SharePoint Online Modern Experience Practical Guide: Learn step by step how to use SharePoint Online Modern Experience

CHAPTER 1

Introducing

Office 365 and Share-

Point Online

SharePoint is a web-based business collaboration and document management system by Microsoft. Its content management feature allows organizations or users to securely store, share and collaborate with each other. It is one of the award-winning products from Microsoft which helps millions of organizations to improve productivity.

SharePoint is a web based application by Microsoft that enables organizations to work more efficiently by letting users share documents, data, and information. It provides document management and collaboration features which increases the productivity of an organization.

SharePoint is one of the popular portal technologies. A lot of small to large scale organizations are using SharePoint to develop their portals. It is scalable, extensible, and customizable portal solution for various organizations.

It helps you store, share, and manage digital information within your organization in a better way. In no time, you can create team sites to collaborate with each other. By using SharePoint lists and libraries, you can store information, documents, and so on.

You can access SharePoint in the following two ways:

SharePoint On-Premises

SharePoint Online (Office 365)

In the year 2010, Microsoft provided SharePoint as a part of Office 365 (Microsoft Cloud Service). An organization can use SharePoint without installing anything on their premises.

In Office 365, most of the times, Microsoft releases new features and functionalities in SharePoint Online.

Microsoft has the same user interface in SharePoint known as classic experience. Microsoft is trying to modernize SharePoint so that organizations and users can use SharePoint effectively. So, Microsoft has come up with the modern SharePoint experience or the SharePoint modern UI.

In the year 2017, Microsoft introduced new experiences for SharePoint team sites, communication sites, site pages, list and libraries, and so on.

Here, in this SharePoint Online Modern Experience Practical Guide book, we will discuss the following topics:

What is the modern SharePoint experience (modern UI) in SharePoint?

What are modern team sites and communication sites?

What are modern lists and libraries?

How an organization can be helpful by using Modern SharePoint Online?

How can we use various web parts in modern SharePoint site pages?

Finally, we will see how we can make various SharePoint Online portals by using modern experience.

An overview of Office 365

Office 365 is the cloud solution or services provided by Microsoft. The services are hosted outside your organization in Microsoft datacenters, and Microsoft cloud is fully maintained by Microsoft.

Office 365 was made available for public on June 2011. As the name suggests, Office 365 provides services such as Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher, and Access) as well as other services like OneDrive for Business, Exchange Online, Skype for Business, SharePoint Online, Yammer, and so on.

Users can access all the above mentioned services (including server maintenance, patching or update activities) in SharePoint Online without having to worry about maintaining anything On-Premises.

There are various benefits of using Office 365 in an organization. Let’s discuss some of these in the following sections.

Pay for what you use

The cloud service Office 365 is available on a subscription-based model from Microsoft. Users can opt for monthly or annual subscription. It has plans for different types of use like personal, home, business, and student. User can subscribe according to their requirement and then, they can access the service from anywhere with any device with an internet connection.

Also, by using Microsoft Office 365 business plans, a user can install the latest Office applications in multiple devices such as PCs, Macs, Android tablets, Android phones, iPads, and iPhones.

Another advantage of the office plans, Office 365 Business Premium and Office 365 Enterprise E3, is that you can work offline without having an internet connection, and the next time when you connect to the internet, all your changes will be synced and will be up to date.

Available from one person company to large companies

Microsoft Office 365 is available from a very small organization (one person’s company) to very large scale organization (50,000+ users). So, you should not be worried about how many users Office 365 can support.

All business users can perform their daily activities such as emailing, document and information management, calendar, collaboration with teams, instant messaging services and so on.

Almost zero downtime (reliable)

Microsoft guarantees that the services will be available with 99.9% uptime. You will have almost zero downtime. Microsoft has various data centers all over the world and if one data center is unavailable, you will continue to receive services from other available data centers.

Apart from this, they also provide 24 x 7 phone support for critical issues (on selected plans).

Access from anywhere with any device

You can access Office 365 and all its services from anywhere and with any device. You can access Office 365 from a desktop, laptop, tablet, or phone. You just need an internet connection for it because all the services are installed in the Microsoft data center.

Microsoft services such as Microsoft Office 365 can now be accessed on Android devices. It provides Office for Android, users can easily work with Word documents, Excel documents or PowerPoint documents from the Android devices.

Responsive across in any device

You can open Microsoft SharePoint Office 365 in any responsive devices like a PC, mobile, tablet, browser, etc. You can access and use SharePoint Office 365 from all these types of responsive devices,

Active Directory integration

Active Directory is a database that keeps track of all the user accounts and passwords in your organization. It allows you to store your user accounts and passwords in one protected location, improving your organization’s security.

Active Directory is tightly integrated with Office 365. Also, Single Sign-On and synchronization with Active Directory are easier in Office 365.

Take advantages of SharePoint Online

Office 365 provides SharePoint features in terms of SharePoint Online. SharePoint Online is a perfect tool for collaboration and document management for your organization. You can create sites in less than a minute for your team to collaborate, maintain documents, and work with lists, announcements, and blogs, and so on. You can take advantages of check in and check out features, and see various versions of documents.

You can share your documents with external users also in SharePoint Online. SharePoint Online is tightly integrated with Office products. You can work with the Word document and then publish to SharePoint Online directly from Word.

Your data is secure with Office 365

This question comes first when you think of moving your application or data to the cloud. Your data is safe in Microsoft cloud. In Office 365, they use five layers of security to keep an organization’s data safe. According to Microsoft, With Office 365, it’s your data. You own it. You control it. Microsoft never uses any of data for advertising and organizations can take their data any time they want. Microsoft continuously monitors the systems for suspicious activities.

Microsoft provides a few more document management features

Here are a few more document management features provided by Microsoft in SharePoint Online Office 365:

Data Loss Prevention (DLP): This feature allows you to set granular data policies.

Data Loss Prevention (DLP): This feature allows you to set granular policies that govern your data and define specific actions taken when information is shared.

Advanced Threat Protection (ATP): This feature proactively protects your organization against incoming threats.

Advanced Threat Protection (ATP): This feature protects your organization from incoming threats from external sources.

Intelligent Protection: This is a machine learning algorithm that tracks vulnerabilities.

Microsoft tracks vulnerabilities at scale through machine learning and mitigates them.

Always up to date

One of the benefits to move to Office 365 is that you will always stay up to date and you will get all the features and functionalities of the latest Microsoft Office products. Whenever newer versions come, everything will be available in Office 365.

Sign up for an Office 365 subscription

Office 365 offers the following subscription plans and you can choose any plan depending on your requirements:

Office 365 plans: As Office 365 is subscription based, the cost depends on the features you use. You can subscribe to features which you need for your company or organization. So it is very much cost effective. Users can opt for a monthly or annual subscription. You can also cancel your subscription at any point of time if you are not satisfied. In the yearly plan, there is an option to choose for a yearly subscription, but you can pay on a monthly basis.

Office Education plans: Office 365 has various office apps for education like OneNote, Sway, Office, OneDrive, Skype, Docs.com, and so on. Sign up with your school email address and Internet Explorer.

Office Home plans:

Office 365 Home ($89.99 per year)

Office 365 Personal ($69.99 per year)

Office Home & Student 2016 ($119.99 one-time purchase) *Price may vary.

You can check the price and compare features on the Microsoft Office 365 official site.

All these plans will have Office products installed and also include Office 2016 apps. You can use your PC, smartphone (Windows Phone, Android Phone or iPhone) and tablets (Windows Tablet, Android Tablet and iPod).

Office 365 Business plans: It has various plans for your business like Office 365 business plans:

Office 365 Business

Office 365 Business Essentials

Office 365 Business Premium

Office 365 ProPlus

Office 365 Enterprise E1

Office 365 Enterprise E3

Office 365 Enterprise E5

For example, if you opt for Office 365 Enterprise E3, then you will have the following features:

You will always have the latest Office apps (Office 2016).

You can use Office products in various devices PCs, laptops, Macs, Windows tablets and iPad and Android, tablets, and most mobile devices. The user can access emails (Outlook) anytime anywhere from your desktop or from the web browser. Each user gets 50 GB of primary mailbox and unlimited storage.

Users can host online meetings with audio, HD video, and web conferencing over the internet and can join the meeting from the smartphone, tablet, or PC.

The user can use Skype for Business meetings as well as take advantage of Instant Messenger, voice calls, and video calls using Skype for Business.

By using OneDrive for Business, users can store 1TB document in the cloud and it can be accessed from anywhere and by using any devices.

By using Yammer, which provides corporate social network feature, organizations can connect with their employees, share information across teams, and so on.

Apart from features mentioned above, there are a lot of other benefits. You can compare the price and features on the Office 365 official site. (https://products. office.com/en-in/business/compare-more-office-365-for-business-plans)

To start a 30-day trial version, you need to have a Microsoft account and then you can sign up for the Office 365 Enterprise E3 account. Start now to use services such as Mail, Calendar, People, Yammer, OneDrive, Sites, Tasks, Delve, Video, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Sway, etc.

People can sign up (free trial) in Office 365 by using the following two ways:

Office 365 Enterprise E3 Account (https://www.sharepointsky.com/ office-365-trial/)

Office 365 Developer Program (https://www.sharepointsky.com/office-365-developer-program/)

SharePoint Online

SharePoint Online is a cloud-based service from Microsoft which comes as a part of Office 365. It provides enterprise content management features and helps organizations to connect, share and collaborate within the team, with business partners and customers.

By using SharePoint Online, users can access SharePoint sites, share documents and information from anywhere, anytime and from any device such as a laptop, desktop, tablet, and mobile.

Office 365 provides SharePoint feature in terms of SharePoint Online. SharePoint Online is a perfect tool for collaboration and document management for your organization. You can create sites quickly for your team to collaborate, maintain documents, work with lists, announcements, blogs, and so on. Moreover, you can take advantages of check-in and check out features, see various versions of documents, and do much more. You can also share your documents with external users through SharePoint Online. SharePoint Online is tightly integrated with the Office products and you can work with the Word document and then publish to SharePoint Online directly from Word. Apart from these, there are a number of advantages of SharePoint Online, some of which are mentioned here:

Microsoft data centers: Unlike SharePoint On-Premises version, in SharePoint Online, SharePoint resides in the Microsoft data center. So, Microsoft manages the hardware related stuff, patches maintenance, etc. So, organizations can save cost related to IT admin activities.

Quick access to updates: Microsoft is investing heavily in SharePoint Online, so you will get a lot of new features if you are using SharePoint Online. These features may not be available in SharePoint On-Premises versions or may come latest.

Highly secured: In terms of security, Microsoft implements tight security measures and has been awarded many security certifications, so your data is very much secured.

Almost zero downtime: There is a 99.99% of uptime, so the SharePoint Online site will be always up and running.

How an organization can benefit by using SharePoint Online

Organizations can benefit a lot by using SharePoint Online. Here are a few benefits:

No hardware, software license costs for SharePoint Online: As an organization, you can access SharePoint Online sites anytime, anywhere and from any devices like a laptop, mobile, and tablet. You do not need to take any hardware or software licenses for it. Organizations can save cost in terms of licensing, hardware, administrators and maintenance costs. Microsoft will take care of the maintenance cost rather than your organization. You just need to use