SharePoint Online – Beginners Course

SharePoint Essential Training

Use SharePoint for Documents and Collaboration

From its humble beginnings, as a homegrown product created to make it easier for Microsoft employees to find and retrieve their files, SharePoint has become an industry standard powerhouse. SharePoint delivers collaboration and document and data management solutions for more than 400,000 organizations and 200 million users worldwide. SharePoint is also the storage facility behind Microsoft Teams. And whether you’re working with Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint, or Word, you can leverage the power of SharePoint Online to make your experience in all of these applications more powerful and far more collaborative.

Getting Started with SharePoint Online

SharePoint: The Basics

SharePoint online is not an application like Word or Excel or even a suite of applications like Outlook.

SharePoint is a platform that organizations use to create websites: for an entire organization, for a department or a project team.

SharePoint is used in a browser and it provides a secure place where users can store, access, organize, and share files and data.

SharePoint includes a rich set of features, Content Management Tools:

1. Libraries ►Where we store Documents
2. Lists ►Where we store Data
3. File Sharing ► Within and beyond the Organization
4. Policies ► For Review & Retention
5. Search Features► To locate Documents and Data

You’ll spend most of your time in SharePoint working in:

Team Sites ►where groups of users collaborate on documents and data

Communication Sites ►used for organizational messaging.

Login to SharePoint

There are several different ways you can log into SharePoint.

1. From any Microsoft product that has this waffle or app launcher ► SharePoint ►start page
2. From a Link you receive by email:

• Link to Communication Site
• Link to a Shared File or Folder

Use The SharePoint Start Page

When we launched SharePoint from the Waffle, we ended up here on the SharePoint Start Page.

At the top, we have create site and create new post, search and SharePoint news from sites. This is what the start page (your personal SharePoint dashboard).

Until recently this page was called SharePoint home. But now you can have a separate homepage which allows administrators of SharePoint sites to point you to exactly where they would like you to start every time you launch SharePoint, instead of coming to this page. 

To come to the SharePoint, start page (no matter where you are):

• Click this SharePoint link,
• Click the Home icon on the Apps Bar.

The start page allows you to decide what you would like to view because you have the choice to follow. And by your actions, you go to particular sites.

• The Apps Bar (Home/ List of your Sites/Your News/ Your Recent Files)
• Navigation pane
• Sites that you chose to follow, followed by
• Sites you visited recently
• Search box: searches all of the SharePoint sites and your own OneDrive for business which is also part of SharePoint.

Work With SharePoint Sites

Navigate and Browse in SharePoint Online

There are two primary types of sites that are used in SharePoint Online:

1. Team site ► where people collaborate, and share documents, lists, other types of data and work together.
2. Communication site► for distribution of information to other people in your organization.

To visit a Team Site, I can simply click in the search box and start typing GK- Retail or click on it and we’ll drop right into this site.

Let’s look at this site as an example of Team Sites.

At the top, we have a search box (Search this site). In SharePoint, where you are is where you’re searching.

At the top, I have the name of the site and there’s a Teams icon that tells me that there’s a Microsoft Teams channel connected to this particular group. I can click this Go to the Microsoft Teams channel.

On the right-hand side ► I can click to follow. (Click again to Unfollow). We also see how many members (if I click, I can actually see the list of members) here. We have different types of members. If I wanted I can add more members to this site, which is how you share a team site.

To the right of the App bar, I have the navigation for this site itself. This used to be called the Quick Launch:

Home that will bring me back to this page, Documents, a Notebook kept in OneNote, Pages, contents of this site, the Recycle Bin for this site, and an Edit button.(if you don’t have an Edit button, that simply means that you don’t have the same level of permissions on the site) you’re looking at that I have here.

Click to go to a team site ► Moving across the top of the page, I have a New drop down …

On the right, I have access to the same document library I have access to here.

The organization and layout of your SharePoint site might be different than this particular site. But how you work with the site content and how you navigate will be the same irrespective of layout.

Understand Your Permissions

When you log into SharePoint you interact with individual sites and the content stored in those sites based on the permissions that you have been granted. SharePoint uses role-based access control. SharePoint comes with some built in permission roles:

In SharePoint it’s possible to set permissions not just at the level of the site but at the level of an individual list or library, and folder or document.

Your permissions can be modified by a site owner or by your SharePoint administrator.

Edit Your Profile

SharePoint Online knows something about you because it was able to validate your username and your password and allow you in. But there’s even more information about yourself that is accessible to SharePoint Online, to all of Microsoft 365, and, therefore to your colleagues.

If you click the icon in the upper right hand corner of SharePoint it’ll say Account Manager for your name. MS Office profile ► +/- log in again in your Office account ► Delve is where your profile is stored, as well as information about different documents that you’re working with. (Delve is a separate application)

Upload or change a photo.

There’s some other information below here, your Title, your email address, your number, a link that goes directly to your OneDrive, and more information about you. This section certainly comes from Active Directory, but there’s also personal information. To add information to your profile, simply click Update profile, and it has several pages, some of which you can edit, and some of which you can’t…

This isn’t a resume. It’s a quick way for people to know about you, your skills, and expertise at work, and, perhaps, other topics, your education, and your interests, and hobbies.

This is your page, so it has a Cover Photo. If you want to change this photo…

When you are all done updating your profile, you can either go back, you can click the waffle and go back to SharePoint, or because I have a SharePoint page open already, I can simply close Delve, and it will save my changes, it’s already updated my profile picture, and we’re ready to continue.

View All Site Content

When you navigate to a SharePoint site, you don’t see everything that’s on the site featured here on the home page.

If you want to see all the contents of the site, There are two different ways to do it:

1. One way is to click on Site Contents (Navigation or Gear icon)► takes us to a page that will show us the content of the site… explore
2. You can locate content by Searching in SharePoint Online. There are three specific things to know about Search:
   1. Search will only show results that you have permission to see.
   2. Search is customizable, your site may include lists and libraries that you have permission to see, but they may be excluded from Search.
   3. it matters where you search in SharePoint. If I have access to 40 or 50 SharePoint sites, it makes sense to try to limit the scope of my search by going to my search location to begin with.

Type a Search keyword on the start page ► Show More Results ► search result page …

Find and Follow a Site

If you find yourself frequently searching for sites, SharePoint is designed to allow you to follow a site so that you can include it on your list of followed sites,

To follow a site, simply locate it… Click Following (Toggle)

Share a Site with Colleagues

There are different ways that I can share content with colleagues and others in SharePoint Online.

The broadest way to share content is to share an entire site:

And there are two places that we can do this:

Go to the site ► members and click► You add members to this group, as long as they’re people who have an email in the same domain (organization active Directory).

To add someone who was external, you go to Outlook to do this If you have a site that is a Public Group► It has an Office 365 group sitting underneath it. And those groups get managed in Microsoft Outlook► I go directly to the public group ► if I put in an email address for a guest it will say guest immediately underneath because guest is the same as this person’s not on our network and not in our active directory

Post News

SharePoint’s news feature makes it easy to keep members of your team connected to each other and connected to the work. You can easily create great looking announcement posts, and news are automatically pushed out to SharePoint mobile apps. So this is a great way to share information for teams that are not always sitting at a computer. To create a new news post, first go to the site where you want to create the post.

In the news section, click the dropdown on add and choose news post. There are three basic templates that are built in SharePoint online.

The blank template lets you start from scratch. You put in whatever columns, text and images you want.

The visual template has a text web part with two columns below an image and basic text has two columns just below an image….etc.

Use the SharePoint Mobile App

You’ll get your mobile app for SharePoint in the same place you get your other mobile apps for your phone. I’m using an iPhone, so I downloaded the SharePoint app from the Apple App Store and launched it.

The first time you launch it, you’ll be asked to provide some credentials so that you can log in. After that I rarely am bothered for my username or password any longer.

If you’re a SharePoint user, I really encourage you to download and explore the Microsoft SharePoint mobile app. It’s worth your time.

Use a Communication Site

There’s another type of site that we will see in SharePoint Online that’s meant for sharing information. This type of site is called a Communication Site. And I have one here.

All of the communication sites won’t look alike any more than the team sites did because all of this is customizable. However, in general, the communication sites will feature large images, less text, and links to take you to various locations within this site, or externally, perhaps a webpage.

So, if we have news stories that get posted here, they will show up in SharePoint on the start page. And you can search the communication sites that you have access to, just as you can search any of the other sites that we’ve seen previously.

Work with Documents in SharePoint

Work in Document Library

Broadly speaking, there are two types of content that we will store in SharePoint so that we can collaborate with it:

1. One type is information or data stored in lists, which are very much like tables in Excel
2. Documents, which are stored in a special type of a list called a library.

Open a document library ► At the top we have a simple toolbar that allows us to:

• New ► Create A New document in this library or a new link
• Upload ► files, a folder or a template.
• Edit In Grid View ► So that we can actually type here (Exit Grid View).
• Sync which allows us to synchronize this library with another device
• Add A Shortcut To OneDrive, that’s a newer feature and then when we click the
• More button… explore

All Documents ► a series of different views to display the information in this library…

Pin / Unpin a document

Select a document ► the first thing we have is the ability to SHARE this item which we will return to, and the More actions button … explore

Multiple documents selected ► the list of choices gets much shorter

This default library view has columns that display information about the documents. The name, when it was last modified, who it was modified by and then we have the ability to add more columns as well and there’s a column out here at the front, which is type, which is represented by an icon.

There’s a lot of power in these views because we can Sort and Filter if I want to see the documents that were more recently modified…

Sort & Filter from All Documents & Funnel ► Save This View I can make it a public view) then switch back to default view.

Document Storage Locations: The Basics

Before we take a deeper dive into documents and libraries, let’s back up and look at document storage more generally.

• By default, every new SharePoint site has one document library, and you can add many
• OneDrive for Business, which is part of SharePoint. OneDrive for Business is your personal SharePoint library at work.
• You cannot connect OneDrive for Business to your personal OneDrive, but you can move documents back and forth between the two.

Open and Edit an Office Document

Documents created with Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, and documents created using the open document formats for document spreadsheets and presentations can easily be opened in a browser. In other words, Office documents and Google Suite documents.

Open a Word Document ► Explore some functionalities in a browser… Tabs/ Editing Button

But what if I needed to insert some smart art? ► open in a desktop app.

Auto save is on. We are automatically saving your changes for you. Why? Because this file comes to me from a SharePoint document library

We have a feature called co-authoring. When you co-author or simultaneous editing, two or more people can edit the document at the same time. How this is managed is SharePoint actually blocks off the part of the document that one person is editing so that we can’t have people overwriting each other’s changes accidentally (Paragraph/ Cell/ Textbox)

When I close Microsoft Word on the desktop, or I close this document as a whole, I end up back in SharePoint.

Save a Document in SharePoint

If you’re creating a document in Microsoft Office 365, you can save directly to SharePoint and to your OneDrive for Business from the application. We don’t have to separately upload documents. Create a Word document then:

1. Turn on AutoSave ► I’m only prompted for my work OneDrive, and my personal OneDrive.
2. If I want to save and SharePoint, I need to go to file, Save or Save as…Here are my frequent sites that I go to. Here are the sites that I’m following. Where do these lists come from? They come from the SharePoint start page.

I can tell that it’s saved in a Shared location because there’s this icon with two people on it. And if I click this dropdown, this will tell me exactly where it is saved. This is the name of the document, and I can change it here. And that works. And if I wanted to choose a different location, I could do that. This would allow me to choose a different library in the same site.

One of the huge benefits that I get by saving in SharePoint, whether I’m saving in a team site library, a communication site library, in OneDrive for Business, is that, from the point when I save, SharePoint automatically saves my changes going forward.

Upload or Create a Document

1. Click the Upload dropdown and either choose files or Folder…
2. We can drag documents in here… File Explorer ► Say pictures from Cloud drive ► Notice, uploading three items. Here in OneDrive, Edge is downloading them, and then it’s going to upload them basically. So, download, upload. So, I can drag and drop files or folders into any document library, and into OneDrive as well.
3. I can create a new file right here, a NEW … test (Rename it in the Document Library…)

Manage Documents and View Versions

As your document library fills with files, you’ll need to manage your document library. So let’s take a look at the tools that we have for this ►(click on ellipsis) Show Actions menu:

Rename/ Open/ Preview/Share/ Download/ Delete/ Pin- unpin/ Move to / …explore.

NB: The Immersive Reader, which is a reader that fills the screen…

Assuming that my library has versioning turned on, because it is on by default, I can look at the version history here, I can look at the version history in the desktop app, or Microsoft Word on the web.

If I want to make older version the current one, then I click Restore. With Word, I can also compare the document with the current version and see what the differences are, but, at least older version is simply a backup that I can return to if I wish.

Set an Alert on a Document Library

Sometimes, you want to know if a document has been changed, and who changed it.

• Simply click on the more actions button and choose “Alert me”… explore options.
• Another business use case for alerts is to set an alert not just in a document, but on an entire library. Make sure nothing is selected ►Click on More (top bar) ►Alert me … explore options.
• To turn Off / view/ modify or create New Alerts ► Make sure nothing is selected ►Click on More (top bar) ►Manage my alerts… explore and go back to library.

Share a File

There are a number of different ways that I can share documents.

Sharing a Site = Adding members

To share a specific document I can select it and click share … explore options

There’s our icon for Outlook and I would just click send.

My other possibilities, so that I can create a link and I could send that link through email or put that link in a presentation or a document. So that’s what the copy link is for. Here also you can set permissions…

If I’m sending links from SharePoint, nobody is receiving a copy of the file. They are every single time receiving a link. And because of that, if they click and edit they’re all editing the same document. One source of truth and therefore there’s less confusion, more clarity and a smarter workflow.

Request Sign-off or Manager Approval

If I really want to receive feedback from somebody on a particular document in my library, then I can actually request either approval or sign off and using the power of Microsoft Power Automate and some other applications like the notifications app I can make it really easy for somebody to give me feedback about an entire document or part of a document.

Click show actions ► Automate ► Request sign off ► Microsoft SharePoint calls Microsoft Power Automate to help us out here. This flow lets you send an item to others to get their approval.

So this particular workflow uses SharePoint, it uses Approvals and it uses Notifications and the first time you run this, you may be asked to set up connections and actions.

Recipient (say Boss) is getting an email generated by SharePoint, sent to Outlook with a link to the file and with my message to ask him would he please go in, review this and then approve it.

Eventually after he has approved it, the sign-off status column, which is inserted the very first time you create a new sign-off request will change from Pending to Approved.

Work with Lists in SharePoint

SharePoint List: The Basics

A SharePoint list is a collection of information, like a table in Excel or in a database.

Lists consist of rows that contain data, meeting categories in columns.

SharePoint Online includes a number of standard lists that are frequently used in team sites.

There are new lists that are available not just here in SharePoint, but also in Microsoft Teams and in the application called Microsoft List.

I’d like to show you a couple of lists so that you know what they look like. First, a list built using one of the Microsoft 365 List templates.

This Travel Request list was built using the Microsoft Travel Request template. It has information about the trip, who’s requesting this travel, when it’s going to start, when it intends to end.

This list was originally created in Microsoft Excel, and that Excel table was then used to quickly and easily create this custom list in SharePoint Online.

Enter and Edit List Data

There are two ways I can add a new item to our SharePoint list:

I can use a form ► New … explore options.

I can use a grid ► click edit in grid view and at the bottom there’s an add new item, but instead of opening a form, it simply opens up the row so that I can begin entering information here.

As soon as I enter any particular piece of data, it’s saved. I don’t have to save when I’m done. I can select an item ► delete it ► It goes to this site’s recycle bin.

Tools For Lists

We often talk about SharePoint being composed of lists and libraries, but document libraries are really a specialized form of SharePoint list. So it’s not surprising that the command bar at the top of our list has many of the same commands that we saw on the toolbar in the document library.

Here we have our Views and you can modify views if you would like to do so.

You can Sort and Filter to modify your view. ► you can save the current view.

Use Your Site’s Recycle Bin

Deleted items are sent to the Recycle Bin.

If I click the gears button ► choose Site Contents, I can visit that Recycle Bin (upper right)

If I want to restore an item, I can select it and choose Restore, and send it back to where it came from. I could also permanently delete it so that no one could bring it back (delete).

The recycling bin is periodically cleaned out. Items that are more than 30 days old are usually gone.

Integration: SharePoint Online, Teams and outlook

Use SharePoint from Teams

SharePoint has a unique relationship with two other applications, with Microsoft Teams and with Microsoft Outlook.

Open Teams ► On the left hand side we have a list of teams (each team represents a piece of effort or a project. It’s a group of people working together to accomplish something) ► Within a team, we organize more specific efforts with channels.

Every person who is a member of a team is also a member of the general channel.

Click on Files for the SP Team created ► this is actually the same SharePoint document library that we have in SP.

Files and Teams are stored in SharePoint libraries, So if you’re working with documents in Microsoft Teams, you are by definition working in SharePoint.

Use SharePoint with Outlook

For a 2 days SP course.

SharePoint integrates with lots of applications, but one of the original integrations was with Outlook & Teams. When you look at a calendar in Teams, the only calendar that you will see is your work calendar in Outlook.

Here I have a calendar that was created by my residential sales group. What they do is they track who’s going to be out of the office and it’s okay to be able to come here all the time and look and see what this looks like. Who’s on vacation, who’s out of the office on a particular day, but as we get more and more information in these calendars and more places to check, it just becomes in a way counterproductive. It’s best if, instead of sending users like you and me to the calendar, the calendar can come to us. And indeed calendars created in SharePoint can do just that. When you see these little tabs up here, when you’re looking at a page, that’s a clue that you’re looking at some legacy applications here. But if I go to the calendar, I get a whole little set of tools here. And one of them is the ability to connect to Outlook. I can do this with a calendar. I can do this with contacts. These are special relationships that were baked into how the calendar and contacts applications inside of SharePoint were built. So if I connect to Outlook, it says this site is trying to open Outlook. I’m going to say, always allow that. And here’s the residential sales calendar, right here. And it is filling in the information. If I wish then, I can treat this calendar as I would treat any other calendar that I get to see here. If I want to overlay the calendars so I can compare my schedule to the information that’s coming from this other calendar, I can do that. It works just fine. So if I have a community calendar like this for my team, if have a group of contacts that I want to share in a similar way, rather than having everyone go look at the calendar, here the calendar has come to me. And if there is a change to the residential sales calendar, for example, let’s just add an item here on the 28th. We’ll just say that I’m out of the office. (keyboard clacking) Personal day, all day long. I’m going to save that. So it drops it in right here, not bad. Let’s go take a look at Outlook. If I come back to Outlook and send and receive all folders, there I am. Out of the office. So this will synchronize on whatever basis your Exchange is set up to synchronize, but you can force a synchronization to look at new things in a shared calendar folder or a shared contacts folder simply by choosing send receive all folders. At some point, if you no longer want to actually have this calendar, you can remove it. You can simply right click and delete the calendar. And if you do, then it doesn’t affect anything in SharePoint. It only removes it from Outlook for you. It’s possible that between Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Teams, you’re using SharePoint all day long. Using SharePoint and Outlook to connect to shared calendars and shared contacts, using SharePoint teams to connect to files. All day long you’re in Teams. All day long you’re in Outlook and all day long you’re in SharePoint.

Create a Calendar from a List

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRyxtVFZQnE

• New► List ►Add Columns (Start & Due Date) ►Save ► Enter few names ► All Items ► Create New View ►Calendar ►Create ► Copy URL.
• In the Site navigation► Click on the list created ► Edit ► Paste URL

Create Calendar in Classic SharePoint – Link to Outlook

• Site Content ►return to Classic SharePoint ► Add an App ► Calendar ► Give it a Name ►Create ► Exit Classic Experience ►Site Contents ► The New Calendar name …(ellipsis) ►Settings ►List name, description, and navigation ► Display this list on the quick launch ► Yes ►Save
• Home Page ► Click on the new calendar ► Add an event (Events Tab) ► Click on the Calendar Tab ► Connect to Outlook ► In Outlook ► Ad an Event and Check it in SP.

Customizing SharePoint Site

Change the Look of a Site

Change the Look of a Site ► Only Site Owner

1. With the New Site Open ► Gear Icon ►Change the Look ► Theme► explore and select… Changes buttons / Icons/ Text
   1. Logo is not part of the Theme
2. Change Header ►Change the Look ► Header:
   1. Layout… explore ► select Standard then Extended (space for Horizontal navigation + Select picture)
   2. Background … explore ► match the theme
   3. Logo ► Site Logo (not necessarily Square) Thumbnail Logo (Square)
   4. Alignment
3. Navigation (I need to add 2 other document Libraries and cascade them under Document to be able to test all options)
   1. Add Marketing Material and Image libraries ► indent
   2. Settings ► Change the Look ► Navigation ► explore… ► Mega Menu

Edit the Navigation Bar

• Whether H or V click on Edit
• Hover until you see H line with + sign ► Click ► explore Drop List and Paste a Link to another Page or website.
• To the right of each item click on the ellipsis and explore Move or Remove. ► Save

Work with Site Pages

Edit a Page

Owners and members can edit site pages ► Click Edit (right side) and the page opens for editing.

• Each Page consists of Sections ► Each Section is divided into Columns ► Each Column has webparts… Hover and explore.
• If you see Comments: These are Not webparts and can be turned On/Off
• Click on Page Details ► explore and don’t change now
• Three options after making any change:

Add a Site Page to SharePoint

Click on Pages (Navigation bar) ► New ► Site Page (modern experience) ► name it as Marketing Material ► Save it as Draft (only owners & members can see it)

Edit the header Webpart

Open the New Page ► Site Header and Page Header ► Edit explore… Save as Draft

Modify header Background image

On the Webpart bar select ►Change Image ► Different sources ►Change Focal point.

Add and Work with Sections

• Edit Page ► Insert 1 Column Section ► Edit Section ► explore ► Change it to 2 Columns
• Duplicate Section ► Edit Section ► 1/3 Right column ► Move it above the previous section

• Try to delete a section ►then Undo
• From the Edit Section Pane ► make a section Collapsible ► explore lots of options ►Add Section Name

Publish a Page

• Unpublished pages can only be seen by site owner or members.
• Click on Pages ► Hover over the icon for unpublished page ► explore
• Click on the Ellipsis ► Version History ► explore
• Double Click on the page ► Publish (upper Right) ►Add to Navigation Bar

Add and Work with Web Parts

Add a Web Part

Web parts allow you to add different elements to your SharePoint pages. You really can’t do anything without webparts.

Open the page for editing ► Hover over the line in the new Section ► Click on the + sign ► explore the web parts ► add a Text web part ► type some text ► explore formatting.

Add an Image Gallery Web Part

Edit Page ►Image Gallery Web part ►select 6-8 images ► see options ► Carousel (like a slide show) ► Save as draft.

Add a Document Library Webpart

Same as previous ► Document Library ►explore options

Add a List Web Part

To do this activity, I created from the site Home page a List based on the Missing Invoices Excel File after converting my list into a Table in Excel. Back to the Marketing Page ► Edit ► list webpart in the lower section ► Edit ► explore options

Work with the News Web Part

Added by default when we create a new Site. In general when you click on the down arrow for New in a news webpart ► Select a new post ► it actually creates a New page ► there are 3 styles to explore and you can see these pages by clicking on Pages in the Navigation bar.

Therefore, many users find the News webpart of little benefit so you might try Deleting it from the Home Page

Work with the Quick Links Web Part

Added by default when we create a new Site… explore the functionality of +Add Links

Add the Group Calendar Web Part

On the Home Page of the newly created site ►Edit ►Insert “Group Calendar” web part above the News ► Click Edit ► Select the Group from the side Pane & # of events► Add an Event in Outlook ► it synchronizes with SP

Add the Stream Web Part

Nabil

Add the Quick Chart Web Part

SP is good in handling data and one of the best ways to visualize our data is by creating a chart.

Home Page ► Edit ►Add one Column Section to the bottom ► Add quick Chart Web part ► Edit ► From the Side Pane select Column Chart ► Add 4 regions manually with values

Alternatively, you can select data from an existing list ► I have Missing Invoices list ► Set the column for Values and the column for labels and that’s it. Hover over columns or slices for tooltip.