What Is SharePoint???

If you’re asking the question “What is SharePoint?”, you’ve come to the right place. This page is dedicated to people who are unfamiliar with SharePoint and are trying to get a simple explanation of exactly what SharePoint is/does.

If you’re like many people we’ve talked to, it might be a little bit frustrating when trying to figure out what is SharePoint. A quick Google search of “what is SharePoint?” will give you a huge amount of results of websites and articles talking about SharePoint. But when you visit these websites/articles they are often times filled with a bunch of technical jargon and business buzzwords that don’t make any sense.

So if this scenario sounds familiar to you, the following is a straightforward explanation that most people may find a bit easier to follow.
 

Can Someone Please Explain To Me “What Is SharePoint”???
SharePoint is a software that you don’t install on your computer, but instead it’s installed on your company’s “shared server” (as of 2011 there’s also a cloud-based version of SharePoint). After you install SharePoint on the server, an administrator will assign users with usernames and passwords. Then employees can use their newfound username/password to log into the SharePoint environment and upload and store files.

Many companies have a shared drive that has no extra software installed on it (a.k.a. no SharePoint). The hard drive on your computer or laptop typically has a letter associated with it like C: or D:. When an IT person installs a shared drive for an office they usually assign a letter to the drive that’s higher up the alphabet like J:, K:, L:, M:, N:, etc…

This non-software shared drive operates like a big USB thumb drive (that you’ve probably used many times before) and you can move files to this drive, edit, backup, and even delete files. If your company has one of these shared drives, it typically appears automatically on your computer when you log on to your company’s intranet.

After companies install these shared drives they quickly wonder how they ever managed before without them. They’re great for storing, sharing, and backing up information. But if you’ve ever used a shared drive that has no managing software installed with it (a.k.a. without SharePoint), you know that problems can arise when you have many employees accessing all these files and folders.  Problems like:

• Accidentally deleting files
• Who should have access to certain files
• Managing file revisions
• Two or more people trying to access the same file at the same time
• Problems finding the files
• Accidentally creating duplicate files
• Employees trying to log in remotely
• Etc., Etc., Etc.,

 
Installing SharePoint on the shared drive provides excellent solutions to all of these problems – and more. So a very simple explanation of “what is SharePoint?” may be:

What Are SharePoint Sites???
After asking “What is SharePoint?” another question you might ask is – what exactly does a SharePoint server “environment” look like?

Well in the last few versions of SharePoint, the environment has a very similar “look and feel” to other Microsoft Office products (like Word, Excel, etc…) with tabs, ribbons, and commands.

In the SharePoint environment administrators and users end up creating SharePoint “intranet” sites. These local mini-sites on the server are simply designated areas that groups, teams, or departments can upload and share files.
 

The Three Best Features of SharePoint:   Collaboration, Collaboration, and More Collaboration
Before companies utilized a shared drive, if employees wanted to collaborate on a file the easiest way to add each other’s input to the file was to:
    1. Sit next to each other and work on the file together.
    2. Make changes and then email the file back and forth with each other’s changes.

You can probably imagine that Option #1 was not convenient all the time, so more often than not employees were opting for Option #2 and emailing the files back and forth.

But if you have several people collaborating on the same file, things can get crazy very quickly. If all these employees are emailing a file back and forth, it becomes increasingly hectic to try and figure out who has the most updated version of the file. It’s also a challenge to make sure that your changes are being added to the most updated file.

Before SharePoint, it was like companies were drowning in a tsunami of emails, cc’s, and attachments!

With files stored on a centralized SharePoint area, employees can work on the same file together and also be certain that they’re working on the most updated version of the file.

So if your company has a very collaborative work environment, and you have many people that are adding input to specific files, SharePoint makes the whole process much easier.

How much easier do you ask?

Well you might have to sit down for this answer!

Because here’s a great example of how good SharePoint is at collaborating on a file.

Imagine that many people are working on an important 10-page Microsoft Word file. With SharePoint not only can you have multiple people working on that same Word file at the same time, but also individuals can block off certain paragraphs within the document so that only they can work on those specific paragraphs.

How’s that for customized collaboration?

Besides collaborating on certain files, SharePoint also makes it easy to:

• Search and find files instantly
• Safely backup files
• Coordinate projects and schedules
• Assign files only to specific employees
• Discuss ideas and review documents or proposals
• Create and manage workflows
• Easily access the server remotely
• Restore deleted files

With SharePoint you can also create:

• Web Sites
• Intranet Sites
• Databases
• Calendars
• Surveys
• Discussion Boards
• Approval Processes
• Social Media Blogs
• And Much, Much More

With all these great capabilities, it’s easy to understand why SharePoint is the fastest growing software in the history of Microsoft.
 

We at SharePoint Atlanta hope this helps answer the question of “What is SharePoint?”
If you have any questions about SharePoint consulting or training please feel free to visit our contact page by clicking on the button below: