There is much more to SharePoint than you might think. With so many different uses and the fact that SharePoint includes OneDrive and Teams, you can squeeze plenty of benefits out of this tool, especially when you customize templates from Microsoft and leverage the Power Platform. As an IT staff augmentation company, our experts are happy to share our four favorite SharePoint use cases. 

Project Management

You likely have a need for a project management tool, which can be expensive. However, if you are already using SharePoint, you have a great built-in tool, which you can create using a Teams site and an Office 365 Group to set up the project management framework. 

When you add the Teams user interface on top of your SharePoint and add in Microsoft Planner, it’s easy to organize tasks and communicate with your team. Teams provides a seamless way to share content, collaborate and host meetings within the SharePoint environment. Integrating MS Planner helps you assign and track tasks for each milestone. Your team can view all your tasks in one place, even if they are involved in multiple projects.

Instead of using folders, we suggest you customize columns for things like:

• Project status.
• Start and end dates.
• Project managers.

If you want more control, consider using document sets that function like folders but allow you to apply metadata to individual documents. You can also add external users if need be.

Employee Onboarding and Offboarding 

Onboarding and offboarding employees are routine tasks for IT professionals like us. The process often requires coordination with HR and hiring managers. We’ve found that using SharePoint is effective for managing the process, especially if you don’t want to purchase costly HR systems. 

When you create a SharePoint and Office 365 Group, you can track key details with customizable lists such as:

• Employee names.
• Job titles.
• Departments.
• Start dates.

The planner tool can assign tasks like equipment orders, account setup and orientation. You can leverage Power Automate to trigger workflows, assign tasks and send reminders to ensure everything is ready on time. You can create workflows that provide status updates to help HR and managers stay informed. 

To visualize data, use Power BI, which offers insights into delays and ways to improve the onboard/offboard process in the future. 

Vacation Requests

By using a calendar app embedded in the website, SharePoint can track vacation requests. Behind the scenes, the calendar operates as a list. 

In order to manage approvals, Power Automate can send the vacation requests to the right person for review. You can set up email notifications and reminders to ensure the responses are done in a timely manner. We suggest you create a workflow that includes the manager for approvals and a task for HR to apply the vacation time in any necessary system.  

When the employee’s vacation time is approved, it will send an email to that employee and any other relevant party.

Issue Tracking 

By using a SharePoint list, you can track tech support incidents by creating columns for details like:

• Issue title.
• Username.
• Email.
• Status.
• Assigned technician. 
• Resolution time.

This allows the support team to filter incidents, while managers can create custom views based on status, assignee or resolution time.

To enhance this SharePoint use case, use Power Automate to send emails when incidents are created, a status is changed or an escalation is needed. Once resolved, an email goes out to your user with a feedback survey that can be exported to Excel for reporting and analysis.

Unlock Full Capabilities With SharePoint Use Cases

There is so much your organization can do with SharePoint to keep your team more organized and increase collaboration across your organization. Need help creating a SharePoint that works for your team? Book a meeting with us to discuss our IT staff augmentation services and other effective SharePoint use cases.