Sometimes you need to know what’s happening in a SharePoint list or library, and you can’t possibly keep checking to see if a new doc has been added or an existing item has been changed by your colleague. That’s where automated alerts come in. But take note, there are two types of alerts that can help you keep up to date with additions and changes to information on SharePoint.
Category: Templates
The mysterious case of the repeatedly used but outdated logo
Have you ever stood at the printer while your large document prints off, and your colleague leans over your shoulder to smugly helpfully let you know: “that’s the old logo, we’re now meant to use the one with the dark blue line under the company name” or similar?
Take the easy road: use templates from SharePoint content types
Most of us have used a template in the past to create a presentation or start a document, and many of us are guilty of reusing the last great version of a document as a starting point instead of locating and using a template. This pragmatic approach helps to avoid wheel reinvention and utilises the efforts of the clever person who created the file in the first place – however, the problem with reusing a last good version versus using a template is that your new file takes on any issues that existed in the original doc, and you could very likely be using out of date branding, terminology and styles.
SharePoint vs OneDrive – confused much?
If you’re confused about when to use SharePoint versus OneDrive, you’re not alone.
For starters, Microsoft really didn’t help matters with their naming strategy – OneDrive is actually a personal online storage solution (if you have a Hotmail or Live account, you’ll have access to free storage via OneDrive) and OneDrive for Business is the storage solution for organisations that comes as a part of your Office 365 subscription. Read more
Document Version Control in SharePoint
There are pros and cons to using version control in SharePoint. I see a lot of clients successfully using their own manual versioning methodology, which can be effective if you have a small number of staff editing the doc and a small quantity of documents to control. SharePoint doc libraries come with an in-built version control that take away all the pain of manual methods, even if you only need to control a few files. Read more