SharePoint: Web Application Platform

In today’s fast paced world, sharing information needs to match speed of everything around us. Traditional ways of publishing web content, (where business needs to pass content IT teams, IT team develops the web pages and hosts them, then sends link back to business), cannot work.

There is also need to be flexible enough to adapt to changing conditions, quick to respond back with better structure and organisation of resources & content.

Although such traditional approach has its benefit in certain conditions, the delays and business frustrations generally outweigh those benefits.

SharePoint offers a lot of options on a web platform to meet these needs.

On a SharePoint publishing site, there is a level of separation on how the Sites structure/branding will be defined and how information/content will be added to the site. This way the IT Department is responsible for the overall structure/layout of the web site ensuring that every page has meets the organisation’s branding requirements/standards. On the other hand, utilising SharePoint user interface, business users can then create new pages based on the web page layouts created by the IT Department and add the content to the pages. So for example, the IT Department can create a page layout for Appliance pages. The layout will define where the appliance picture, technical details and financial information will be displayed on the page. When a new appliance is added to the appliance range, the Appliance Department will create a new page, based on the layout, and enter the appliance information onto the page.

Organisations can introduce approval procedures to control the publishing of new pages onto a site. Often on a publishing site there will be a small set of people creating and managing web content (Administrators and Content editors) that will be viewed by a much wider audience( whole company/department). So for example, in company’s Sales Department, all the department members may be able to create a New Product page, but the page will only be visible to all company users when the Sales Manager has reviewed the New Product page and approved the page.

Also, the SharePoint publishing feature allows users to schedule time when a new page will be visible on the site. So for example, Products team can create a page for new product (much before the release date of the product) and configure the page to be published on the product release date.