So many more companies are discovering the power of SharePoint now that they have Office 365. We’ve had a few companies ask us recently if SharePoint can do the document management they require; like can it replace their own document servers, or docs in Dropbox. The answer is a resounding yes! Here’s what SharePoint can offer you :

1. Save – save all your documents to a central repository.

2. Access Anywhere – with O365, you can work and sign in from anywhere.

3. Collaborate – you can work on documents together using co-authoring, allowing multiple editors to work at once, either with internal staff and/or external stakeholders like clients, vendors and partners.

4. Edit Online or in Office – you can make some changes right in the browser, or if you need to do hardcore stuff like track changes, open the document in Word, (or PowerPoint / Excel) and do the big stuff there. When you close it, it saves directly back to SharePoint.

5. Check Out – you can check a document out to you if you don’t want anyone else to work on it while you do.

6. Preview – you can preview a doc to make sure it’s the right one you want.

7. Comment – you can add comments to documents you are working on together.

8. Version Control – versioning is available on all documents so that if someone over-rides a major edit, you can revert back to a previous version.

9. Search – there is a powerful search engine behind SharePoint that allows you to find what you want quickly. Or alternatively, switch search off for top secret documents if required.

10. Follow – you can also follow a document if it’s really important to you.

11. Share – easily share the link from the document to your colleagues, so no more sending attachments in emails.

12. Classify – all documents can and should be properly tagged when they are uploaded so that the filters and views mentioned below can rock your world.

13. Better Structure – you can have multiple document libraries with classification instead of hundreds of subfolders. Find your documents so much quicker that way and no more click through endless folders and getting to yet another empty folder.

14. Sort – you can sort docs in ascending or descending order by document name, or by any other classification on those documents.

15. Filters and Views – you can do manual or permanent filters to instantly view documents you access often, this is especially handy when you have thousands of documents.

16. Colour Code Document Tags (modern SharePoint only) – assign colours to different kinds of documents for snazzy views.

17. Create – you can create new blank documents right from your document library, or create them from a template you have.

18. Bulk Upload – you can upload 100 documents or 10GB at a time, whichever comes first.

19. Bulk Delete – select and delete 100 documents at a time if you uploaded them by accident.

20. Restore – deleted a bunch of stuff by accident? Don’t worry, there are 2 recycle bins where you can retrieve them for the next 45 days.

21. Bulk Edit – most naming standards leave a lot to be desired, but you can bulk edit them in SharePoint so you have beautiful clean data.

22. Connect to Outlook (classic SharePoint only) – you can connect your library to Outlook to make it easier to email the documents out.

23. Rating Stars – you can get people to rate docs from 1 to 5 stars so you can see what the most popular content is.

24. Approve – you can approve documents that get uploaded, and restrict people from even seeing a document until it’s been approved.

25. Security – you can restrict access to documents, some can be read only, some can be editable, some can be restricted completely to management level.

26. Alerts – you can be alerted via email on documents that have been uploaded, edited or deleted; and get the email instantly, or on a daily or weekly summary.

27. Reports – see at the click of a button which documents are the most viewed. This is handy so you know what documents to do more of, because people use them a lot. Also instantly see how many documents you have in a library so you can manage the views of them.

28. Work Offline – you can sync your documents to OneDrive so you can work offline, and sync them back automatically when you’re back in signal range. Great for working on long distance flights.

29. Archiving – for the purposes of small to medium sized businesses, you can easily have an archive section and make all the content in there read only.

30. Declare records – you can lock down documents so they can not be deleted in the case of a legal incident.

31. Save Libraries as Templates – need lots of the same library structure? No problem, set up one, save it as a template, then re-use it across your site.

32. Maintenance – once SharePoint is setup for you correctly, the only maintenance you’d need is to keep adding new content and making sure it’s classified as it goes in.

33. Decide on the Interface – you can switch between modern and classic SharePoint on demand based on personal preference and functionality required.

34. Space (SharePoint Online only) – no need to worry about storage space. You get a Terabyte by default and can buy more fairly cheaply at any time.

35. Backups (SharePoint Online only) – no need to worry about that of that, Microsoft takes care of that.

36. Own Servers (SharePoint Online only) – no longer needed. You can go straight to the cloud via a subscription fee and not worry about buying and maintaining servers ever again. Brilliant for small to medium businesses. Some larger businesses will probably still have their own servers for quite some time.

And all this with no code required!