Benefits of SharePoint Document Management

Enhances Collaboration

Traditionally, multiple people working on a single document meant moving the document back and forth, often creating multiple copies. This often ended in the final product being an inaccurate representation of the collated knowledge. SharePoint eradicates these issues, allowing for the most current version of a file to always be available.

Streamlines Onboarding

Inducting new team members can decrease productivity with the time it takes to onboard them. SharePoint resolves this by allowing creation of training tasks, videos, or even FAQs to help new team members get up and running. You can also create resource pages for team members who need to be upskilled or trained.

Open Communication

SharePoint works with all Microsoft applications, including the Microsoft 365 suite, to create a comprehensive collaboration system. When a new Microsoft 365 group is created, an additional SharePoint site can be made to allow team members to collaborate on documents. This ensures everyone is on the same page right from the beginning.

Improves Productivity

SharePoint improves your productivity by simplifying the process for creating and managing documents. Access control also improves security, eliminating the need for consistent monitoring of documents. To make your life even easier, the management and maintenance of SharePoint can be easily outsourced to a trusted IT professional, like Domain Digital.

Improves Agility

An agile business can pivot effectively when a new project comes on board. SharePoint allows you to start a project quickly, with the ability to create a secure site and integrate the relevant applications you need. With SharePoint on your side, your project team can get to work efficiently and effectively.

Using SharePoint Document Management

Identify Roles

When multiple users work together on a single document, it can lead to issues identifying who is responsible for which aspects of the document. SharePoint helps you avoid this confusion with document management that can identify people working on a document and the tasks they were responsible for from the outset.

Identify Users

Although SharePoint document management is about working collaboratively as a team, it doesn’t mean you will want every member of your organisation to have access to all your documents. SharePoint allows you to identify who is involved in each project from the outset, eliminating the need to constantly manage document access.

Organise Documents

SharePoint simplifies your document management experience. It organises your documents into libraries containing folders and subfolders. SharePoint’s real power, though, lies in its search abilities. You can search everything from a document title to phrases inside a document or a date range a document was created. With SharePoint, anything and everything can be tracked and searched.

Plan How Content Flows

As a project develops, it moves through various stages of the project cycle. SharePoint enables a free flow of documentation between those involved in each stage of the project. This can be achieved by setting up sub-sites within the main project site or creating multiple SharePoint sites for each aspect of the project.

Grouping, Sorting, and Filtering

Documents created for your projects will vary depending on the type of content and the purpose of the document. To enhance searchability, SharePoint can group documents according to their content type. To make it even easier, you can sort and filter documents to pinpoint exactly what you are looking for.

Automate Workflows

To simplify recurring actions within a SharePoint site, the platform allows for the integration of both custom and pre-built workflows. For example, the review and approval of a document can be created into a standardised workflow to increase productivity. For more complex business functions, SharePoint allows for customised workflows.

Content Control

The library method of storing documents within SharePoint allows for the additional safeguard of ensuring users ‘check-out’ documents. The check-out feature means you can have greater control and monitoring over who is making changes to your documents within SharePoint. This function is optional for all documents and can be used as needed.

Policies

Some industries require a level of security surrounding their documents. To increase security when using SharePoint for document management, you can set boundaries for the access users have to each document. Boundaries include who has access, what they can do within a document, and how long the document can be retained.