SharePoint Primer for End Users

Benefits

SharePoint enables departments, classes, student organizations, and project members to share and collaborate with other faculty/staff, students, and external partners. With SharePoint, you can create collaborative websites that can be used to share files, assign tasks, start blogs, calendars, manage workflows, etc., from anywhere — at the office, at home, or from a mobile device. 

Modern SharePoint Sites combines Microsoft's Teams, O365 Groups and SharePoint together to seamlessly integrate security, content, people, and applications together. Modern team sites are replacing the need for shared drives since the files are stored in the cloud and can be securely accessed anywhere by members of the team.  Team sites can also be grouped together using hub sites (communication sites) that will have a common/shared navigation, news, content search, and design.

A modern team site can include SharePoint document libraries, group email address/inbox, shared calendars, lists, workflows, and forms.  Each Team site uses an O365 Group to manage security permissions (who can access the site), but additional permissions can also be defined for each document library (folders and files).  Modern teams allow members to easily track all conversations and Office 365 documents (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, SharePoint, OneNote, Planner, Power BI, and Delve). Teams allows group members to securely chat and share files/information with one another regardless where they are located.

Should I save to OneDrive or SharePoint?

If you’re working on a file by yourself, save it to OneDrive. Your OneDrive files are private unless you share them with others, which is particularly useful if you haven’t created a team yet.

If you’re already working as a team — in Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, or Outlook—you should save your files where your team works, because OneDrive for work or school connects you to all your shared libraries, too.

When you need a new shared location to store team files, create a shared library right from OneDrive, add members, and start working together. These libraries are accessible within Teams, SharePoint, and Outlook. And it’s easy to copy or move files where you and others need them.

• Defining roles and responsibilities while planning and building your site will reduce the need to clean up or reorganize a site when staff members rotate in or out of a team. Site governances should consider including a plan for user training, monitoring site usage, auditing content, and communicating expectations to team members managing the site. 
• Following consistent naming conventions for SharePoint sites/O365 Groups/Microsoft Team sites is important for reporting and tracking purposes.

  • Department Site: {[School Name Prefix]-[Department Name]-[Descriptive Name]}

  • Multi-Department or Multi-Organizational Site: {[School Name Prefix]-[Descriptive Name]}

  • As a general best practice, use underscores "_" or dashes “-“ between words in file names. For example: Recommended_File_Name.docx. When you use spaces in file names, all of the spaces will be converted to the characters "%20" in hyperlinks.
  • The site owner/creator should check for a unique public name when creating the SharePoint/O365 Group/Microsoft Team.
  • SharePoint/O365 Group/Microsoft Team names cannot exceed 64 characters.
  • Do not use Dates in your file names. Every document has a Created By and Modified By date in the system, so dates are usually not needed as part of the name of a document. All file names must be unique within a folder or library, so you might need to add a date to your file name only if you have two documents that must have the same name and you need to distinguish between the two.
  • Don't add version numbers to file names. We have versioning turned on in SharePoint, so if you want to publish an updated version of a document, just upload it with the same name as the previous version and the system will place the new version on top of the old version. Old versions are not found during searches, but you can examine old versions of a document by Viewing Version History
  • Max storage size per site is 25 TB. 
  • Site governance, permission, and sharing
  • Design for Accessibility

Getting Started

When you sign in to Microsoft 365, or Buzznet, click SharePoint in the app launcher navigation or top bar. These are your entry points into SharePoint.

1. Select + Create site on the SharePoint start page.
2. In the wizard:
   • Select whether you'd like to create a Team site or a Communication site.
   • Enter the name (and a description, if you want) for the site.
   • You can select Edit and then edit the group email address or site address, if you want.
   • Important: The only symbols allowed in the site address are underscores, dashes, single quotes, and periods, and can't start or end with a period. 
   • Choose a sensitivity level for your site information.
   • Select whether the group will be public or private (if creating a Team site).
   • Select a default language for your site and then click Next.
3. In the next pane, enter the owners and members.
4. Select Finish.

A modern SharePoint site is created and ready for use in seconds. If you selected a team site, a Microsoft 365 group is also created. 

Adding Functionality

• Add a web part
• Move or remove a web part
• Available web parts
• Web parts you can connect