Remote Team Collaboration with SharePoint Development

Remote working is a concept that has become more popular in the year 2020. Since the beginning of COVID-19, software development companies have started working remotely, and with time passing by, they have aced the concept of remote team collaboration. There are many ways to work remotely and collaborate the work, but the best one is using SharePoint development.

Nowadays, the majority of the companies are using SharePoint to collaborate the teamwork and provide the expected result to the end-users. In this blog, we will see how SharePoint development helps in remote team collaboration.

What is SharePoint?

Microsoft SharePoint is a tool that is used for browser-based collaboration and document management by software development companies. It enables the developers to set-up a password-protected and centralized document sharing space. It helps the organization in improving its effectiveness by accessing and managing the data.

It is known as a multipurpose set of technologies that can easily handle the documents and manage them with Office 365.

How does SharePoint help the Software Development Company?

Being a Microsoft product, SharePoint is very responsive and flexible. It is a tool used by the IT department to make the task of employees very easy. SharePoint helps in customizing the options and creating anything. Basically, the reason behind SharePoint is that it organizes and manages the documents & development process in such a way that everyone’s tasks become easy.

Why SharePoint for Remote Team Collaborative Solutions?

SharePoint is the perfect choice for remote team collaboration as it ensures security and effectiveness. Here are some of the reasons why SharePoint can be the ideal choice for collaborating with a remote team.

1. Microsoft Teams: SharePoint development offers the fastest-growing apps with the help of Microsoft Teams. It has around 44M users and a hub where all the remote team collaboration efforts are made.

2. Power Platform: Power platform is a combination of Power Automate, Power Apps, and Power BI. It enables the SharePoint developers to use tools that are required in automating the business process.

3. Microsoft SharePoint: With Microsoft SharePoint, the developers can build intranet websites and document libraries. Besides this, it can also configure these things for collaboration.

How can SharePoint Development help in Remote Team Collaboration?

1. Plan the Project with SharePoint:

When it is about using SharePoint development to collaborate with remote teams, the first step is to increase the collaboration with the team. This can be carried out by thoroughly planning the project. The planning process must involve the team at the very beginning as it can help every team member in understanding the importance of their individual work and the goal of the project.

Microsoft Teams is a tool that enables to plan a workshop with the use of video call meetings. The concept of it is to share important information about the project in advance so that the team can go through it and the team meetings can be more productive. All the team members’ sessions are to make the team members brainstorm tasks, create timelines, find out resources, and take risks to deliver a user-friendly & expected result.

With the planning process, the SharePoint developers would also prefer to discuss the remote project guidelines as without a proper set of guidelines, there are chances that the project will not be able to serve the user requirements. Some of the things to be considered as a part of the remote project for the team are -

• The remote team must be aware of when to chat, email, or call other members to discuss anything.
• When to have a one-to-one meeting and when to have a group meeting, the project manager should take care of it.
• As the team members would be working remotely and would report in their working hours, their operating hours must be fixed so that it doesn’t overlap.
• The use of web cameras must be compulsory for video meetings to build trust between team members.

In addition to this, it is clear that Microsoft Teams offer private chat and real-time group chat options. So making use of these features to clarify the planning process of the remote project is essential.

After planning the project workshop, it is sent to the stakeholders and the team for approval. Once it is approved and the plan is finalized, one must create a collaborative project site with the use of SharePoint. The collaborative project site helps the team in focusing on one central point and also connects the team members with each other. Because of this, it becomes easy to create alignment around the goals, vision, and objectives of the remote project.

2. Track the Documents and Reports:

Once the planning is done, and the project is in the process, the next step is to make the working process easy for the remote team. Here, one will have to find out how one team member will find out the work, complete it, and update it so that the rest of the team members can work efficiently around it.

All the developers in the team will often be working on multiple projects simultaneously, so focusing on work to complete it before the deadline becomes a bit difficult as they will have to shift their priorities at the end moment. This is the stage where remote programmers might struggle. Therefore, SharePoint has three ways to keep them connected to their work - my work report, document library, and project dashboard. Let us look at these three ways that enable the remote team members to track their work and complete it before the deadline.

My Work Report

My Work is a report that shows the list of the assigned work to the software developer. With this, the remote team can easily Find the upcoming tasks and Update their work.

Document Library

The document library is one of the most popular features of SharePoint development when it comes to remote team collaboration. SharePoint enables remote programmers to focus on one particular central point.

Project Dashboards

The project dashboard gives a clear context of the project to the remote team and makes it easy for them to understand the progress of the project with a real-time dashboard.

3. Microsoft Teams

When any SharePoint development company works with a distributed team, the biggest challenge is building a cordial relationship between the developers. Getting the teammates to work together with proper understanding becomes very important, especially when working remotely. In such situations, where one has to build the relationship between the programmers so that the project doesn’t get affected, Microsoft Teams is used.

Microsoft Teams is a tool that makes group chatting and interaction very easy. It helps in solving the project queries within no time. Besides this, Microsoft Teams also integrates various third-party applications and website links that can make the project’s working process clearer and provide unique solutions to the remote team about the project.

How to Start Remote Team Collaboration With SharePoint Development?

After learning about the top three ways SharePoint can help in collaborating with the remote project team, we will go through some points that will help us understand how one can start the collaborating process.

One of the easiest ways to boost team collaboration on SharePoint development is to use project management templates. BrightWork is a platform that offers free templates that can help in managing the software and collaborating with the remote team. You can get any SharePoint project management tools from there and start working on them. This free template will help you in -

1. Creating My Work reports for the remote team members.
2. Developing a work report for the project manager of the remote project.
3. Making a task list for all the remote programmers.
4. Creating a project document repository.
5. Specifying all the project issues.
6. And the last is making a project wiki.

Once the template is selected, you can see the project homepage that will summarize the remote project’s data and updates and the team members working for it. Some of the key details that will be showcased on the project homepage are -

• Status of the project in percentage.
• Overdue items that the developers still need to work on.
• Metric tiles which specify the tasks list, deadline, and the latest update details.

The free SharePoint-based project management templates help the remote team members in planning and tracking the project together. It can also help in solving any issues in the project.

Conclusion

With the use of Microsoft SharePoint and its latest features, everyone is now able to work remotely with no complications. SharePoint development enables the project managers to create out-of-the-box custom applications for their clients by using digitized workflows. It enables software developers to work remotely as a team and fulfill the client’s requirements. There are many different tools and features that SharePoint offers to manage remote teams while making collaboration an easy process.

The SharePoint consultants can help the software developers understand the system and make them aware of the different ways they can collaborate with the remote team for a project. If your business is looking for workflow automation solutions and remote team collaboration, there is no better option than SharePoint development.