SharePoint Online – An Introduction

Microsoft SharePoint Online in Office 365 allows people to share, collaborate, connect together, update and engage others across the company, transform business processes, and harness knowledge. In addition, SharePoint Online has capabilities for organizations to protect and manage data and to build custom solutions. Primarily, organizations use SharePoint Online to create intranet websites. It is very easy that in Office 365, you can create a SharePoint site from the SharePoint start page. Whenever a new SharePoint site is created, as a part of the Office 365 group, a team site also gets created.

To access SharePoint Online services, all you need is a web browser, such as Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, or Mozilla Firefox. Also, get the SharePoint mobile app to stay connected from your mobile devices. SharePoint Online is made available on your PC, Mac, or mobile device. The SharePoint document library and SharePoint sites are the two core features of SharePoint Online.

When you sign in to Office 365, you are exposed to various Office 365 online services through an app launcher as shown in Figure 1-1. Select SharePoint Online service to explore it.

Introduction to SharePoint Document Library

A SharePoint document library is a unique and secure place to store files where you and your team can access them easily from any device at any time. For example, you can use a document library on a SharePoint Online site to store all files related to a specific project or a specific client. In document libraries, adding files or moving them between folders is as simple as dragging and dropping them from one location to another. See Figure 1-2.

Upload Files into SharePoint Document Library

Create Different SharePoint Sites

There are two choices: a team site or communication site. Let’s start with a team site.

Creating a Team Site

A SharePoint team site allows you to connect you and your team to the organizational- or project-level content, information, and apps that are required on a day-to-day basis. You can use a team site to store and collaborate on files or another way is to create and manage lists of information. On any team site home page, you can access links to important team files, apps, and web pages and can see recent site activity in the activity feed. See Figure 1-5.

To access your team site from the SharePoint start page, go the Files section of your Office 365 group if Office 365 Groups is enabled, or on the go with the SharePoint mobile apps. You can also find your SharePoint files in OneDrive (Figure 1-6).

A SharePoint Online team site consists of a group of related web pages, a default document library for files, lists for data management, and webparts that you can customize to meet your business needs. Let’s see how we can create a team site.

1. 1.

   Sign in to Office 365 and access SharePoint Online service.

    
2. 2.
   At the top of the SharePoint page, click + Create site and choose the Team or Communication site option to create such a site. A team site creation wizard will appear on the screen where you input the information to create a team site. See Figure 1-7.

   

    
3. 3.
   Select the design you want to use for your site. For example, see Figure 1-8.

   

    
4. 4.

   Give your new team site a name, and add some text in the site description box.

    
5. 5.

   In the Privacy settings section, choose either Public – anyone in the organization can access this site or Private – only members can access this site to control who has access to your site.

    
6. 6.

   Choose data sensitivity for your site from options such as confidential, internal, high business impact, low business, and impact.

    
7. 7.

   Select a language for your site and choose additional owners for your site.

    
8. 8.
   Hit the Next button as shown in Figure 1-9, then add additional owners as shown in Figure 1-10 to complete the site creation process.

   

   

    
9. 9.

   Finally, add members to your site and click the Finish button for the site to publish (Figure 1-11).

    

Creating a Communication Site

A SharePoint communication site is a place to share information with others. You can share news, reports, statuses, and other information in a visually compelling format. Figure 1-12 shows a communication site in a website view.

Figure 1-13 shows a mobile view.

Below are the steps to create SharePoint communication sites. The steps are simple and easy to understand.

1. 1.

   Sign in to Office 365.

    
2. 2.

   From the app launcher available on the top left, choose SharePoint tile.

    
3. 3.
   After selection, at the top of the SharePoint home page, you will see an option to create a site as seen in Figure 1-14, and choose the create communication site option as seen in Figure 1-15.

   

   

    
4. 4.
   Select one of the following site designs:

   • Topic design to share information such as news, events, and other content.

   • Showcase design to use photos or images to showcase a product, team, or event.

   • Blank design to create your own design.

    

Figure 1-16 is the user interface where you can choose your design.

Explore SharePoint Hub Sites

The objective of hub sites is to bring together various components of organizational intranet under one single place. They can also be referred as a set of steps as one can adopt it to create a successful intranet. Hub sites are popularly known as “connective tissue,” which aims to tie a collection of team sites and communications sites into one strong unit. One prime aspect of creating digital intranets or social intranets based on SharePoint Online is that different components of the intranet ideally should be built as a different site collection; that is, there could be a communication site or team site so that each site can manage content and its permissions appropriately to have updated information available for the user community. A hub site (very commonly created from a communication site on SharePoint Online) can be considered as an umbrella of different components of an intranet that attempts to bring different communication and team sites together.

Team and communication sites can be hub sites. Besides these, you can create a traditional site collection in a classic experience to manage your content (Figure 1-17).

SharePoint Online Features

In this section of the chapter, we will look at some of the SharePoint Online features as well as explore SharePoint Online admin features as well. Following are some widely used SharePoint Online features:

File Storage: Provides options to upload, store, and share files.

External Sharing: Share attachments or files with your suppliers, partners, and clients who are outside your organization.

Content Management : Manage and organize content with metadata, records management, and retention policy.

Team Sites: A dedicated place for your team to collaborate and share documents, news, and information to stay updated.

Communication Sites: Broadly communicate your message across your organization by publishing beautiful content to keep them informed and engaged on topics, events, or projects.

Intranets: With this feature, you would be able to share exciting client stories, leadership views and opinions, new deals, organizational charts, and what’s happening in your organization.

Mobile Apps: With this feature you can access your content just from anywhere in the world and without any time restrictions.

Automate work: With this feature, one can set up alerts and workflows to automate processes.

Discovery: With this feature, one is able to discover very valuable content and people when required to do so.

Search: With this feature, one will be able to search content and find what is expected in the search results.

E-Discovery: With this feature, one can discover content in an electronic format for legal and audit purposes.

Data loss prevention capabilities (DLP): Use of advanced DLP capabilities to monitor data loss and information security protection.

In-Place Hold: Prevent content from editing and deleting.

SharePoint Online Admin

Global administrators in Office 365 have rights to assign users with SharePoint administrator roles to manage SharePoint Online admin features. Global admin by default exists as a SharePoint admin. When you decide to purchase a Microsoft 365 or Office 365 subscription, a default team site is automatically created, and the global admin gets configured as the primary site collection administrator. When you assign a SharePoint admin role, you can assign the role of Service administrator in order to see important information in the Microsoft 365 admin center, such as the health of the SharePoint Online service, as well as change and release notifications (Figure 1-18).

Users with a SharePoint admin role are able to access the SharePoint admin center and have options to create and manage site collections, designate site collection administrators, manage user profiles, and more. In addition, SharePoint admins can now manage Office 365 groups, including creating, deleting, and restoring groups, as well as changing group owners.

SharePoint Online DCX Features

In this last section of the chapter, we will look at some key features of SharePoint Online that will help to build DCX. In subsequent chapters, we will take a deep-dive look into DCX.

We will take a brief look at the out-of-the-box webparts of the SharePoint communication and team sites, which help to design visually appealing SharePoint communication and team sites and thus create great DCX. Customers want to find information easily, communicate simply between users, and finally, there is definitely business value for end users to reuse information. Let’s explore some elements of SharePoint communication and team sites to create an awesome user experience.

Summary

With this, we have come to the end of this chapter where we have introduced SharePoint Online technology, described features of SharePoint Online, introduced SharePoint Online admin features, and finally, highlighted some key features to create DCX. In the following chapter, we will explore top SharePoint Online features so that a user can jumpstart their digital transformation journey. There are features to change the look and feel, deep dive into out-of-the-box webparts, and features to create team collaboration and SharePoint Online themes.