Effective teamwork using Microsoft SharePoint and Lync 2010

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More and more companies are implementing organizational productivity tools such as Microsoft SharePoint and Lync to enable employees all over the world to work better together. Even though these applications are rather straight forward to use, it’s not always evident how to most effectively use them in a work environment. Today I’m pleased to announce that we’ve launched a new course on Udemy called “Effective teamwork using Microsoft SharePoint and Lync 2010,” a 1.5-hour course in which you will learn how to use SharePoint and Lync in real life.

1. Share and collaborate using a SharePoint team site

In the first 8 lectures you will learn how to effectively use Microsoft SharePoint 2010 team sites to share and collaborate with each other to support various business scenarios. You will learn how to create picture libraries to share artwork with your colleagues so that they can easily find different types of images. You will learn how to share business partner contact details using a contact library in SharePoint and how to connect this contact library to Outlook so that you can copy and synchronize contact cards between your contact list in SharePoint and Outlook. Having a shared contact list in SharePoint can be very useful in a number of scenarios; you might need to share a list of people to invite to an event, a list of people to target for a marketing campaign, or a list of customers that have complaints you need to follow up on.
Contact libraries in SharePoint 2010
In the lecture titled, “Get coordinated using a shared task list” you will learn how to create and assign tasks to team members working on a joint project. You will learn how to modify the settings of the task list so that you can clearly see dependencies between tasks and how to link the task list to Outlook so that you have an immediate overview of everyone’s tasks.

SharePoint task list in Gantt view

In the lectures, “Increase visibility by sharing your Excel data” and “Modify your data lists to provide additional insights” you will learn how to work with Excel spreadsheets in SharePoint lists. Importing data that you have in spreadsheets to a SharePoint list provides a lot of added benefits. Multiple people can simultaneously update rows, you can create better input forms for people to add data with higher quality and you can create different views of your data. At any time you can export your data back to a spreadsheet if you want to use Excel for analysis.

Import spreadsheet to SharePoint

In the lecture called “Collaborate on a Word document with version control” you will learn how to set up a document library with version control to support a publishing process where multiple people are contributing to a document. You will learn how to add different status stages to a document to clearly show if the document is in a “draft” or “finalized” state.

2. Gather information using surveys

In addition to creating sites for collaboration and information sharing, you will learn how to use SharePoint to collect and gather feedback. In the lecture called, “Collect feedback using a survey” you will learn how to create a basic survey. In the lecture called, “Add more flexibility with more advanced surveys” you will learn how to create a more advanced employee satisfaction survey where you leverage advanced tools such as branching logic and page breaks.

Creating advanced surveys in SharePoint 2010

3. Add sites to SharePoint

The final lectures on SharePoint are for more advanced users who want to add and customize their own SharePoint sites. In lecture 12, “Enhance communication by starting a blog” you will learn how to create a blog, how to customize the design, how to add categories and how to properly manage the permission settings.

Create a blog in SharePoint 2010

In lecture 13, “Create and design a team site” you will learn how to create a team site from scratch, how to change the image, the text and the navigation.

4. Communicate in real time using Lync

In the last two lectures, “Improve efficiency using real-time communication” and “Enrich communication using video conferencing” you will learn how to use Microsoft Lync 2010 to effectively communicate with your colleagues using instant messaging, voice and video conferencing. The lectures walk you through two different work scenarios where you will see the benefits of having access to your colleagues in real-time using instant messaging and the power of meeting face-to-face over a video conference.

Real-time communication using Microsoft Lync

Help your team use the tools effectively

Many organizations implement great tools such as Microsoft SharePoint and Lync without any type of training for employees. Many learn using trial and error, but in order to quickly get the best possible return on the investment in these powerful platforms, I highly recommend that you provide them with scenario-based training so that they can quickly get up to speed on how to best use the tools at hand. So go ahead and provide your employees with access to our Udemy courses today.

(If you have difficulties reading this article, you can access the full article in pdf here).