3 Surprisingly Powerful Microsoft SharePoint Capabilities You Should Be Using

If you’re one of the millions of IT leaders who use Microsoft SharePoint daily, you might be missing out on some of the perks of your productivity platform while keeping up with user expectations and your growing tech stack. Sound familiar? If it does, you aren’t alone. Most IT leaders don’t have the time or resources to invest in learning and leveraging the latest SharePoint updates. That’s where this blog comes in handy.

SharePoint is changing. In the current version, Microsoft has added some advanced tools. Here are a few of my favorite features that more IT teams should leverage:

Now you can create advanced forms with Power Apps in the latest SharePoint version. With Power Apps, there is a no/low-code approach to custom SharePoint Online solutions that expand new capabilities for your business users. Using PowerApps as InfoPath’s successor, you can replace your InfoPath forms to avoid the glitches that come with a wide expanse of InfoPath versions.

Now, you can create and manage forms all in one place. With multiple custom M365 lists in play, Power Apps lets you create apps that integrate SharePoint and other cloud sources data without writing time-consuming code.

Leveraging Power Apps to create custom SharePoint forms, you can:

• Create with no/low coding required
• Brush up on your formulas
• Fully automate processes backed by Power Automate
• Tap into artificial intelligence (AI) functionality
• Accelerate app development while lowering the cost of app ownership
• Power smooth, swift deployments with access across platforms

In previous SharePoint versions, you had to go under List Settings to create desktop workflows. Now, you can click Power Automate, and boom, SharePoint brings up workplace templates with a ton of pre-built options. The Power Automate capabilities in SharePoint help you make agility gains by automating burdensome daily tasks.

Now, using a SharePoint PDF workflow, you can automatically have sensitive word documents convert into secure PDF documents as part of the automated workflow. This saves you time while enabling you to specify which teams should have access to any given document with advanced privacy settings.

SharePoint is a safer alternative to shared drives for confidential business content sharing. Why? With general shared drives, users don’t have the ability to control permissions down to an organizational level. With SharePoint, your users can control permission settings without burdening your IT team for intervention.

In our remote, connected workforce, SharePoint supports uninterrupted collaboration and greater productivity levels. I love the transparency leveraging the platform in tandem with so many organizations going remote. SharePoint and Teams have made it so that no matter what document you’re using, you and your team members are always using the latest version.