Hello, welcome to this video! Let's get a general overview on the most
important features inside Microsoft SharePoint Online 2019 and see how to
start with these for the first time!
Make sure to visit our YouTube channel and our official website to get
free tips, tutorials, giveaways and extra content!
Microsoft SharePoint is an online platform spread among small and large
companies. It creates a common online intranet page collecting news,
documents, resources and lists to edit and share between people and groups,
within your organization or external. It allows to have deep control
on sensitive information and communication; advanced file versioning, and
knowledge sharing through blogs and notebooks.
SharePoint is accessible online with your web browser from both Windows and
Mac platforms and available in three main versions. SharePoint Online is
the most common solution for smaller businesses, hosting intranet sites on
Microsoft servers. SharePoint Server is the most complete version, with
intranet addresses completely customizable and pages hosted on local
private servers. SharePoint App is a free version which allows to access
all SharePoint sites directly from smartphones.
In this simple tutorial we are going to see how to use SharePoint Online
as the main administrator. You can obtain this version with any SharePoint
Plan or with any Office 365 subscription.
To access your SharePoint site, just enter inside the main Office
website and login. Then, just go to the SharePoint Online App to enter
inside your main intranet page. This is hosted on a Microsoft server with
your organization name as part of the address and sharepoint.com as domain,
unless you have bought a custom one.
The main page is divided in two parts: on the left you have the quick
sites list, including the starred ones you are Following and the most
Recent ones you have visited; on the right you have a big preview on the
most recent news posted on your SharePoint sites and at the bottom all the
sites you have visited often. You can also use the Search bar in the
top left corner to look for any interested site or page.
Before creating any site, let's understand the basic structure of any
SharePoint intranet. This intranet is made by several independent Sites,
collecting pages, news, documents and anything you need to share inside
your organization. These Sites can also include Subsites showing other
content with dedicated options.
In addition, you have two main kinds of sites: the Communication sites and
the Team sites. The Communication sites have a modern visual layout used
to communicate and share news and events on a large audience. The Team
sites can be either public or private and are used to share information
and make collaborations on projects between all the users approved on a
defined Office 365 group chosen for such Team site.
By default, your intranet includes just a single Communication site which
is your Home page, with the main web address of your intranet. To create a
new site, go to Create site above and choose the kind of site to use.
Let's start with a new Communication site, defining site name, address,
description and default language. On the left choose the kind of template
to use for the site design. In this video we will see the default Topic.
The new Communication site opens with a nice layout showing links to pages,
News posts, organization Events and shared documents. In the top right
corner you can enable Following to add this site to your most favorite
list and use Share site to invite and give access to people, Office groups
or even everyone inside your organization.
If you go to Settings and then to Site permissions you can check the
privacy and accessibility options applied to the current site. By default
only you have access to the site, being one of the Site Owners that have
full control on the site content and layout. You also have Site members
that can view, edit and moderate the site content and Site visitors which
can just read and download content from your site. You can go to Advanced
permissions settings and then to Permission Levels to manage all the
possible actions that Owners, Members and Visitors can perform on the
current site. You can also create custom Office groups by going to Create
Group above.
You can go to Settings and then to Site information to rename, delete the
site or change its basic logo. You can go to View all site settings to
adjust all the possible options for your current site.
Whereas to edit the site template and appearance you can go to Settings
and then to Change the look to adjust the basic color Theme, Header and
Navigation structure.
To check and manage the content of your site go to Settings and then to
Site contents. This collects all the site media, pages and documents
grouped into several kinds of SharePoint Apps, such as Document libraries,
Events lists and Page libraries.
The Document libraries lists all the media files and documents inside the
site, such as all the files used for site logos and backgrounds on Site
Assets or all the documents created and uploaded by users inside Documents.
Inside the document library you can use New to create a new folder, link or
a new file you can edit with Office Online. You can also upload any file
from your computer by either using Upload or dragging and dropping these
files directly inside the library.
Use Sync to sync this Sharepoint library with your OneDrive account. In
this way you can download these documents and edit these offline in your
computer and then resync these on SharePoint once you come back online.
When selecting any file you can use Share or Copy link to share it;
Download to download it, Delete to remove it and Open to open and edit the
document directly on SharePoint. You can also go to Version history to
check all the past versions of the document in a chronological order to
view or restore.
When getting a lot of files, you can use Add column to show more metadata
or the Search bar to find documents matching your keywords.
By default you also have the Events list app. This is the official
calendar shared on your site showing meetings and appointments to all
the people inside your organization.
Inside your site you can also include new apps by going to New and then to
App. You can add other document libraries, custom lists and other special
apps by visiting the SharePoint Store.
The Communication site also includes a section dedicated to all news and
links you want to share, complete with title, description and thumbnail.
To create a news post, just go to Add and then to News post. This creates
a new page inside your Communication site that will be collected under the
News section.
On top, type a title, upload a background picture and add content by
creating Web Parts with the plus button at the bottom. These are parts of
the news page showing different kinds of content, from picture, videos and
text to interactive content, chat and pieces of HTML codes. For example
you can use Text to type text content; Document library to link any of
your media libraries; News to link your news pages and Hero to include an
interactive Web Part which directs your visitors to intranet sites, pages
or files with a great thumbnail and call-to-action text.
You can use the tools inside the black box to edit, move or delete the
current Web Part or just click on Page details to correct and adjust more
of its options on the extreme right side.
In addition, you can adjust the page layout by using the page sections.
These group several Web Parts together in order to move, arrange and adjust
their placement inside the page as you like. You can create a new section
by using the plus button on the extreme left and use its tools to move,
delete it and the Edit section to adjust its layout and its basic
background color. This color fits the main theme color you have chosen for
the main Communication site this page belongs to.
Once the new page is ready, just go to Post news on the right to
publish it.
Also the main Communication site follows the same structure of the News
page, including several sections collecting Web Parts you can edit with
the tools on the extreme left. The site also includes the Navigation on
top, including quick links to intranet and internet pages you can customize
by going to Edit.
The main site and all its news pages are collected inside the Site Pages
library, in .aspx format. You can create other new pages by going to Site
Page above. This new page belongs to the main Communication site and it
works just like the News pages, with the difference that this page won't
be listed as a News post. Pages and News posts do share the same privacy
and permissions settings of the Communication site.
You can come back to the main SharePoint page by going to SharePoint in
the top left corner.
The Team site is another kind of site that allows to get major control
on privacy and permissions on the site content. This is recommended for
private groups working together that need to share sensitive projects and
documents.
When creating a Team site you automatically create a Group email address
(or Office 365 group) associated to it that grants access to your new Team
site content. At the bottom you can also set the Privacy settings: choose Public
to make your Team site accessible by anyone inside your organization or
Private to make it reachable just by users invited and approved as Members
by the Team site Owners.
Team sites can be edited and shared just like Communication Sites. They
also have the same Settings panel to adjust permissions, reach its content
and change its look. They also include the Navigation on the left and the
several sections containing Web Parts, more focused on team groups rather
than external communication.
Team sites can include Site Pages but also Wiki Pages and Web Part Pages.
Wiki Pages are simple text pages very useful to share ideas, comments and
knowledge across the Team site group; whereas Web Part Pages are empty
pages you build by adding Web Parts from scratch.
The SharePoint intranet can also include site collections, such as subsites
referring to a main Communication or Team site more focused on a particular
theme. Subsites can either inherit or get their
own privacy settings and Office groups independent from the main Site.
To create a new subsite go to Site contents and then to New, Subsite.
Define name, description, address, privacy options and also the layout
template to start from. All subsites are listed under Subsites inside Site
contents.
Thanks for watching this video! Make sure to check our YouTube channel and
our free Microsoft Office guide to learn more and completely for free!