SharePoint allows us to store and share files and folders using your preferred online browser. All search engines and various gadgets are compatible with SharePoint. The platform is well-suited to sharing files in a variety of formats. The process is straightforward due to the user interface’s ease of use. 

Sharing documents (files/folders) with external users is a little more complicated than sharing them with internal users. It may be necessary to share content (files, folders, etc.) outside your firm under specific circumstances. Let us guide you on sharing a contract document from your SharePoint document library with a vendor outside your business(organization) or sharing the entire folder with all the associated documents. 

What Is External Sharing in SharePoint 

External sharing  describes sharing content, such as files, from within SharePoint to a user outside your company. 

For those making the most of Microsoft 365’s intuitive applications, SharePoint is the primary tool for document management, sharing, and storage. This is important because many configurable permissions, when it comes to external file sharing, are controlled through SharePoint’s admin center. 

Even though external collaboration can happen across different Microsoft 365 solutions, including OneDrive and Teams, SharePoint is considered the most central way of doing this. 

What User Can Access from SharePoint Outside Network 

External users can access SharePoint Site, Folders, and Files. You need to enable the external sharing capabilities on the site.  

Share SharePoint Folders Externally 

1. Navigate to the Document library.
2. Select the folder you like to share and right-click on it.
3. Click on  Share.

 4. Now click on the “People you specify can view”.  

 5. Now choose “Specific People” from the options on the pop-up and click the Apply button. Also, there is an option to allow or not allow editing of the folder. If you want to enable the user to edit files, you can let them use via the “Allow editing” option. 

 6. Type the external user’s email and hit Send.

Above we checked the steps to share the folder with external users; Now, we see the steps mentioned below to share Files with external users. 

Share Files Externally 

1. Navigate to the Document library. 
2. Move to the folder and open it. 
3. Select the file you like to share, right-click and then click on Share. 

4. Now click on the “People you specify can view”. 

 5. Now choose Specific People from the options on the pop-up and click the Apply button. Also, there is an option to allow or not allow editing of the file. If you want to enable the user to edit files, you can let them using the “Allow editing” option. Also, you can restrict a user from downloading; you can do that using the “Block download” option. 

 6. Enter the external user’s email and hit Send.

Steps to Access the Shared Folder/Files by The Receiver  

We are sharing the steps to access the file and the same goes with the folder. 

1. External user receives an email 

 2. Click on the “Open” button in the email. On clicking the Open page “Request verification code” will open. 

 3. Click on the “Send Code”. 

 4. Email with the Code is sent to the user. The code is valid for 15 minutes. 

 5. Enter the code and Verify. 

 6. Great…. Now user can access the file. 

What External Users Can Do with The Files and Folders 

We can permit the User to modify the Files or Folders while sharing them. Users can do the procedures described below if you choose the “Allow Edits” option while sharing the file: 

• Upload and Download files and folders.
• Create new folders and upload files.
• Delete files and folders.
• Edit files and folders.
• Transfer files from a folder to another and change the name and format of a particular file.
• Can share the files and folders with others.

Some things are still off-limits, even with enabled editing. Here’s what the receiver is unable to do: 

• Edit or rename a root directory. This goes for other upper hierarchy folders.
• From your SharePoint server, open other folders. They can only view and edit what you have shared.
• Access anything else on your SharePoint site without permission.

How to Configure External Sharing in SharePoint Online 

In Microsoft 365, a global administrator can set up external sharing on two different levels. 

• Set up external sharing in your environment’s SharePoint Online. 
• Set up external sharing on a specific site. 

Set up external sharing in your environment’s SharePoint Online: 

1. Navigate to the Apps. 
2. Click on the Admin. 

 1. In the Microsoft 365 admin center navigate to the Admin centers and Click on the SharePoint. 

 2. In the SharePoint admin center, navigate to the Policies under the Policies, and click on Sharing. 

 3. You can configure the External sharing capabilities from the Sharing section at the tenant level. 

Set up external sharing on a specific site: 

1. Navigate to the Apps and Click on the Admin. 
2. In the Microsoft 365 admin center, navigate to the Admin centers and Click on SharePoint. 
3. In the SharePoint admin center, navigate to the Sites; under the Sites, Click on the Active Sites. 

 4. Choose the site collection where you want the external sharing features enabled. Click on the ellipsis and select the Sharing option. 

 5. You can now access the options to enable external sharing. 

Conclusion

In this article, we learned about the external sharing of files and folders, step by step, and also shared the steps for the recipient. Externally sharing content is now easier than ever, thanks to the cloud. Previously, sharing content externally in SharePoint/Office 365 was a hassle. That’s why a sizable portion of active Microsoft 365 users chose not to use it for file sharing (especially with external users) and instead chose Google Drive or Dropbox, which were much more user-friendly to the average User becoming familiar with the cloud earlier. 

Thanks to some recent Microsoft updates, sharing files and folders with third parties is much simpler than ever. If you have any queries related to SharePoint, Contact Us.

In this blog, we will walk you through the enormous potential of Microsoft 365 and SharePoint in business process automation.

At Beyond Intranet, we have engaged with many of our clients to help them leverage business process automation capabilities in Microsoft 365 including SharePoint Workflows, Power Automate, and Power Apps to boost business efficiency and speed across departments and processes so businesses are empowered to deliver fast and digital-friendly customer experience. We aim at using our 15+ years of SharePoint consulting and development experience to help you understand the possibilities within SharePoint and how you can use it as a SharePoint Automation platform.

What is Business Process Automation?

Business process automation helps organizations improve business efficiency by empowering their teams to leverage technology such as software applications to ease up their recurring tasks or processes performed on a routine basis. It helps to replace manual efforts by automating these repetitive processes while reducing costs, enhancing efficiency, and expediting processes.

Does your business even need  SharePoint automation?

Even though business process automation is not restricted to a handful of an enterprise’s functions, but, before diving in, it’s necessary to ask yourself the below questions that indicate the need for SharePoint automation.

5 signs your business needs SharePoint Automation Workflows

• Does your enterprise deal with a huge volume of tasks most of which are of a repetitive nature? 
• Do most of these tasks involve multiple people in execution?
• Does your team work on tight deadlines?
• Do your tasks affect other organizational processes and systems?
• Does your work involve compliance and audit trails?

How to leverage SharePoint for Business Process Automation?

According to market research firm IDC, companies lose 20 to 30 percent in revenue every year due to inefficiencies. SharePoint Workflows can streamline and automate a wide variety of business processes. These workflows can range from collecting signatures, feedback, or approvals for a plan or document, to tracking the current status of a routine procedure. 

By 2023, digital automation will no longer be a need but a norm for businesses around the world. 

Here is how you can use SharePoint to automate workflows and also leverage other SharePoint and Microsoft 365 tools that you can consider for business process automation.

• Create SharePoint alerts

Alerts in SharePoint offer a great way to stay updated and get notified whenever a file or folder changes in SharePoint. Creating alerts helps users to be aware of any changes made in their Microsoft SharePoint documents or items on their site. Users can easily set up an alert for a list, library, folder, file, or list item. 

Related article: How to create SharePoint List? 

You can even set up an alert for a specific folder in a library so that you will only receive an alert when changes occur on any file in that folder.

 2. Enable Content Approval 

Using Power Automate, you can enable the content approval feature in SharePoint libraries for documents that contain sensitive information. You can simply put an approval process for documents in the document library where you require approval of documents.

Using this content approval process, documents pending approval will not be visible to users until they are approved.

 3. Use built-in SharePoint workflows

Built-in SharePoint workflows offer a variety of ways to address common challenges that your business might face including approvals, feedback, digital signatures, managing tasks with phases, and even content publishing. 

Checking up and keeping track of tasks including forwarding documents and sending reminders means a lot of extra work. It can be overwhelming for you or your colleagues as it causes a constant stream of interruptions. SharePoint offers pre-built workflow templates that let you automate certain tasks, such as gathering signatures or getting approval for a document so you can eliminate the burden of running these repetitive processes manually.

For example, when you work on documents you can use the SharePoint document approval workflow to run the process to check and track, and reminding and forwarding are done by the workflow, automatically. 

If someone is late in completing a task, or if some other issue comes up, most of the included workflows generate a notification to let you know about it. This way, the job to monitor the process is also reduced.

 4. Build flows using Power Automate

Using Power Automate, you can Set up workflows for lists and libraries within your Microsoft Lists, SharePoint, and OneDrive. Flows save your time and effort and help bring consistency and efficiency to your regular tasks. 

Power Automate also helps you automate common tasks among SharePoint, other Microsoft 365 services, and third-party services.

Here is what you can do with SharePoint using Power Automate:

• Automate data extraction – including verification, and population of data from spreadsheets, PDFs, or other documents. This expedites the process to pull, check, and generate reports from data.
• Automate document processing – pick information from forms, PDFs, pictures, emails, and other data sources. It helps you generate or share documents quickly and easily. 
• Automate workflows – Your works might involve a particular series of actions that you must automate all such tasks. For Example: include checking stock, placing orders, filling invoices, sending customers updates, and so on. 
• Automate the flow of critical information – It is critical to save, manage, and share- your important documents and business info. By using countless connectors and plug-ins within SharePoint you can make it easier to fetch email attachments, tweets, work tasks, and more. You can even store and share those automatically with your dispersed colleagues. 
• Automate manual work and third-party processes – Your organization might be using some additional steps to verify user data, sales information, or other essential details of your work, you can utilize a huge library of tools and connectors within SharePoint that can completely eliminate these extra efforts. 
• Automate typical work processes and steps in your projects – Your typical workday might involve a series of multiple tasks which can be performed within minutes instead of hours by automating tasks like sending an email, creating a task on your Planner, and sending messages to your team and so on. 

 5. Use SharePoint Designer 

Creating workflows using SharePoint Designer is a great way to manage a variety of business processes in your enterprise including the simplest to the most complex processes. With the help of a SharePoint designer, you can automate both business application processes and human collaborative processes. 

A business application workflow enables updates in one data source right after a change happens in another data source; whereas human collaborative processes workflows enable users to send a document to an employee’s manager for approval.

 6. Use Visual Studio 

While using SharePoint Designer, you can only create workflows comprised of a few stages, Visual Studio offers another powerful type of workflow: the state machine workflow which allows you to model your workflow in an event-driven manner. Though building workflows using visual studio requires strong technical expertise, its numerous capabilities to build complex workflows offer a great deal of flexibility and customization to developers to create workflows that support more than one business process. Another advantage of building workflows with Visual Studio in SharePoint is that you can create a few useful templates and further deploy them to multiple SharePoint sites.

 7. Use Nintex Workflow Designer 

Even if you don’t get the specific features in your workflows built using SharePoint Designer or don’t have the skills to build workflows in Visual Studio, you can still build a solution with a variety of custom features using any other third-party tools like Nintex to create workflows. SharePoint workflows built using Nintex also enable enterprises to leverage a wide-ranging and sophisticated workflow automation functionality. 

Nintex workflows tightly integrate with SharePoint enabling IT managers to improve the functionality of their SharePoint experience and increase the business value of their workflows.

For users who are already friendly with the SharePoint environment and its established methods to save documents, assign tasks, and record user information, it is even better to bring workflows from any other platform like Infopath by migrating workflows to Nintex and integrating them within SharePoint.

Conclusion:

SharePoint is undoubtedly a promising platform for enterprises looking to create custom automated workflows using tools from the suite of Microsoft 365 products like  Microsoft Power Automate and add-ins including Visual Studio, SharePoint Designer, and other third-party tools. By SharePoint Automation, enterprises can not only improve employees’ daily routines but also eliminate manual, repetitive processes and free up themselves to focus on more valuable work.

Enterprises often choose to bring in the workflow automation functionality using certain add-ins and third-party tools as the native Microsoft tool offers limited features. In some instances, enterprises need custom features for a better interface that is easier to navigate to complete simple  SharePoint automation tasks.

Developing robust workflow management and automation capabilities across your business processes within SharePoint is the best way to enhance your SharePoint automation experience and the business value of your SharePoint platform.

To learn more about our SharePoint Workflows and Business Process Automation capabilities, talk to our SharePoint consultants now.

The updated navigation switcher is now generally available. The visibility of the site navigation can also be turned off completely. By modifying the navigation’s orientation and visibility, site owners can tailor the layouts and alignment styles of their team site.

To change the navigation orientation, follow the steps below:

1. Go to the team site collection where you want to switch the orientation from vertical to horizontal.

2. Click on the gear icon from the top right.

3. Select the ‘Change the look’ option.

4. Now from the change the look screen, select navigation.

5. Under navigation you can see the option to change the orientation.

6. Mega menus options are only available for horizontal orientation.

Conclusion

If you were looking for the release of this feature, your wait will soon be over. You can share with your team how the new feature to change the orientation is coming soon and how to do it?

If you have any additional questions about changing the orientation of the team site navigation, or general questions about SharePoint, connect with us.

You may now modify the domain in your SharePoint and OneDrive URLs using PowerShell if your company has gone through a rebranding, merger, or acquisition. You can now modify your SharePoint URLs from contoso.sharepoint.com to fabrikam.sharepoint.com if your company name has changed from Contoso to Beyondkey.

Follow the below steps to rename your domain

Add the new domain name

1. First, check the new domain you want is available. To check enter https://beyondkey.sharepoint.com in a browser, for example, if you want your SharePoint and OneDrive URLs to start with beyondkey.sharepoint.com. If you get a 404 error (this site can’t be reached), that means the address is probably available.

2. If you get a sign-in page or a notice saying your username couldn’t be discovered in the beyondkey.sharepoint.com directory, the domain is already taken, and you’ll have to try again.

3. If you control the domain for another subscription, you must delete the tenant in Azure AD. The process of deleting a tenant and making the domain available usually takes three days.

4. Now, navigate to https://aka.ms/SPORenameAddDomain (To access the custom domain names page in the Azure AD admin portal, navigate to https://aka.ms/SPORenameAddDomain. You won’t be able to effectively create your custom onmicrosoft.com domain if you go to the page instead of using the link.)

5. Select ‘Add custom domain’

6. In the Custom domain name box, enter the full new “. onmicrosoft.com” domain, and then select Add domain. ( It must be a “onmicrosoft.com” domain when adding the domain. For example, if you wish to rename your tenant to fabrikam.sharepoint.com, put fabrikam.onmicrosoft.com as the domain. You do not need to buy the “onmicrosoft.com” domain and no public DNS registration is required to use it.)

7. If you receive an error message stating that the domain is not available, try a different one.

8. You may receive a notice stating that the properties could not be found after receiving confirmation that the domain was successfully added. To refresh domain references, choose the message.

9. To return to the Custom domain names page, select the name of your tenant from the navigation at the top of the page.

10. Check that the onmicrosoft.com domain you added is listed and that the Status is set to Verified (If the status is NOT “Verified” then you will NOT be able to perform a rename).

Use Microsoft PowerShell to rename your domain

1. To run the PowerShell, you will require the latest version of the SharePoint online management shell. (Uninstall “SharePoint Online Management Shell” from Add or Remove Programs if you installed a prior version of the SharePoint Online Management Shell.)

2. Now connect to Microsoft365 by PowerShell using global admin or SharePoint admin credentials.

Example:

Connect-SPOService -Url https://beyondkey-admin.sharepoint.com

3. To specify a new domain name, use the command below.

Start-SPOTenantRename -DomainName <DomainName> -ScheduledDateTime <YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS>           [-WhatIf] [-Confirm]

4. Where “DomainName” is the part before “sharepoint.com” or “onmicrosoft.com” and “ScheduledDateTime” is at least 24 hours in the future, but not more than 30 days. The time you enter is based on the current date and time of the computer you’re using.

Example:

Start-SPOTenantRename -DomainName “beyondkey” -ScheduledDateTime “2021-12-31T10:25:00”

5. If the PowerShell command Start-SPOTenantRename is not found or nothing is returned, make sure you installed the latest SharePoint Online Management Shell. Before installing the latest version, you might need to uninstall all previous versions by running

Uninstall-Module Microsoft.Online.SharePoint.PowerShell -Force -AllVersions

6. You can get the status of the rename by running Get-SPOTenantRenameStatus. Make sure you open a new PowerShell window to sign in again. The date and time shown with this command is in UTC format.

7. During and after the rename, you can get the state of a site by running Get-SPOSiteRenameState.

8. To cancel a rename that has not started, you can run Stop-SPOTenantRename.

Notes:

1. This feature is currently in public preview and is only available to organizations with a total of 1000 SharePoint sites and OneDrive accounts. When you try to start a domain rename and get error 773 “Not Implemented,” the feature isn’t enabled for your organization yet because Microsoft is still rolling it out.

2. Changing your SharePoint domain name might take several hours to days depending on the number of sites and OneDrive users that you have.

3. During the rename, any actions that create new OneDrive’s and sites will be temporarily restricted (for example, starting a new team or private channel in Microsoft Teams).

4. Only SharePoint and OneDrive URLs are affected by this change. It has no effect on email addresses.

5. Organizations that have set up multi-geo will not be able to use this feature.

6. We create a redirect at the former address when you rename your SharePoint domain.

7. Your SharePoint domain can only be renamed once every six months.

8. It’s not possible to rename your SharePoint domain back to its original name after you’ve renamed it. If you change your SharePoint domain from contoso.sharepoint.com to fabrikam.sharepoint.com, you won’t be able to convert it back to contoso.sharepoint.com.

Final Thoughts!

Please feel free to connect with us on your SharePoint customization needs. Contact us now.

Introduction

Document Management is considered a key process in any business. Information must be sorted and methods of sharing these documents with relevant people should be identified.

SharePoint is a great resource for document collaboration and user permissions. Our SharePoint-based document management system makes storing, sorting, searching, and sharing of information/ documents easier.

This custom solution can be tweaked per the business needs of your specific organization. Learn more about the features and benefits of our custom DMS below.

Important Features of SharePoint Document Management System

Below are several important features and benefits for our SharePoint-based document management system:

1. Multiuser application: Log in multiple users at any given point of time to upload new documents, approve/reject, or download any document

2. Email notifications: Receive email notifications when a new document comes into the system to approve or reject the document.

3. Archiving: Archive older documents to display what is important.

4. Version control: Collaborate across multiple departments on the approval of a single document with the versioning intact.

5. Search: Assign keywords to any document to improve search results.

6. User access permissions: Permit specific users to upload documents, which admins and super-admins can approve or reject. It is possible to control  which documents can be  viewed or downloaded.

7. Organisation: Sort your documents based on departments/ classification. Additional to this categories and subcategories can be created to be assigned to any document.

Key benefits of SharePoint Document Management System

With an electronic document management system, lost documents are a thing of the past. Now, all your files are safe in one secure, central electronic repository.

Also, searching for a particular document was a cumbersome process before SharePoint DMS. Now, you can associate documents with specific search terms to make it easier to locate them from various locations and multiple file cabinets.

This not only makes employees and users more productive for that task, but also shifts the focus from document retrieval to solving the original issue. There are several other benefits of our Document Management solution which you learn about here:

1. Saves time searching for the required information.

As stated earlier, documents are tagged with multiple search terms. They are also categorized based on the departments and location, so users need to look at them everywhere in the system. They just need to type in the relevant keyword/ category and the documents will come on top.

2. Share and collaborate – in real-time.

The system is an automated digital workflow where one user can upload a document and the system automatically sends an email to the associated person. The approver can approve or reject the document. If rejected, they can also mention the reason.

A notification is then sent  to the uploader  with the decision. Thus, the sharing cycle is complete. Later, other people in the department can view/ download the document.

3. Automate workflow and make the process simpler.

The solution allows users to process documents as per their permission rights and keep everyone notified if the process is pending. Approvers know they have a pending document to review and can share their feedback.

Also, the users know when to check the status and make it available for others to view. This makes the whole process simple and secure.

4. Timely approval or rejection

Approvers cannot sit on any document because they are notified when a document is not reviewed by them. This makes the process faster. Timely document processing is a key component of any team’s productivity.

5. Ensure document security

This document repository cannot be accessed by anyone without sign-in privileges to ensure only authorized personnel can view and access the right files.

SharePoint provides specific user permissions which restrict who can open, view, edit and download documents.

6. Create a central repository hub

Everyone in your organization should now know where they can find relevant information. They don’t need to scan piles of files or email copies to find the right information. They can access the DMS repository and search for the document by department or keyword.

7. One version of the document
Though multiple document versions can be maintained in the system, if any editing/ activity is done by any user then it tracks and records the changes. Moreover, people can access the same document and collaborate on changes to avoid multiple copies.

By keeping only one document, it reduces clutter and keeps the file system clean.

8. Categorize documents to remove clutter

Clutter of information can do more damage than good. Document overload in a single category can  take up a lot of precious time. Users spend most of it finding information and scanning through several incorrect documents. To avoid this, documents are assigned categories, sub-categories, and departments from the beginning. This classification system ensures all documents are saved in the right folder.

9. Archive unnecessary documents

To make the system efficient, unnecessary documents must be removed from active folders and moved to a secure archive storage area. Archiving documents can only be done with specific user permissions.

10. Set user permissions

Super-admin can assign specific rights to designated people. For example, approvers can view, open, and make changes to the document. Regular users can upload new documents with proper categories and departments with keywords. However, after approval- admins can decide whether the uploader can view only or view and download the document. Archiving documents can also be done with user permissions only.

11. Notify people when any changes are made in a document.

Email notifications are an important DMS features that helps keep the workflow moving. This email content can be customized by the backend. Emails are sent when any new document is uploaded, approved, rejected, or edited. Thus, tracking the document within the workflow is streamlined.

12. Store all types of files

All kinds of physical documents can be scanned and uploaded into the system. Additionally, electronic documents and media files like document, PDF, PNG, JPG, and video files can be stored, shared, and searched within the DMS.

Final Thoughts!

Till now we have got a fair idea about what is Document Management System and why SharePoint is the first choice of enterprises when it comes to managing documents because of their robust Document Management System.

Beyond Intranet is a Microsoft Gold Partner company with experience working with M365 and SharePoint services. We created a SharePoint Document Management System that helps organizations across all industries and sizes. The solution is not only user-friendly but can also be customized to your specific business needs. Connect with us if you are looking for a free personalized demo of the solution.

Let’s get started to manage your sea of documents today!

Microsoft described Lists as an “evolution” of the current SharePoint Lists capability. Lists make it easy to create and share with anyone on your network. Lists work on any device and keep everyone in sync with its smart rules and collaboration features. You can customize the Microsoft Lists according to your specific business needs.

You can create a list in several ways from scratch, by importing Excel data for a quick start, from an existing SharePoint list, and using the templates available on Microsoft Lists. Microsoft Lists provide the following eight default list templates.

• Issue tracker
• Employee onboarding
• Events itinerary
• Asset manager
• Recruitment tracker
• Travel requests
• Work progress tracker
• Content scheduler

Create a list in Microsoft Lists

1. To access the Microsoft List, open the app launcher in the top right corner of your Microsoft 365 Online Portal, and click Lists.

2. You will be redirected to the Lists app home page, where you can see all the list.

3. From the app home page click on the ‘+ New list’ button.

4. From the ‘Create a list’ page, select one of the following options:

a. Blank list: Choose this option to start from scratch. Give your list a Name, Description(optional), and select any other options you want. The list will save to ‘My lists’ unless you choose one of your SharePoint sites or Teams from the ‘Save to’ list. When you are finished selecting options, select ‘Create’.

b. From Excel: Choose this option to create a list based on an Excel spreadsheet.

c. From the existing list: Choose this option to save time and create a new list based on the columns in another list. Your new list will start with the same columns but will not have any data.

d. Templates: Select a template, such as an ‘Issue tracker,’ to see what columns the template has. You can then scroll through sample data to see what to include. Select the templates that fits your specific needs.
Click the ‘Use Template’ button.

5. Once you create the list, you can open it. If required, you can add new columns by selecting ‘+’ or ‘+Add column’.

6. You can share the list with your co-workers. Determine how much access they receive by choosing either the “Full Control, Edit, or View” permissions.

7. You can export the list to an excel file.

8. You can integrate the list with Power Apps and Power Automate integration as needed.

Currently, Microsoft Lists is included in the following subscriptions.

• M365 Business basic
• M365 Business standard
• M365 Business premium
• M365 Enterprise E3
• M365 Enterprise E5
• M365 Enterprise F3

Final Thoughts

Microsoft Lists is a great app to organize your work and track key information. The app has integration with PowerApps, Power Automate, Microsoft Teams, and SharePoint, which makes it more powerful. Microsoft lists not only has a web and Teams app, but it also has an iOS and Android app which will help users to work remotely on the list information. In our upcoming blog, we will share how to use the Microsoft lists app with Microsoft Teams. To learn more about our M365 service suite and capabilities, connect with us at contact@beyondintranet.com.

Schedule pages on the SharePoint site

1. Go to the library page of the site you want to schedule.

2. Select ‘Scheduling’ at the top of the page.

3. Slide the toggle right to enable scheduling.

Note: you need to be a site owner to enable/disable scheduling on the site. When you disable scheduling, page authors no longer have the option of scheduling their pages or news.  However, any pages or news posts that were scheduled prior to disabling will still get published at the time specified unless the scheduling for the individual pages is removed.

Schedule a Page

In the above steps, the site owner enabled page scheduling on the site. Now, users (page authors) can schedule their pages.

The following steps needs to be completed by the page authors to schedule their page.

1. Go to the page, you need to schedule.

2. Click on the ‘Page details’ from the top of the page.

3. Page details will appear in the right pane.

4. Under ‘Scheduling’, slide the toggle towards right to enable.

5. Choose the schedule date from the calendar and enter a time.

6. Click Schedule from the top right of the page.

7. Once it gets scheduled, a schedule icon can be seen next to the page name.

Final Thoughts! 

Scheduling is also directly associated with document approving process. That means, if page approval is set up for a site, and an author schedules a page or news post for publication, the page must first be approved.

Scheduling a SharePoint site or publishing the news is a great feature because scheduling was available in classic SharePoint but not in Modern SharePoint until now.  

If you have additional questions about how to use this new SharePoint feature, contact us today.

Thanks to advanced communication and collaboration tools available in today’s digital workplace, people can now work anywhere they choose.

There is always communication between teams, but physical proximity is no longer necessary for them to function well.

Remote Employment is the Work of the Future

Even though it’s unlikely that brick-and-mortar workplaces will go away anytime soon, the rise of the telecommuting workforce is undeniable. Currently, 38% of American workers do some or all of their jobs from part. That number is only expected to grow as communication and collaboration technologies work to advance at a rapid time. Workers in remote locations may include: 

• Employees, either full-time or part-time, who perform periodic work away from the office 
• Workers that are entirely remote from their workplace environment, whether full-time or part-time 
• Freelancers, consultants, and contractors that work independently, either whole or part-time  

There are several reasons why companies that don’t offer flexible work choices struggle to compete. When companies aren’t limited by geography, they have more freedom to find and hire the greatest people. Companies are learning the hard way that giving workers more control over their schedules and working conditions results in happier, more productive workers, which positively affects the bottom line. 

There has been rapid development in the digital workplace, with sophisticated tools for communication and collaboration empowering employees to work in whichever manner and location they see fit. While it is still essential for teams to work together, physically being in the same place is no longer necessary, given the prevalence of constant connectivity.

Despite its many advantages, the remote workforce is still in its infancy, and many companies have yet to figure out how to maximize its potential for productivity and employee engagement. Collaboration software and practices that put teams in the same position to be productive and company-centric, whether at the office, at home in pajamas, or halfway around the world, are essential to the success of a remote workforce. 

This is where SharePoint comes in. SharePoint is one of the most successful enterprise-level collaboration platforms in the world. Over the past two decades, Microsoft saw SharePoint grow to over 100 million users around the world. 

Microsoft 365  SharePoint Intranet  has the tools your employees need to boost your productivity. Below we share how to get the most out of your Microsoft 365 license when you use a SharePoint-based intranet to improve productivity and communication among your remote team. 

7 Reasons why SharePoint Intranet is for Your Remote Teams

1. Clear Communication- Share news instantly and stay informed

Your corporate intranet can become a virtual hub where your team meets to communicate effectively. 

SharePoint has the features and flexibility to customize the platform to mold this to your business needs. You can choose among various plug-in and play add-ins, workflows, and other widgets for your corporate intranet page. These tools can help your remote teams instantly search, store, or secure key company data. The portal helps companies disseminate information across your organization. This helps you organize information, people, and projects. 

You can also use SharePoint Add-ins like the Employee Directory as a central directory for your organization. People can easily search for employees’ information and share their contact details, skill sets, and current project lists. You can embed the add-in on your corporate intranet to connect your staff. 

Other add-ins like News Ticker and RSS Viewer share the latest news and snippets related to your company or industry. This helps your remote teams stay informed about changes in your organization.

2. A Great Collaboration Tool

It is vital to ensure Your remote team works together as a group collaborating on projects. SharePoint helps collaborators change documents simultaneously without delay. Co-authoring is a great way to get real-time feedback on your work and ideas. 

Also, SharePoint lists serve as project management tools to help remote teams collaborate more effectively. Remote team members can review the list of outstanding tasks, check deadlines, and dependencies, and communicate accordingly with concerned team members. 

Furthermore, we developed advanced collaboration add-ins like the SharePoint Knowledge Management add-in. It is a digital repository that stores your key company information. You can use the Knowledge Management add-in to share:

• Policies and procedures
•  FAQs
• Best practices
• Document templates
• Project requirement data, etc. 

Finally, employees can ask questions in real-time. Employees who are authorized to answer get email notifications about a new question on the platform.  

Depending on the privacy of the question, the answer can be privately emailed as well as publicly published if you wish. This add-in can also be easily embedded on your corporate intranet as a widget. 

3. Central document repository

SharePoint is awesome when it comes to storing crucial documents. They have an advanced search feature to ensure users can find the data they uploaded.

With SharePoint, you can share documents and files with your remote team at any given time from wherever you are on any device you choose to use.

These documents can be in formats like Word, Excel, PDF, image, or videos. You can also set user permissions for accessing, downloading, or editing these documents thus also setting up a secured system for storage of the crucial company files.

4. Encourage ideas

Your remote team members may not be close physically,  but it is important to never underestimate their ability to work together when it comes to innovative ideas.

Your intranet is a central platform where team members can post their innovative ideas, chats, pictures and more. By sharing this information, they can build their relationship, and improve employee engagement.

5. Intranet in your pocket

As companies adopt a mobile work environment it’s increasingly important for employees to have access to business content, anywhere they work, no matter the time of day or device.

With SharePoint Mobile and SharePoint Online, you can use your device to access company data from anywhere in the world. This means you can open, review, and edit documents with colleagues even when you’re not in the office. Note: To keep this digital environment secure, it is only accessible with a specific login URL and the right credentials.

Conclusion

Remote working has become the new normal for many organizations. Because it is still new for many companies, they are learning how to master this new organizational setup.

A robust and intuitive SharePoint intranet can help your team ease into this type of work scenario. Let’s start building a connected workplace for our remote teams and boost their productivity and collaboration with the best-in-class Intranet. Check out our SharePoint Intranet Examples here or contact us today. We are here to answer any questions you have on how to set up your intranet.

On modern SharePoint sites- the team collaboration lists feature is disabled by default. So, if you are looking to create a calendar, document library, or a tasks list on modern SharePoint sites like we used to do in classic SharePoint sites and cannot find the list templates for that then you need to enable that feature.

When you enable the list, collaboration features on a modern site you will get the following list and library templates:

Libraries

• Picture Library
• Document Library

Lists

• Calendar
• Contacts
• Custom List
• Discussion Board
• Links
• Project List
• Tasks
• Announcements

To enable the team collaboration list templates on your site you need to follow the below- mentioned instructions:

1. Click on the gear icon from the top right of the page.

2. Click on the View all site settings.

3. Click on ‘Manage site features’ under ‘Site Actions’ in the site settings page.

4. Activate the ‘Team Collaboration Lists’ feature.

5. Now go to ‘Site contents’ and create a new app.
 

6. You can see all the team collaboration list available under ‘Apps You Can Add’.

Final Thoughts

It’s easy and helpful to create lists using the predefined list templates.  In the above-mentioned process, we have discussed how you can enable team collaboration capabilities for a site by making standard lists, such as document libraries and issues available.

If you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment below, or reach out to our SharePoint team for more questions. You can reach us at contact@beyondintranet.com.

Getting your new employee up to speed can be a difficult task for even the most established companies. It’s a careful balancing act of teaching your newcomer the ropes, immersing them in the company culture, and getting them familiar with team processes — and doing it all in a reasonable amount of time. So how do you set your new hire up for success from the start? Having in place a proper employee onboarding process can make the transition from new hire to established employee simple and painless.

So, what does an onboarding process include?

Onboarding new employees is a detailed process that typically involves several people, departments, and resources. For every new hire, a multitude of small tasks has to be completed as part of your employee onboarding checklist. Some examples include:

• Provide company policies and forms to be reviewed and signed
• Collect contact and payroll information
• Setup company email and accounts
• Provide introductions to different departments and team members
• Explain company hierarchy
• Schedule training with a mentor or peer
• Review team processes
• Complete tax forms
• Schedule computer setup

What are the benefits of using an onboarding process?

The are some fantastic benefits to using an onboarding process, particularly a digitized process. First and foremost, it provides a personalized and simple onboarding experience that eliminates the need for lots of paperwork and manual effort. When an employee has a great onboarding experience, they’re likelier to stay with their company longer. A digitized onboarding process also delivers improved collaboration and time savings. All of these things work together to ensure your new hire gets off on the right foot.

Speedy, Standardized Process