SharePoint Online is an online platform that assists businesses in engaging their employees in content sharing and management of content, knowledge, and applications that enable enhanced teamwork, timely access to information, and integrated communication throughout business operations. The research reveals that 85% of Fortune 500 business enterprises have implemented SharePoint Online as a tool for information storage and organization.

If you sync SharePoint Online with Microsoft 365 consulting, then there is much more you can do. Microsoft 365 suites enhance SharePoint and include applications like Teams, OneDrive, and Outlook, which are offered as packages with better versions than the previous ones. Microsoft 365 Consulting experts have described how you can improve SharePoint Online, and here’s what we found out. Here, we guide you through getting to know SharePoint in terms of its application in the business environment.

Understanding SharePoint Online Basics

Microsoft SharePoint Online is a cloud-based service that enables organizations to collaboratively share information, knowledge and applications within an organization. While on-premise SharePoint necessitates a significant amount of installation and maintenance in addition to hardware, SharePoint Online is hosted on Microsoft servers leading to improved reliability, scalability, and security. This means that your business does not have to spend a lot of its time worrying about the underlying technical problems.

Key Features of SharePoint Online:

• Secure cloud storage for documents with clear version history and rights to edit and discuss them.
• Special pages that are owned by teams where they can share documents, work on projects, etc.
• Ideal for reaching a large audience, it is suitable for posting company news or announcements for all the employees to see.
• Uses web parts – Lync web parts for instance – to customize sites without developing tools, or the SharePoint Framework (SPFx) to develop powerful solutions.
• It is fully compatible with other Microsoft 365 apps like Teams, OneDrive and Outlook, making it easier to work with.

Integration with Other Microsoft 365 Tools

Among the top benefits of SharePoint Online is the ability to integrate with other tools from the Microsoft 365 suite. Here’s how it enhances your workflow:

Microsoft Teams: It saves files to SharePoint for the Teams channel. This way, the files are immediately available and can be edited directly within the Teams interface.

OneDrive for Business: Sync SharePoint and OneDrive files so that you can work with them offline, and the app will update them.

Outlook: Outlook users can work with files in an integrated manner, meaning that one does not have to constantly jump between different programs since the files can be shared and accessed from within the Outlook email.

Why Use SharePoint Online?

Benefits for Businesses:

• SharePoint Online provides a means of effectively managing documents as a team, where members can edit each other’s work, post updates and track project progress in real time.
• SharePoint Online helps deploy all documents in one central repository so you can find, share and manage them easily.
• SharePoint Online is advantageous as it is an online solution that can expand with the pace of your business. Whether

Best Practices for Customizing SharePoint Online
Planning and Requirement Analysis

As always, it is said that the proper planning and analysis of the requirements are the two most important steps that help in achieving a successful customization. Start by defining the purpose of using SharePoint Online within your organization and the issues that you want to address.

Using Built-In Features versus Custom Development

It is also important to note that SharePoint Online has a rather rich set of out-of-the-box capabilities that can solve many basic business problems without the need for additional code. These are lists, libraries, Workflow, and site templates, which are normally customizable. This can be done by leveraging out-of-the-box functionalities that can save time and reduce the overall complexity of the project.

Tools and Techniques

SharePoint Designer

SharePoint Designer is another valuable application that allows you design SharePoint sites and work with them concerning the workflows as well without any programming languages. It enables the representation and management of the business processes that should be automated to define and integrate the proper flows.

Power Automate

Power Automate lets you schedule repetitive tasks, connect Microsoft 365 services, and manage multiple workflows without extensive coding. It makes the developer’s job easier, and they can focus on other important tasks.

Power Apps

Power Apps allows you to build specific business apps that are built on data either in the data foundation or other web and on-premise sources.

Common Customization Needs in SharePoint Online

Below is a set of strategic and technical tips that can be used to ensure that the SharePoint customizations provided are business-oriented, scalable solutions that do not compromise security and compliance.

Strategic Recommendations

Using SharePoint Customization for Achieving Business Objectives

In any project that involves SharePoint customization, it is vital to begin by defining what needs to be achieved and how the work done would be of value to the business. This involves engaging in the discovery of the purpose and the aims of the organization as well as SharePoint’s capability in fulfilling the same.

Minimizing Risk and Lock-In While Maintaining Customizations

Custom solutions may be planned in terms of current requirements, and future growth and increased utilization of the system must also be taken into account when designing. Develop the system with a modular approach, so that, each of the modules can be changed or replaced without affecting the whole system.

Technical Recommendations

Utilizing SharePoint Framework (SPFx) for Development

The SharePoint Framework (SPFx) is the recommended way to create solutions for SharePoint Online. What can be done with SPFx? SPFx enables developers to create client-side solutions with the help of modern web technologies such as JavaScript, Typescript, and React.

Leveraging Microsoft Graph API

Microsoft Graph API is an advanced approach for connecting SharePoint Online with other Microsoft 365 solutions and external applications. It offers one coherent way to work with data in Microsoft’s cloud services, including Azure AD, Outlook, and OneDrive.

Security and Compliance Considerations

Permissions and Access Controls

Access controls and permissions must also be managed effectively to minimize the risks of revealing restricted data. Ensure that you adopt the principle of least privilege, where a user is only given the amount of access that he or she requires to accomplish certain tasks.

Ensuring Compliance with Industry Standards

Meeting the set standard is crucial, especially for those companies that are in business-sensitive industries such as the health finance industry and the government industry. While evaluating Microsoft Office SharePoint Online one can identify some tools aimed at compliance support, such as DLP, eDiscovery, and auditing.

Wrap-Up

In this blog, we looked at how to change SharePoint Online to meet your goals, be flexible, and, most importantly, be secure. We also provided strategic and technical recommendations by expert Microsoft 365 consultants and outlined crucial elements such as SharePoint Framework and Microsoft Graph API. Using these insights will assist you in building a robust and effective SharePoint platform exclusive to your company.