries and other compilations we've provided, are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to SharePoint. Be sure to keep your eyes on this blog for more updates here and, for the greatest level of success possible, contact SharePoint Engine for a free consultation on how we can help your organization.

Now, onto the 7 tips!:

1: Create a hub where you can share documents, projects, and information with your potential and current clients. Just be sure you lock it in a password-protected site! 

2: Be sure that all individuals who work with the interface know how to add custom fields. It's incredibly easy to do, it takes only a couple minutes, and it allows each staff-member to get all the information they need for each project. 

3:  Put all your company, team, and other interpersonal announcements in a single place. Once you have, use the dashboard to either quickly link users to that location or – with a little Web Part magic – pull those announcements directly onto their dash. 

4: For non-collaborative projects, tasks, documents, and discussions, encourage your workforce to work on the projects offline and then upload and update the data later on. This will improve the speed your SharePoint runs at by preventing server communication every time a minor change is made. 

5: Use SharePoint to establish brainstorming sessions. Not only does the collaborative environment work well, it leaves a paper-trail that's easy to look back on – and it gives everyone an equal voice, since no actual yelling is required. 

6: Use email notifications to ensure that all your team members stay up-to-date on the latest project additions, changes, and completions. 

7: Encourage your staff to sync their Outlook or other company email address with their mobile device and home office. This ensures that everyone stays at full speed, and it's fairly easy to stop the flow of information to your staff should that individual leave your company.

Want to learn more tactics to bolster the impact of SharePoint on your organization? Look through previous posts in our SharePoint tips series and stay tuned on Twitter and Facebook for updates in the coming weeks.

Cheers,

The SharePoint Engine Team

Effecitve SharePoint Use Means Impressive Growth

Following up on our popular post "7 Ways to Use SharePoint Effectively," we're happy to bring you 7 more tips today. No need to gild the lily that is SharePoint! On to simple ways you can become more effective.

1: Open up document to collaborators, and train your staff on doing likewise. This will improve the sense of teamwork, get the ideas stirring, and allow for swifter communication. 

2: Use the "check-in / check-out" system to manage documents if you're uncertain of how collaboration would work or how changes will interact. 

3: Train your staff on how to restore previous versions of documents. Far too much time is wasted re-writing or re-constructing content that's already been built! Simple reversions to old iterations is often the best path. 

4: Use a single site to store, archive, and organize your emails. This also makes migration to a new/upgraded system far easier. 

5: Use a task-based project system. Give each team-member tasks related to the project, notify them that they have a task, and have them make notes and complete the task within the SharePoint system. 

6: If your company has issues with ineffective documents spreading, documents being bloated, or docs otherwise needing some care and attention, implement the "content approval" feature. This lets you give quick tips and pointers in addition to an opportunity for weeding out useless or inaccurate content. 

7: Allow for telecommuting for specific tasks, such as training. It's easy to set up documents and other training materials that can be pulled from anywhere that gives you access to the web. This lets those who are sick at home stay up on work, cuts cost during training, and gives you an additional incentive by which to retain your top talent.

Hungry for more pointers on how to get every last drop out of SharePoint? Be sure you check out our previous SharePoint tips and stay tuned on Twitter and Facebook for updates in the near future.

Cheers,

The SharePoint Engine Team

Digitize Your Growth with SharePoint

The immense landscape that is SharePoint functionality is easy to lose track of. As a result, even those who don't make major mistakes can still fall well short of taking full advantage of the platform. To help you as you try to milk this magnificent Microsoft system for all it's worth, here are 7 simple ways you can use SharePoint to better your business.

1: Post all of your event-related tasks, documents, notes, and other files to the event itself. You can even sync this up with Outlook!

2: Centralize your task locations. This lets team members find their tasks more quickly, allows for easier synchronization, and lets management check in more quickly.

3: Use a company blog (set to private!) instead of time in your meetings to communicate advances, ideas, and updates. This prevents time-wasting while giving you a visible, hard-copy rendition of current company news.

4: Keep all your project management inside SharePoint itself. This gives you additional filtering and social options while minimizing your overhead; project management software can be pricey.

5: Set up your road-warrior SharePoint experts with mobile access through tablets and smartphones. For more on this process, check out our SharePoint for tablets series.

6: Use a "help ticket" resolution system for your company. This lets you organize and prioritize any issues, see what problems are common, and keep a written trail of the issue's history.

7: Create project dashboard that allows you to filter projects by the elements they contain. This will let you see projects with similar or identical documents, tasks, details, events, and more, and lets you easily track down and replicate projects in the future.

These are just a few of the literally thousands of ways you can use SharePoint to make your organization stronger, faster, and more effective. Keep up-to-date on further tips by subscribing to SharePoint Engine on Twitter and Facebook.

Cheers,

The SharePoint Engine Team

While the default print option for SharePoint 2010 is certainly useful, much of the included data can be done without; specifically, the inclusion of a header that gives document names, navigation, and other system-based details will often be useless when you have a document in print. One of the most effective and simple to implement solutions is a quick change to the CSS of a page.

Thanks to the SharePoint 2010 custom CSS functionality, as well as improved rendering from the 2007 edition of the same, users will be able to take care of the header quite easily. (Users of SharePoint 2007 should note that there are often hidden elements that prevent appropriate rendering when you change the CSS. As such, you will need to either re-enter full CSS or locate the hidden elements before proceeding.)

The primary piece of CSS you'll need is as follows:

#s4-topheader2, #s4-titlerow, #s4-statusbarcontainer { visibility: hidden; display:none; }

This code alone will hide the core header elements during print when you place it within the appropriate media signal (@media print). You can extend this functionality further by connecting the customized CSS with your print preview for a page. To do so, add the code <linl media="print">.

Additional helpful CSS for printing includes the following line: #MSO_ContentTable { margin: 0 }. This line centers the content on a page. You can further alter the page alignments and other visual features with the use of tags such as text-align (left, right, or center) and padding (where you can insert a specific size to determine how much space is put between objects).

If you have additional page elements, or page elements that are named differently than the items above, you can hide those items by inserting the element name with the code { visibility: hidden; display:none;  }. 


For more information on CSS coding, including what elements are functional inside SharePoint, visit w3schools.com.

SharePoint is a framework, a structure, that you must flesh out yourself. While we can do a lot for you as consultants and production workers, it's still important that you make the most out of SharePoint at every possible turn. Here are six simple ways (listed in no particular order) that you can improve your use of SharePoint for rapidly visible results.

1) Organize your events in SharePoint. Include details, assigned tasks, related documents, group posts, and social functionality with the event itself. Integrate with the calendar. Let SharePoint serve as your hub for any major company happenings.

2) Track productivity through SharePoint. If you track tasks and projects within SharePoint, you can create reports on who does what in the company. This will let you compare productivity between individuals and departments, and quickly pin-point individual strengths and opportunities for improvement.

3) Let no person be an island. Have your team members set up social profiles on SharePoint that let the group know about their areas of expertise and that share commonly requested information in a public forum.

4) Use a centralized SharePoint site for your email. This makes organization, reporting, and security much easier.

5) Start a private company blog to share the latest updates. You can save yourself time during meetings and ensure that everyone has access to current data and plans by centralizing that data.

6) Publish all of your training materials. You can help staff members stay up to date by giving them quick access to a web document instead of a physical hand-out. Additionally, by referring to a live document that you can update, you're saving yourself from the "outdated version" headache while saving some trees.

These are just six quick tips to getting more out of SharePoint, but there are hundreds of additional possibilities. If you're ready to truly make the most out of your company's content management, contact SharePoint Engine today.