A web application platform developed by Microsoft within their Office 365 productivity suite.
What does it do? – SharePoint is designed as a centralized replacement for multiple web applications and supports various combinations of enterprise website requirements. Its multi-purpose platform allows for managing and provisioning of intranet portals, extranets and websites, document management and file management, collaboration spaces, social networking tools, enterprise search, business intelligence tooling, process/information integration and third-party developed solutions.
Another use of SharePoint is the functionality it provides a comprehensive set of collaboration tools in the cloud for users to work together on projects. SharePoint brings a single point of reference to where the documents are, similar to a card catalog in a library. The documents are shared through a password-protected website and can be accessed anytime making it easy for colleagues to work together. Instead of hunting around for files in different locations, such as personal computers & network shares, SharePoint provides a reference for where the files are located.
An example would be how a large university used SharePoint to keep track of absence time taken by their IT employees. Every employee went to the SharePoint site and because of the settings that are applied to the files in its secured library, they could only view their own leave records. However, the administrator could go to that same site to view and edit everybody's leave records. They also used it to schedule training meetings for any new student employee.
Users in a SharePoint group site can add files to and edit files in a library. If you are the site owner or designer, you can customize the library by changing how the files are displayed and managed. You can also set permission guidelines for if you want others in the group to be able to edit the files in the library or not, similar to how a page on Wikipedia works.
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