The digital world has provided modern businesses with an abundance of collaboration and file-sharing tools. But how can you know which ones are worth your time?

Microsoft’s SharePoint has taken center stage in the company’s bid to rule our professional lives — both on the desktop and on our burgeoning communities of mobile operating systems. As part of their Office 365 subscription model, Microsoft is positioning SharePoint as the last word in business collaboration.

But how can you make the most of it? Read on to find out.

Create a Community

The first and most significant advantages of using SharePoint in the workplace is the ability to create communities within communities. Your business is already (hopefully) a closely-knit collection of like-minded folks, but within that family are smaller teams, each of them working on unique projects.

SharePoint will allow you to create bespoke communities for each of your teams, drawing members together and giving them a central location to share files, track and discuss changes and ultimately collaborate more seamlessly than before.

This is especially important if you preside over a geographically diverse workforce, or if your team is comprised largely of remote workers.

Let SharePoint and Outlook Work Together

If you haven’t yet taken advantage of SharePoint’s ability to dovetail with Outlook, you’re really missing out! Lots of modern businesses already leverage Outlook’s rich feature set for calendar management and email, but did you know SharePoint complements Outlook in some really impressive ways?

It’s true — you can enable SharePoint integration in Outlook by selecting “SharePoint Calendar” in “Other Calendars.” From there, seek out the Tools menu, opt to Send/Receive, and choose SharePoint. What this does is make sure all of your work items flow seamlessly between your “regular” daily calendar and your SharePoint calendar.

What’s the advantage of this? It’s pretty clear: Sometimes, people need a little extra reminder about tasks, deadlines and where they fit into their schedules. By connecting your two most important software suites, you can ensure that deadlines are adhered to and that there are no surprises along the way.

Collaborate on Your Most Important Documents

The world is, by now, quite familiar with the concept of file sharing. But with so many providers cropping up out there, and even some DIY options, how can you be sure you’ve selected the right one?

There’s a real advantage in bundling together productivity tools and other software offered by the same company — in this case, Microsoft. In the Outlook example, Microsoft makes a point to ensure that their workplace tools function well together, with few surprises.

Here’s the sort of collaboration you can expect with SharePoint: The ability to share files instantly with your team, no matter where on earth they happen to be. The implications are enormous. You won’t be emailing documents back and forth, or wondering which version is the latest.

As it does with Outlook, SharePoint meshes nicely with Microsoft’s cloud document platform, OneDrive. This gives you a central location to store your team’s most important documents, keeping them available at all times.

As with anything to do with the cloud, you’d be right to wonder about the security of a setup like this one. Rest assured, SharePoint features robust security protocols — both from Microsoft and from third-parties who have leveraged SharePoint’s modular nature by developing security-centric plugins and other tools.

Organize Your Workflow and Receive Critical Updates

Microsoft has nearly made themselves indispensable in the workplace, and it’s little wonder: SharePoint users speak highly of its ability to help them stay organized.

Another of the soon-to-be-indispensable features of SharePoint is its ability to receive critical updates from your manufacturing and design systems. SharePoint can receive updates on how your projects are progressing, and make these updates available in a convenient central location.

Another angle? Some SharePoint acolytes even use the productivity tool to keep tabs on the status on their deliverables and their contracts. The latter is particularly important for any fast-moving, customer-facing outfit that relies on speedy transactions and communication. With SharePoint, you can see when contracts were sent, received, signed, amended and much more. In other words, it’s like the best personal administrative assistant you’ve ever had.

Get Started With SharePoint

Is SharePoint right for your business? To find out, ask yourself these simple questions:

• Is there critical information that multiple team members need access to at a moment’s notice?
• Do you have difficulty juggling multiple calendars at once?
• Are your important work-related documents scattered to the four winds?

Do I want to seek out project updates, or do I want them pushed to my workstation automatically?

Your answers to these questions can help determine if SharePoint is right for you and your business. The end result isn’t so much about the software itself, it’s about spending your time on what matters: Growing your company, thinking creatively, and ensuring that your team members can do the same.

By trusting SharePoint with the boring but hugely important administrative details, you can get back to what you do best- thinking outside the box.