A Breakdown of SharePoint Application Development

From previous knowledge, we know that SharePoint is cloud-based software, to help keep your organization on track with every piece of information gathered, inquired, monitored, and reported on. SharePoint offers an endless amount of possibility and flexibility which is ideal for content management.

However, that is not all SharePoint is utilized for. SharePoint is also known for its application development programming.

But what is SharePoint Application Development?

Well, since we know that SharePoint is a web-based collaboration and document management program from the Microsoft hub, we know that it is a popular option for enterprises and organizations to develop apps.

This program offers several bonuses alongside the basics. Including, seamless incorporation to the Microsoft Office Suite and easy to learn reconfiguration features.

Here is a breakdown on how to develop an app using SharePoint, and the recognizable advantages of developing this way.

The first requirement is to onboard your developing applications onto a SharePoint server through SharePoint. The SharePoint server offers two editions:

1. Standard

2. Enterprise

There was a basic free version, but that was unfortunately discontinued in 2016. Despite that, users are able to install the Standard edition immediately. Whereas the Enterprise edition is built from the Standard edition and must be unlocked. By unlocked that means the entering of a license key on the standard edition.

The standard edition comes with access to many useful, intuitive tools and features – like workflow templates, a secure storage service, web analytics, governance tools, audience targeting abilities, enterprise wikis, search customization features, and more.

The enterprise edition comes with all of the features of standard, plus a few extras including:

• More accurate search results from rich web indexing

• Better search interface, with thumbnails and previews

• More in-depth integration of business intelligence, through the use of intuitive dashboards and business data surfacing

• Incorporation of PowerPivot, PerformancePoint, Microsoft Office, Visio, Excel, and more

Incorporating Microsoft Office onto the SharePoint server is ideal for the enterprise because it is viewed as an ordinary cloud server that delivers better control over SharePoint’s behavior or design.

The next requirement is to build a template and create a definition for a site. Establishing secure access to a server is a must because that starts your core site within Windows SharePoint services 3.0 or Office SharePoint Server 2007 for success.

Every site needs a great template to begin.

Once you’ve established if you’re developing a standard or enterprise application and defined a template for your application. Your next step is to make the necessary modifications.

To help ensure all the modifications are completed, here are four essential lists to go off of:

• Project Lists

• Project Tasks

• Project Issues

• Project Milestones

By creating the lists, they’ll display what exactly needs to get modified, so there’s no need for you to lose track of any important details.

Lastly, to aid the development process, even more, we have intuitive tools. Of which SharePoint offers a plethora of. Utilizing intuitive tools and resources help ease and speed up the development process.

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 provides you with several new libraries and list types of intuitive tools.

Intuitive tools consist of content types, with a reusable collection of settings. Having access to these can help users increase the content types they manage and enable them to reuse the metadata and behaviors of a specific document or item type from the core.

How opting into SharePoint benefits helps the Enterprise:

By no means is SharePoint the only solution to developing an enterprise app. It does however make developing much easier than other programs.

With enterprises, you can deploy apps instantly, with complete functionality right after installation. The collaborative tools from SharePoint are also a huge bonus to developing with an Enterprise.

We hope you choose SharePoint Application Development as your next platform for development. If you have any questions or want to reach out to get started, contact our experts at ISU Corp!

All About Sharepoint And It's Benefits

Have you always wondered about “What is SharePoint? What are its benefits and how can it help my team?” Today’s blog is going to answer those exact questions. We will take you through the basics of what Sharepoint is, the benefits of using it, and how you can get started. 

What is SharePoint?

Sharepoint is a digital cloud-based platform made for collaboration and project management. It's perfect for the social distanced age as it allows your team to still work together remotely and effectively. It allows you to manage all of your corporate content (financials, marketing materials, etc) so you can have everything in one easy to access location. It also lets you create websites, post company alerts to keep everyone in the loop, automate workflows, and build customized apps to help your team's productivity. 

It offers all these tasks in one easy to use platform, making collaboration a dream.

What are the Benefits?

As mentioned before, SharePoint offers many great features, but how do they all come together to really benefit us? Here are a couple of key benefits of using SharePoint:

1. SharePoint is Secure

If you heard your documents were all going to be on one platform the first thing you might have thought of are security concerns. But with this being a Microsoft piece of software you already know the security is taken very seriously. They place a heavy emphasis on protecting their customer's information, which is why they spend 1 Billion USD annually just on security. 

Some of the built-in security features include: 

• The ability to limit who outside your organization can see your content

• Set limits on who in your organization can access certain things

• Block or allow access to certain content just based on your team's location

2. SharePoint Excels Collaboration Amongst Team Members

Working remotely has its benefits but it certainly depletes one aspect in every business. Collaboration. When your team is not together there can be some concern on how they will be able to work together effectively and efficiently, however SharePoint provides a platform that simplifies collaboration. SharePoint puts all your documents into one place and lets them be accessed from any device at any time. As well, it shows real-time changes to documents and lets multiple people work on a document at one time, meaning your team can all be collaborating at the same time. 

Team members can also set up group tasks, assign tasks to other members, and check off tasks as they are completed. This allows everyone to know exactly what their responsibilities are and what everyone else is completing. 

3. SharePoint Helps Automate Pesky and Time-Consuming Tasks 

Having to collect signatures from employees or get approval can be annoying, especially when you want to just get back to your task. Sharepoint makes it easy to collect signatures and approvals digitally, meaning you'll spend less time chasing after your boss in the office and more time checking off tasks. 

As well, it automates other tasks such as tracking statuses on documents and enables notifications to see when something changes, etc. All these automations are called workflows and the most commonly used ones are: 

• Approval workflows

• Status workflows

• Notification workflows 

• Automation workflows

• Custom workflows

Isn’t SharePoint Hard To Use?

This is the same question that is always asked by any project manager before adopting new software and with good reason too. No one wants to adopt and transfer their team to a new platform just to make your life harder. Just like with any project management platform, if you prepare your team on how to use the platform and take time to implement it properly, it will be smooth sailing from that point forward. Not to mention, Microsoft is known for continuously updating their products so they can be the best, meaning you will continue to get improved service and new features. 

If you still have software questions or want to get in touch for more tips, please feel free to reach out to us at ISU Corp.