Top 10 Features of SharePoint Online and Its Future

Microsoft SharePoint is a cloud-based application that is mainly used for advanced content management, document sharing, business intelligence, and insightful business decision-making. According to a recent study by Statista, more than 81% of businesses use cloud-based SharePoint servers i.e. SharePoint Online instead of SharePoint On-Premise, and the number is ever-increasing, considering the amazing features and benefits of SharePoint Online.

In this blog post, we have listed top 10 features of SharePoint that are amazing to use today and in the near future. Nowadays, business organizations like Windex and Viacom are reaping the benefits of SharePoint. And, since SharePoint has the same user interface as that of Office 365, it delivers excellent user experience in terms of ease-of-use.

MS SharePoint also enable business companies to use third-party applications and off-the-shelf software to discover best-suited solutions for everyday business problems. Here are the top 10 features of SharePoint and their future.

1. Ease of Management/Centralized Administration

Ease of management is the second most significant benefit of SharePoint Online. This provides Administrators with the quick access to;

• Security settings.
• SharePoint site data.
• Perform all data restorations on a single dashboard.
• Operation features.
• Get privileged updates.

 

2. Customizations

With Microsoft SharePoint Online, you can always keep the default benefits and features of the platform, or customize them as per your distinctive business needs. SharePoint empowers you to customize every single features to best suit your business needs. Likewise, you can customize the interface of the entire platform to maintain consistency of your brand, while helping employees to grow with the application by using its features and functions effectively.

Customization features are considered very essential in SharePoint at present and also in the future. This is important because customizations allow modernizing and standardizing the style and theme in which the company wants to keep its SharePoint portal.

SPFx or SharePoint Frameworks by Microsoft provides advanced customizations options that allow SharePoint Developers to personalize solutions that add better value to the organizations and their users.

3. Flexibility or Multi-Purpose Built-In Functionality

One of the biggest benefit of MS SharePoint is flexibility. Being a collaborative platform, SharePoint serves best as an intranet, which is ideal for meeting companies everyday tasks of information sharing, scheduling, contacts management etc. SharePoint offers remarkable scalability and flexibility to businesses that are in need of personalizing their online workspace.

In the future years, SharePoint’s flexibility tends to increase more, that will consequently result in;

• More streamlined document and content management.
• More simplified business activities.
• Improved workplace collaboration.

 

4. Document Management

Since we have the 2013 release of SharePoint, it is very much accessible to the organizations to schedule company’s information. SharePoint Online provides a very smooth data flow from cloud storage that can be accessed anytime, anywhere, by using any mobile device. Employees get access to important business documents all the time, that can be shared, edited and created from any remote location using any mobile device.

Enhanced accessibility to company’s data and information all the time keeps the employees informed. And, informed employees have better understanding of company’s goals & objectives, have better decision making abilities. Not only this, but they also meet deadlines more effectively and make better work contributions to the company.

With SharePoint you get ultimate safety, security and confidentiality of your folders and documents. Furthermore, you can add details to the accessibility of documents through permission settings. This allows to keep track of who accessed the document and who changed what and when etc. Document management is SharePoint is expected to refine more along with the future updates coming to the market in next years.

5. Easy Integration with Existing Apps

SharePoint allows quick and easy integration with other Microsoft and third-party business apps. MS SharePoint seamlessly integrates with other apps and software and have the tendency to work with equal efficiency. Most common integrations that businesses seek with include MS Word, MS Office Suite, MS PowerPoint, MS Excel, MS Exchange Server, MS Unified Communications, CRM and other back-office systems. The compatibility of SharePoint is not restricted to Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer; and it works remarkably well with all the latest web-browsers.

6. Site Consolidation

Site consolidation is also a great benefit offered by SharePoint Online. You can easily combine all your SharePoint sites i.e. your shared work environment within a centralized platform, while significantly cutting down the siloed cost of website administration. You internal IT team can also easily manage the intranet and internet website consolidations and can access them anytime without any hassle. And, if in any case, you are unable to access or combine your sites, you can easily hire SharePoint experts from a professional SharePoint Development Company.

7. Enhanced Data Security

Data security is another major benefits offered by SharePoint Online. SharePoint Online includes advanced features like workflow upgrades and authentication enhancements that completely eliminates the risk of outages and unauthorized access. With SharePoint Online, you also don’t need to worry about optimizing information access and data shareability. Because, with SharePoint your data remain reliably safe. SharePoint’s collaboration application ensures enhanced security for companies that are dealing with raw data. With SharePoint Online, you can configure different settings ranging from auditing to shareability and storage control. This also helps in promoting data security compliance with your industry’s regulatory demands.

8. Content Management

The next feature to our list is SharePoint’s amazing capabilities to manage content. With SharePoint Online, you can create, edit, share and schedule content for publishing on various social media platforms, websites and intranet. SharePoint’s social media networking features allow easy sharing of content, ideas and updates. Content management is further divided into the following;

• Record Management.
• Web Content Management.
• Digital Media Management.
• Document Management.

 

In future, content management feature of SharePoint is anticipated to lead to

• Better Coordination.
• Improve Employee Experience.
• Enhanced Data Security.
• Extra Permission Rights and Control.
• Improved Customer Experience.

 

9. Design Assistance

Another benefit of SharePoint is to design and develop solutions that will serve business needs in a better way. This feature takes off the worry of hiring developer to develop a private database management system or to enhance your website. SharePoint Online and SharePoint Server have APIs that are used especially for this job. App building and design assistance features in SharePoint are great for cutting costs.

10. Speedy & Streamlined Business Process

MS SharePoint is the platform which is known for collecting and organizing data effectively at one centralized location. Your employees can easily build BI portal and displays business data and insights through scorecards, charts and dashboards. Business data may include anything such as communication with customers, interaction with partners, vendors and suppliers and any other kind of SharePoint driven data. This enable employee to keep a better track of their consumers’ choice, and predict variations in demand and supply, while making better decisions.

Conclusion

The top 10 features of SharePoint and its future that are discussed above in this blog show their specialty, uniqueness and different types of uses. But, all of them work together to make SharePoint a unique collaborative platform. SharePoint offer a lot to business organizations to take full advantage of it. New SharePoint team site is remarkably well and offer more packaged feel, which makes it an ideal choice for organizations as a collaborative platform.

In the forthcoming years, more updates on SharePoint are expected from Microsoft and it is projected to become more organized and structured. To help you with SharePoint App Development, hire SharePoint Developers from top SharePoint Development Company like Code Creators Inc. Click here to connect.