SharePoint, Microsoft’s online sharing platform, has a variety of options to make this program useful for everyone. The various facets of SharePoint make the program customizable to almost any business need for companies of any size, no matter how many employees are involved. Here is a look at the various aspects of SharePoint and the purposes they serve for businesses.
- SharePoint Online. SharePoint Online is a cloud-based service that is hosted by Microsoft and serves businesses of any size. The cloud service allows your employees to run SharePoint from anywhere, rather than installing the program on each computer. Employees can access the SharePoint features from anywhere and one any type of device by subscribing to an Office 365 plan or the standalone SharePoint Online services. Employers and employees can create and share documents and information with everyone or with a select group of people.
- SharePoint Foundation. The foundation for all SharePoint technology is the SharePoint Foundation, formerly called the Windows SharePoint Services. This program allows you to create many types of sites and collaborate with colleagues on web pages, calendar data, documents and other information.
- SharePoint Server. The SharePoint Server allows on-site deployment of all SharePoint services. In addition to the online features of the SharePoint foundation, companies can add in additional features such as content management, business information management and personal sites as well as a Newsfeed.
- SharePoint Designer. This free program allows customization, design and building for Web sites that run on SharePoint Foundation and SharePoint Server programs. The SharePoint Designer allows users to create workflow-enabled solutions to all types of information challenges.
- SharePoint Workspace. This desktop program can use SharePoint site content in an offline format. You can even collaborate on the content with others while you are still offline. The changes will all be synchronized back to the SharePoint site when you reupload it to the online version of SharePoint. The Workspace is called OneDrive after 2013 versions.
Collaboration becomes much easier when you use SharePoint. Whether your business is a huge corporation with hundreds of users or a small company with a few employees, SharePoint can offer you collaborative resources unavailable on many other programs, including offline capabilities to edit and upload material simultaneously.
SharePoint offers the very best in collaboration capabilities for businesses including a full suite of programs that allow for both online and offline editing and document storage.