Introduction To SharePoint Online – Beginners Guide

Ashish Ratan Singh | Modified: November 12, 2016 | Introduction, Office 365, SharePoint Online | 4 Minutes Reading

This blog is aimed at sharing the basic introduction to SharePoint Online.

Introduction to SharePoint Online

Introduction to SharePoint

In general, SharePoint is a tool to share, manage, and access information on Office products. It is an extension of existing Office desktop software that are most widely used by computer users. Clients require/use this tool for solving their business problems and it works as document manager and storage system. Its usage varies from one organization to another and it comprises of many capabilities, out of which most of them requires governance & configuration.
There exist two on-premises versions of SharePoint and they are mentioned below in detail:

  • SharePoint Foundation Plan: This plan provides basic features for documentation and collaboration including some additional features like Website templates, document library, etc.
  • SharePoint Server Plan: This schema is an advance edition of previous plan i.e., foundation plan. It provides all the core features of fundamental schema plus features for enterprise-level business users. Following are the enterprise features provided by this plan:
  1. Full enterprise Search
  2. Business Intelligence Tool
  3. Enterprise Content management
  4. User site provisions and social networks

This is all about SharePoint, now let’s learn about an introduction to SharePoint Online.

Introduction to SharePoint Online

SharePoint Online is basically a bundle of Microsoft Office 365 subscriptions, which include team sites, OneDrive for Business, Yammer, Office Online, etc. Data in SharePoint Online is kept in encrypted form for keeping data safe and secure on the server. However, it is bounded by a set of collaboration, different management scenarios, and file hosting. It provides online access to Office applications in a secured manner.

SharePoint Online is basically a bundle of Microsoft Office 365 subscriptions, which include team sites, OneDrive for Business, Yammer, Office Online, etc. Data in SharePoint Online is kept in encrypted form for keeping data safe and secure on the server. However, it is bounded by a set of collaboration, different management scenarios, and file hosting. It provides online access to Office applications in a secured manner.

introduction to sharepoint

Outlined Structure of SharePoint Online

The site plays a role of a private website for an organization with a storage size of 10 GB + 0.5 per user. Team site provides central storage and private access for security with authentic permissions. Moreover, OneDrive for Business users is provided with storage space of 1 TB per user. It provides a variety of operations on online Office data like store, retrieve, search, archive, manage information, etc. The SharePoint Online also provide an interesting feature of searching and graphing functionally. Microsoft Windows & Microsoft Office integration enable collaborative real-time edition and synchronization of information rights.
NOTE: These specified sizes will increase with the change in time and as per users requirement.

Document Libraries in SharePoint Online

SharePoint Libraries act as a container, which keeps files of Office 365 applications. A List is a reliable manner to keep information in the form of rows and columns. Users can sort, add items, edit, and very effectively filter the list. In addition, libraries are also in lists form, which allows users to hold and set various views based on columns & even dynamic data.
SharePoint Online is an approach to access enterprise data & applications. The tool provides an ease to manage organization’s internal communication, an application as well as information. It holds OneDrive for Business functioning, which provides a facility for synchronizing and storing client’s personal documents along with sharing of public/private files of such documents. It basically discovers a personal cloud for its users.

Observational Verdict

In this blog, we have discussed an introduction to SharePoint Online & SharePoint, outlined structure & document libraries in SharePoint Online. However, in conclusion to the above discussions, we can say that the SharePoint software can be titled as a part of Office 365 application. Constantly, there are variations in its features of online version and license arrangements. Until now, we have following facilities provided by SharePoint Online:

  • Microsoft Delve & Sway,
  • Yammer Integration & Office 365 Groups,
  • Newer versions of Online Office Document Editor Tools,
  • Limitation of various file size removed, and
  • Collaboration with Outlook Web App