Chris A Watkins - Business

O365: Make Life Simple. Grab Data on the Go. See also -  Other Office 365 Posts Earlier Office 365 posts have pointed towards simple ways to make SharePoint List and SharePoint Library data containers, simple ways to populate these with data that is useful to business and simple ways to filter that data for useful output commination like invoices and reports. Reading back through those posts it becomes obvious that the more data you collect, the more you can do with it. This is probably best highlighted in the CRM example, where all communication between company representatives and individual customers is captured and used across the business. The great thing about modern technology is that even when visiting a customer the person representing the business can access the same data that is available when sitting at a computer in the office. In addition, updates can be made to the data without a return to the office being necessary. Accounting The same can be said of accounts and exp...

O365: The SharePoint Data Harvest See also -  Other Office 365 Posts An earlier post on getting data into SharePoint libraries touched on the various methods of building data stores for use across the business. The methods range from creating files, documents and data in SharePoint Lists and Libraries, importing into SharePoint Lists and Libraries and scanning into Lists and Libraries. The importance of import and scan in this context is that valuable communication data generally has two parts - Outwards communication - files, data and documents that are sent out  and Inwards communication - files, data and documents that are received. The email Issue Let's take a look at what happens with email. In a sales department email will often be sent from and received by an individual. A well organised salesperson will probably create folders in the inbox to sort incoming mail so that communications from customers are easily found. But, what happens to outgoing mail? This usually resi...

O365: The Advantages of Teams and SharePoint for Business See also - Other Office 365 Posts Business and management are stressful enough without having to worry about where to store or file a communication, or worse still trying to remember where you stored the communications you had last week. It gets worse when you are part of a team and you need to know where everyone else is filing relative data.  How long does it take to message or email a colleague to ask if they know who said what to a customer yesterday, or last month?  How long does it take to get your reply? It's not difficult to ensure that all communication is captured and catalogued to make sure that every team member has the full and current picture. Store and Catalogue Using Office 365 Data can be stored in SharePoint Lists . These are simple to create and use. Documents can be stored in SharePoint Libraries . Providing fast, secure access to communication Data from SharePoint Lists can be linked to SharePoint L...

O365: Getting Really Useful Data into SharePoint Libraries See also - Blogs on  Library ,  List ,  Linking ,  Teams ,   Invoicing ,  Workflow ,   Bulk Invoicing  and  Spreadsheet Data A really useful SharePoint Library structure will give you something like this -  Just typing the words 'Credit Card' into the SharePoint search box returns a list of items relating to credit card across the entire Office 365 site. Security Don't worry about users accessing documents that are restricted. If you create or place a document into a Teams Document Library, it will be available to members of that Team by default. However, each document can be locked down to no access, view only or edit. You can also stop sharing any document, or alternatively share only with the members of the team you select. Users with whom the document has not been shared with will not be able to access it. Being More Specific   That's fine if you know which Credit C...

O365: Word Documents and PDFs in SharePoint Libraries See also - Blogs on  Library ,  List ,  Linking ,  Teams ,   Invoicing ,  Workflow ,   Bulk Invoicing  and Spreadsheet Data Following on from storing data in SharePoint Lists rather than in spreadsheets, we'll now take a look at storing word processed documents in SharePoint Libraries rather than traditional file stores. Typical Teams or Groups Document Library When you create a Team site or Group site in Office 365 a document library is automatically created for you - see Teams You can add more libraries to the Team site, just go to 'Site Content' click 'New', select library, name the new library and it's done. A library is where you can store files and documents, just as you would in a file store folder, but with added enhancements. The above image shows a standard Teams Document library. The left column shows the quick access menu which can be hidden, the body show the document list, which c...

O365: SharePoint List v Spreadsheet - which is best? See also - Blogs on  Library ,  List ,  Linking ,  Teams ,   Invoicing ,  Workflow  and  Bulk Invoicing The image shows the same data displayed in different applications. On the left is the information imported into a SharePoint List and on the right is a table representation in Excel What's The Difference? Let's assume you are running Office 365 and you may even have Teams launched. You need to provide your users with access to a table of data, the sort of thing that has traditionally been circulated in spreadsheet format. Only now, you have SharePoint Lists as well.  So, which is the best way to store, maintain and distribute the data? In both apps you can sort and filter the rows and columns, you can add new columns that read original columns and perform arithmetic, mathematical, statistical and text manipulation on the content of the original. In the SharePoint List linking to other lis...

O365: Bulk Invoicing from Office 365 See also - Blogs on  Library ,  List ,  Linking ,  Teams ,   Invoicing  and Workflow Note - requires compatible client versions of Word and Excel Earlier posts have covered List and Library creation and producing high quality single invoices from Office 365 and SharePoint. In this post I'll demonstrate how to push bulk invoicing from the Office 365 platform. Create the List First you will need to create the SharePoint List . Be sure to include fields for Invoice number, date, each address field, quantities and price. Remember that most countries have minimum legal requirements regarding what needs to be shown on an invoice. Build the Content Add content to the list as required. This can be done as orders are fulfilled or work completed and may be part of a broader process that includes works order processing and stock control. Once there is data in the list you can export it. Select 'Export to Excel' in the top menu of t...

Tasking and Work Flow See also - Blogs on  Library ,  List ,  Linking ,  Teams  and  Invoicing The image shows a SharePoint ASPX page representing a simple CRM added to Teams as a web application site tab. For increased user focus you can build a list or library view that is filtered for a specific person or group  Just add a people picker (Person or Group) column to the list or library and name it 'Allocated To' Create a new view of the list or library  Filter the new list or library view by 'Allocated to EQ [ME]' This will filter the list or library to display only those items where the 'Allocated To' field is equal to the logged on user  Get the URL for the new filtered list from the address bar of the browser and add it to Teams as a web application tab. The logged on user will see on this page only list items, documents from the library or tasks allocated to them. Using Groups to make a Work Flow This can also be used to great effect in ...

O365: Adding Content To Teams for Collaboration See also - Blogs on Library , List , Linking , Teams and Invoicing Having briefly discussed  Teams  in an earlier post I'm now going to re-visit in order to demonstrate how it can really aid users with collaboration. In addition to Chat, Meetings and Calling, Teams also delivers collaboration space for documents in SharePoint libraries and data in SharePoint lists. The image below shows a standard Teams Client view with added components - From the left, there is the standard tool bar showing Activity, Chat, Teams, Calendar, Calls, Files and More. Select any one of these to drill down into that functionality. Moving to the right there is the selection panel for different Teams. This is a client based application and what appears here is dependant on what teams the user has joined. Team membership is controlled at team ownership level. The teams shown here are a selection from my O365 tenancy and are a mixture of  project tea...

O365: Using Word to Make a SharePoint Invoicing System Note: Requires MS Word Client based application. See also - Blogs on Library , Lists , Linking and Integration Practical Business Uses for Office 365 One way of looking at Office 365 is to imagine it as a massive toolbox. The businessman, like any good craftsman, identifying a need for the business turns to the tool box for a means to effect a solution. The problem is that it is not always apparent which O365 tool to use to get the most effective result. Word is Integrated in O365 All Office 365 plans have the Office suite of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. In some plans these are restricted to the browser versions of the applications, but others have additional downloadable client versions. You can also use stand alone compatible client versions of Office to link Office 365 and SharePoint. The following requires a client version of Word. A New Library with SharePoint Fields Any new library created in SharePoint has a ready m...

O365: Getting the best out of SharePoint See also - Libraries , Lists , Linking List and Library Simplicity Anyone who has read my earlier posts on creating, populating and joining data containers like Libraries and Lists in Office 365 SharePoint will know how simple it is. Giving a little thought to what data or information you want to keep and what you will use it for in the future is the hard part. Once you have that, building the lists and libraries is as easy as creating a spreadsheet.  But, a SharePoint list or library is far more flexible and effective than a spreadsheet can ever be. Shadow IT This is the name given by IT departments to the practice of hiving off chunks of corporate data into silo data stores controlled and maintained by individuals. A mobile phone contacts list is a great example. The same data might be held in a dozen or more separate phones and the data might never be synchronised. Personal spreadsheet lists can fall into the same category. Data from any ...

O365: Link a SharePoint List and a SharePoint Library Data in a SharePoint on-line List can be accessed for Library Metadata See also - Create a SharePoint library and Create a SharePoint List This means that you can enter reusable data into a list and select it from a drop menu when entering data into another list or library. In most business scenarios when an invoice is created it will be specific to a customer. If a customer is invoiced many times for different goods or services, it would be necessary to enter the customer details each time an invoice is created or imported into the document library. This chore can be avoided by entering the customer details once into the Customer list and having a drop selection menu to copy the data into the Invoices library. The Method If we use the newly created Customer list and Invoicing library as an example. NB: Click the links for information on creating Libraries and Lists First we need to modify the Invoices library to add a lookup Sele...