Introduction to Microsoft SharePoint

Microsoft SharePoint is basically a Web-based collaborative platform, it comes under the umbrella of Tech giant Microsoft, it was launched in 2001. It is mainly used to handle web application development and content management by providing powerful tools such as organizing content, providing collaborating, and managing information in a very structured way. it is primarily sold as document storage and management system. Microsoft Sharepoint is highly configurable and has a vast application among organizations, It is accessible anywhere in the world via a browser and the internet.

Microsoft also states that Microsoft  SharePoint has Over 190 million active users across a massive  200,000 customer organization.

Microsoft Sharepoint has mainly 6  different areas which are stated below :

1. Sites: managing and building websites
2. Communities: Creating a social and collaborative environment
3. Content: Managing your data and records
4. Search: Search your info
5. Composites: Work Together
6. Insights:  Digging for Business intelligence

What is Sharepoint Online?

1. In simple words, Microsoft Sharepoint is a combination of cloud and web-based technology that makes it easy to store and share information with an organization
2. it allows for collaboration with the users such as vendors and customers.
3. SharePoint online is basically divided into three main parts: onesite, a newsfeed, and sites.
4. SharePoint Online is a part of the office 365 suite of services
5. Big and small companies use Microsoft SharePoint to create websites

What are the benefits of using Sharepoint?

Following are the benefits of using SharePoint:

• Cloud framework: Because of its cloud based technology, it is fast, simple and scalable, as it is cloud-based so you can connect your project from anywhere around the world
• Document management: Management of documents is the most widely used feature of Sharepoint. It includes many features that help to maintain documents. One of the document management features includes version control,  Document Search, Document Check out & Check-In in,  Customized Templates Document Workflow, Permission alerts, and Document alerts.
• Team Collaboration: One of the most important features of SharePoint is that it allows you to connect with your colleagues and business partners in a creative way to share ideas, documents, and important information regarding an organization. This approach allows information and knowledge to flow more frequently throughout the organization.
• Security: As we all know that the data of an organization is the most crucial thing, but Sharepoint ensures you that whatever the data you are sharing it will be secured in every possible way. it also uses cloud solutions to ensure that confidential documents that are being stored on the cloud are never compromised to any security risk.
• Highly Responsive: Sharepoint is highly responsive across all devices and platforms. It performs important tasks such as sharing documents, storing the records of business reports, answering customer queries, etc.
• Integrated platform: It allows easy integration techniques such as Extensible Mark-up Language (XML) , Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP),  numerous Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), and event handlers for documents and lists.
• Content Management:  For a non-technical person, creating, updating, and deleting information on a website is a very difficult task. SharePoint allows content management, which helps non-technical people to easily create, modify, and delete content from their websites.

Elaboration on the features of Sharepoint:

• Connectivity with mobile:  The best feature of  Microsoft sharepoint is that we can connect to it from any mobile phone or tablet with an internet connection enabled in it. We can read and modify our lists/libraries, documents, and other site contents using our device. This is one of the best features of SharePoint.
• Browser support: Microsoft sharepoint is supported by almost all of the browsers across the internet, including the latest internet explorer, Apple safari, google chrome, and Mozilla firefox. so it does not depend on which browser you are currently using you can access sharepoint from any browser.
• Rich user interface: Sharepoint provides a rich user interface. it makes it easier for their users to interact with the sharepoint features.
• Microsoft Suite Integration: weather Be it  Excel, Word, PowerPoint, or Outlook, SharePoint online can be seamlessly integrated into the entire suite of Microsoft business applications. And, it has greater compatibility with a host of key web browsers such as Chrome, Edge, Safari, Firefox, etc.
• Content Creation with ease: it allows users to easily create and modify  content on their website with the help of rich user interface and functionality of the sharepoint
• Publishing content on the web: It allows users to publish content on the web easily basically non technical person find it difficult to handle CRUD operations on the website but sharepoint makes it easy for everyone.
• Collaboration with others: it includes advanced collaboration with wikis, blogs, and forums.
• Integration with outlook: Sharepoint also integrates with Outlook and it extends the capability of the sharepoint .it  allows users to use drag-drop or copy-paste to move emails to the folder and  It helps the users to synchronize the folders with the Microsoft SharePoint.
• Productivity: We can Increase our Productivity in many factors.
• Multi-purpose functionality built in: SharePoint’s greatest advantage is its flexibility. Administrators can assign different privilege levels based on user status. Moreover, the software has almost all functions related to document sharing, file management, social networking, business informations.
• Real-Time Collaboration: We can work on the same document if there are many employees in our organization at the same time.

What is Sharepoint used for?

The main use of sharepoint is to Create a Website. it can be used as a secure place to store and organize all the documents in a structured way, from where they can be accessed easily. Sharepoint is also used for content creation, with the help of sharepoint users can create quality content.

The SharePoint Framework provides a development model based on the TypeScript language. its technical stack is  node.js, yeoman, web stack,  npm, and gulp. It also embraces a modern web technologies development method. It is the only supported way to customize the new modern experience user interface.  It has been globally available since mid-2017. It allows a web developer to step into Microsoft SharePoint development more easily.

What is Sharepoint App? 

sharepoint is a stand-alone web-based application that extends and enhances the functionality of a SharePoint site. SharePoint apps can be made for any functionality that is not readily available within SharePoint. that means there is some functionality that is not included in the website version but is in the app.

sharepoint app is also launched by Microsoft to make things easier.  it is a part of office 365 suite services .  . it was first launched in 2013 by Microsoft. Millions of users of smartphones and tablets are accustomed to downloading and using simple yet effective apps on their mobile devices. Similarly, SharePoint users now have a platform that is more flexible and open for the development, hosting, and distribution of SharePoint apps that are designed to be quick to set up, manage, use, upgrade, and remove. 

some of the features of the sharepoint app are – 

1. Corporate news app – it allows you to manage client app parts in sharepoint sites. it allows you to manage news content.
2. Quick poll app – it allows quick analysis of surveys and getting the feedback
3. myFAQ app – This app allows you to create and maintain a bunch of frequently asked questions for people visiting your SharePoint site.

Hosting sharepoint apps:

1. The SharePoint 2013 app model facilitates two primary approaches to hosting apps for SharePoint: SharePoint-hosted and cloud-hosted. An app for SharePoint can have both SharePoint-hosted and cloud-hosted components.
2. SharePoint-hosted apps are installed on a SharePoint 2013 site, called the host web, and have their resources hosted on a subsite called the app web. The apps can reuse common SharePoint components, such as lists and Web Parts; however, the apps can only use JavaScript and not any server-side code.
3. Cloud-hosted apps for SharePoint includes components that are deployed and hosted outside of the SharePoint farm. A cloud-hosted app for SharePoint interacts with a SharePoint 2013 site but also uses resources and services that reside on the remote site.

In fact Apps in SharePoint 2013 is not tied to just traditional SharePoint development tools and can be developed on common platforms and tools for building web applications such as HTML, JavaScript, PHP, .NET, and Microsoft Visual Studio. The Cloud App Model supports a multi-tier architecture in which the app’s business logic, data, and user interface (UI) can use separate components. For example, an app could have its presentation logic in HTML and JavaScript and runs on the client, its business logic in Microsoft .NET, and its data stored in an SQL server. Apps can be designed where one component could use SharePoint functions such as search, workflows, lists, and social networking, and other components could be external to SharePoint.

How is SharePoint Useful for Collaboration?

Sharepoint can be used for collaboration at an enterprise level, as we all know collaboration is an important factor in the continuity of the business process and also for their effective implementation. it also improves employee engagement. and for these things to take place sharepoint can help us a  lot.

Microsoft SharePoint is a widely used enterprise-level and business-level platform that in addition to content management and project management, also offers rich collaboration capabilities. Holding a Microsoft Gold Competency in Collaboration and Content. In this article, we’d like to share with you our vision of the essence of enterprise collaboration and show how SharePoint fits into this concept.

In general, SharePoint is widely used in business. So, there’s no need to adopt any new software while establishing collaboration in a company, which is cheaper and adds to user adoption.

 But what does SharePoint have to offer as a collaboration platform?

It mainly offers two types of collaboration :

1. Team-based collaboration: For a team to work together on a project sharepoint can offer a large variety of features that may be very useful while doing a collaboration with other teammates. SharePoint enables any team member to create a project, and decide who can participate in it and what access each participant will have.
2. Company-wide collaboration: Microsoft SharePoint also offers company-wide collaboration. SharePoint can support cross-departmental collaboration through various tools like content management systems and storage of important documents. However, the core of company-wide collaboration is the intranet that connects all company units and stores all corporate documents, policies, news, etc. Employees from different departments can communicate through the intranet instantly with message tools, blogs, discussion boards, etc. And besides business communication, SharePoint intranets can support corporate life through communities, which creates weak ties that are valuable for boosting collaboration.

There is a number of reasons that make SharePoint good for employee collaboration:

1. Affordability of the cloud deployment –  Sharepoint is very affordable, it only costs $8.00/month. after buying a subscription you can begin using it
2. No requirement for coding –  users don’t need to have any coding knowledge, they must need to assemble things
3. Integrated environment – SharePoint is compatible with other Microsoft products, which is one of the main reasons for its popularity. it also integrates easily with third-party software such as CRM etc.
4. Adaptability – SharePoint allows a company to use only needed tools without overloading it with unnecessary software. Thus, SharePoint enables creating a solution that meets the collaboration needs of businesses of any size or domain.
5. Managing permissions–  it enables managing user permissions according to their roles. This makes collaboration well-organized as SharePoint regulates who is allowed to see, edit, delete, etc. documents and perform various actions like approvals.
6. Increased productivity –  it allows users to connect anywhere in the world for example a user can connect to it from home thus increasing productivity.
7. Enhanced project management–   SharePoint enables keeping version history for documents, as well as real-time collaboration and commenting. Thus, it creates full visibility into projects and ensures everything is on track due to such functions as monitoring tasks, deadlines, etc. it also ensures centralized project management throughout an organization.

What is a SharePoint Farm?

In simple words Sharepoint Farm is a logical grouping of sharepoint servers that share a common resource provided by Microsoft, Most commonly the sharepoint Farm is operated stand-alone but can also use the resources shared by the other farms and it can also provide resources to another farm.

If an organization is using a sharepoint then it will have its own configurational database, which is managed by the Powershell interface . in the Microsoft sharepoint, each server can directly interface with the centralized configured database. Microsoft sharepoint servers use this to make sure the services are configured. A SharePoint farm can be hosted in a web-based cloud, in any company’s private data center, or across multiple data centers in different locations of the world.