SharePoint

SharePoint is a highly configurable platform that enables organisations to be more effective by web enabling key business processes quickly without having to write lots of complex code. It is tightly integrated with Microsoft Office enabling users to share their documents in SharePoint libraries and sites directly from Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

Typical uses of SharePoint include:

• Document Management
• Records Management
• Project Office
• Product Development
• Knowledge Base
• Policies & Procedures
• Intranet Extranet
• Personal Sites: MySite, CEO, Buy & Sell, Have your say
• Department Sites: Marketing, HR, Children Services, Canteen
• Process Sites: Forms, Capex, Orders, Expenses, Timesheets
• Make content searchable and business intelligence available

SharePoint business and architecture planning

We provide SharePoint planning and architecture services for our clients.

For customers new to SharePoint or looking to make better use of an existing ShrePoint installation, our goal is to establish which business issues SharePoint solves out of the box and demonstrate what would be possible in the first stage of a project.

This may involve a Demo outlining capabilities of the Platform, a Proof-Of-Concept tailored to the client, and workshops with business professionals to gauge how best to implement a SharePoint architecture for enterprise search, content management, enterprise social and portal design.

Once we have prioritised requirements from Business Professionals, we use this information to produce a Proof of Concept where a greater level of understanding is revealed and additional benefits for implementation identified.

SharePoint design and development

If you need to re-skin your SharePoint implementation so it takes on your corporate colours or rework the SharePoint design and UI so it works like your website we can give SharePoint a completely bespoke design.

We also provide bespoke development of SharePoint Apps and Web Apps that integrates with your SharePoint implementation.

On-Premise or in the Cloud

You can choose to run SharePoint wherever you would like to. Either on-premise or in the cloud via Office 365.  Microsoft also provide SharePoint in many of its Office 365 licences so you may already be paying to use it. If running via Office 365, SharePoint will continue to receive updates for new versions automatically, without any additional workload being added to your IT Department.

Pluggable Architecture with Built in Features

SharePoint already includes many of the features that teams and businesses require such as:

• Workflows - enabling actions to be carried out on uploaded content
• Approval
• Search and Indexing
• Reporting
• Microsoft Office Integration
• Retention Schedules

The above can all be configured within “Site Settings” areas of the system.

Powerful FAST Search Functionality

Initially acquired by Microsoft back in 2008, SharePoint 2013 was the first version of SharePoint to come with FAST search built directly into the product. This means that out the box, SharePoint comes with an extremely powerful and tightly integrated Search Engine. Core capabilities of this feature include the ability to search:

• Entire farms
• Rank content
• Generate preview images
• Show only show results based on user access levels

Out the box it supports all the main file formats (i.e. MS Office, PDF, txt etc) and can be extended to support even more. You’ll find that the search service is a big advantage the SharePoint platform.  

OneDrive for Business

With Windows Server we had ‘Offline Files’. In the SharePoint Platform we have OneDrive for Business. This file synchronisation application is built into SharePoint 2013 and allows a user so simply click ‘Sync’ to take libraries of documents offline. This is two-way synchronisation so any files that are updated on the local machine will see their changes published to SharePoint Online.

Simultaneous Document Editing

SharePoint is all about collaboration, and with this comes it’s coupling with Microsoft Word. Two users can open the same document at the same time, and see updates that the other user makes to the document. No more ‘read only’ issues of the past!

Highly Extendable

Microsoft provide extensible interfaces for developers to integrate with SharePoint, consume services, and enhance your business processes. This includes Apps for SharePoint, which allows applications not tied directly into SharePoint to share resources via an Iframe. This allows for the development of third party applications to take place, that interface with either SharePoint Online (Office 365) or On-Premise which do not affect the underlying performance of the platform, and these applications can sit on different servers outside the SharePoint Server Farm. Developers can also access SharePoint from their own applications via it’s built in REST services.