Would you accept purchasing a new car and it running in first gear? Of course not! You’d immediately return it to the dealer and have it fixed. I however see so many businesses running Office 365 suites that include SharePoint Team Sites and them never being used. Even worse I see SharePoint being used in first gear constantly, yet people never opting to change up gears to the next level of what SharePoint has to offer.

Why is this? I believe the answer is simply a lack of understanding about what SharePoint is, and like any knowledge, you don’t gain such insight over night or by reading a few web pages. To gain the most from SharePoint you need to change the way you view information sharing. You need to shift your mindset from storage to collaboration as I have written about previously:

The Classic SharePoint Online Migration Mistake

First gear with SharePoint is generally using it as file storage which I see many people do. The problem is if web storage is all you have planned for SharePoint how is that any different from where you store that data today? All you are doing is simply moving that data from one storage ‘bucket’ to another. Where that bucket maybe is irrelevant because it is just being used as container. Simply moving data from one location to another makes no sense. Where is the value add? What is the business benefit of data being in bucket number two? Where is the business benefit of going to all the trouble of migrating the data? Being purely pragmatic about things here, it make no business sense and generally is just incurring expense.

With SharePoint wedged in first gear many now continue to ‘load’ SharePoint up with more and more data and wonder why things aren’t magically becoming more productive. They do nothing more than just uploading files to one document library. Doing the same thing and expecting different results is the definition of insanity is it no? In short, you are burdening SharePoint with structures and concepts that bog the service down. In short, it is like constantly driving around in first gear.

Much like a modern car, SharePoint Online has a significant number of forward gears that you can and should take advantage of. Problem is most people don’t invest the time to learn how to do this. The essence of productivity is that you invest some time up front learning how to do something better and then apply that. The payoff is never immediate, it is down the track. However, the payoff is always much greater than the initial investment because productivity scales.

In my books, you cannot use or sell Office 365 without making some investment in learning SharePoint. Everyone, I mean everyone, using Office 365 must appreciate the basics of SharePoint. They must be at least able to take the product out of first gear. Beyond that is a choice. You can certainly skill yourself up on SharePoint or you can get assistance from someone already skilled who can provide a shortcut for you.

Every top professional sports person/team has a coach. Why? Because they are looking to improve so they can be more competitive. How come the same doesn’t apply to businesses with Office 365? Why aren’t they trying to use the product to its fullest extent? Why are they not seeking the skills and knowledge to become more competitive? Why are they using it’s most mundane functionality?

SharePoint knowledge and experience is not simply going to materialise overnight. It is a transformational process that requires learned experience. There are certainly ways and means to accelerate this but it means making the commitment to making the most of a tool like SharePoint and aspiring to open the product up beyond first gear. The benefits there are well worth the effort.

Of course, the next road block people raise is about how they go about learning SharePoint? The best option is to start with a problem you need solved and try and use SharePoint to solve that. Maybe you have a need for an automated vacation request process. Maybe a need to create a shared team calendar and so on. In essence SharePoint is a tool, a very powerful tool that is at your beckoned call. Use it to solve a problem. That’s what it does best.

The next resources I will point you to are my own. Although that may appear self serving I have taken what I have learned in the field and created offerings that are tailored to exactly these introductory needs.

If your SharePoint is stuck in first gear take my

Free email SharePoint course

there you’ll get an email a day for 3 weeks with a video tutorial about one aspect of SharePoint Online including downloadable lesson notes.

If you want training immediately take a look at my online courses at the

CIAOPS Academy

which include a number of SharePoint and OneDrive for Business (which is SharePoint) courses you can sign up for immediately.

Beyond that have a look at these resources:

SharePoint courses at Microsoft Virtual Academy

SharePoint 2013 training for IT Pros

Discover SharePoint

SharePoint Online Videos and Training

Start using your Team Site and OneDrive for Business

SharePoint can transform your business productivity but you will typically need to transform the way you think about SharePoint. That transformation is not simply going to drop in your lap, you need to invest some time up front to reap the rewards as with anything worthwhile.

Look at it this way, the investment you make today means that you will be able to do tomorrow what your competition can’t.

I hope that the next time I see your SharePoint driving past it isn’t screaming in pain over the redline in first gear, it is instead accelerating away into the distance in eight gear. I’ve shown you how to start that process, now be fruitful and apply.

Introduction to Lookup Columns

One of the problems faced when implementing a good collaboration Team Site is that you need to reference the same material in multiple locations within the Team Site. It is not always possible and it is also not best practice to put all the information you require in a single SharePoint app such as a list. There are however, times when you need to reference fields from another list in a Team Site. SharePoint supports this ability natively via Lookup columns that you can insert into an app as unique columns.

Although SharePoint should not be considered as a true relational database, good design encourages the minimisation of duplicated information by separating out information into unique apps (like lists) so that it can be used in many different ways. A good example of this is a contact list that contains names, email addresses, employers, etc. That contact list may need to be referenced in an “items purchased” list as well as perhaps a “phone log” list. It doesn’t make sense to have multiple contact items, it makes more sense to have a single point of truth that once updated is valid throughout the Team Site.

In this case the lookup will be performed on an existing contact list as shown above called Members. This is why designing a good structure with Team Sites is so important, because you need the look up item needs to exist prior to using it elsewhere.

In the list in which you wish to perform the lookup from (here a list called Locations) go into the List Settings and then locate the Column area towards the middle of the page as shown above.

Select the option Create Column at the bottom of this section.

You will need to give the new column a name. Then you need select the option below Lookup (information already on this site). Scroll down the page when you have made these changes.

You can then add a description and select whether the column must contain information and have unique values. Below these options you will now be able to select where the lookup information for those column comes from.

If you select the Get information from: field you will see a list of existing Team Site apps that you can select from. In this case the Members list will be selected.

Once you have selected where to get the lookup information from the In this column: field will change to be a list of all the columns in that app as shown above (here all the columns from the Members list). Now simply select the field you wish to display from the list that is being referenced. In this case the selection will be Full Name to avoid confusion.

With these two options now selected you will see that you can also display additional columns from the list that is being looked up. This is handy because you may need to display more than a single field from the list being looked up. In the case with the members list, perhaps you need not only their full name but also their email and mobile number.

In this case the additional fields Email Address and Business Phone have been selected.

At the bottom of the list of fields that can be added from the lookup location is a selection option that also allow these fields to be automatically added to the default List View. Normally, you will leave this selected, however fields displayed by Views can easily be customised at any point in the future.

The last option that can be set is how the relationship between the two lists will be handled. Basically here you determine what happens to this list when an item in the list being looked up is deleted. If you select the option to Enforce relationship behavior and an item is deleted in the list being looked up then any items in the current list that refer to that now deleted lookuped up item will also be deleted from this list.

You want to consider this cascading delete option carefully before you enable it because it can result in unexpected data removal. Best practice is generally to always retain the data, even if it no longer refers to something in the list being looked up. Best practice is therefore to leave the Enforce relationship beahvior unchecked.

Scroll down to the bottom of the page and select the OK button to save the changes.

If you now view the list you will see the additional columns just added. Here the Person column is a lookup to the Full Name field in the existing list Members and the fields Person:Email Address and Person:Business Phone are also taken from this location.

When you add a new record to this list you will only see two options (as the other fields are referenced once the lookup is performed).

If you select the Person field (which is a lookup to the Members list) you should see a list of all the rows from that location as shown above.

If you now complete a new record and save it you’ll be returned to the list summary as shown above. Because the lookup field was selected the associated values for that entry (here from the record for member Robert Crane) will automatically be populated in the email and phone fields as shown above.

You will also see that lookup field (here Person) also becomes a hyperlink that you can select.

When you do that, a dialog window will open and display that record from the list being looked up (here Robert Crane’s record). You can now edit and make changes to this looked up item quickly and easily if needed.

It is important to remember that the lookup functionality between SharePoint lists is not a true relational database. This means that there may be times when you update one field and a dependant location doesn’t appear to be updated. In this case, the information has indeed been updated but the display simply hasn’t. By viewing or editing that item you should find that the dependent information that was changed is automatically updated and displayed.

Lookup fields are an important part of designing good Team Site structures to ensure that information is not replicated in multiple locations. This however means that more time needs to be devoted to planning these linkages up front, however the payoff can be a significant reduction in overhead and complexity.

One of the challenges with SharePoint Online is around user engagement. A step towards solving this can be the branding of Teams Sites from the default. There are number of simple branding elements that can be configured via a browser, this first of these is to change the site logo.

The site logo is located in the top left of a Team Site, just below the Browse link as shown above. To change the site logo you’ll need to have appropriate permissions.

The first step in the process is to select the Cog icon in the top right of the page. From the menu that appears select Site Settings.

On the Site Settings page, in the top right, under the Look and Feel heading, select Title, description and logo.

On the Title, Description, and Logo page scroll down to the bottom to locate the Logo and Description section.

Here you can see that you can add a logo from either your computer or SharePoint. Select the From Computer link to upload a new image from your desktop.

You can now select the Choose file button and navigate to the location of the file you wish to use as the new logo.

By default, uploaded logo images will be saved into a hidden Document Library on the the Team Site called Site Assests. If you select the Choose Folder button you can alter this location.

Selecting the Choose Folder button will open a new windows allowing you to navigate the folder structure of the Site Assets Document Library. You will note that you can only navigate the Site Assets folder and below, you can’t navigate to anywhere else in the SharePoint Online Team Site.

In most cases the default location of the root of the Site Assets Document Library is suitable as a location for uploaded logos, so accept this and complete the process by selecting the OK button.

You should now see you logo displayed as shown above, you will also see the path in SharePoint Online where this file will be saved.

You can also enter a description of the logo. This description is visible when you mouse over the logo or when the images doesn’t display. It is always best practice to ensure that you enter some text here.

When you have finished making any changes, scroll to the bottom of the page and select the OK button to apply these changes to your Team Site.

If you return to the home page of your Team Site you should now see the new logo displayed as shown above.

If instead of uploading the image from yoru desktop you wish to select an image already saved in SharePoint Online you select the From Sharepoint link from the change logo region detailed above. When you do so, you’ll see a dialog appear like that shown above.

Depending on the permissions you have with the SharePoint Site Collection (i.e. all the Teams Sites under this URL), you can navigate to and select an image from anywhere in that Site Collection.

For example, you may have created a sub-site in which you want to change the logo. However, you may wish to store all the images in the parent location. All you need to do to use this parent location is navigate to it using the dialog shown above.

It is generally best practice to have the copy of the logo you wish to use in the same Team Site as it will appear. If you wish to use a logo from other locations in the Site Collection you’ll need to ensure that users have at least read rights to that location so they can view the logo when the site renders. If they haven’t got rights, then the logo will not display.

You typically use the From SharePoint option for the logo when the logo already exists in SharePoint Online. This ensure that there is only a single point of truth for that image, which is handy if it ever needs to be changed or updated.

Email alerts allow users to receive a notification in their inbox when something changes in SharePoint. Alerts are available on most SharePoint apps such as calendars, contacts, lists and so on. In this case we’ll look at configuring an email alert on a SharePoint Document Library.

The first step is to navigate to the location within SharePoint where you wish to configure the alert.

If you then select the Library tab in the top left of the page this should reveal the Ribbon Menu as shown above.

You need to locate and select the Alert Me button in the middle of the ribbon in the Share & Track section.

This will reveal a drop down menu as shown above. Select the Set alert on this library option to continue.

This will open a new dialog like that shown above.

You can now customise what the name of this alert will be called using the Alert Title box at the top of the page. Best practice is always to make it as meaningful as possible.

The Send Alerts To box should already be populated with the name of the current user. You can add additional names here if you have the appropriate security settings, however it is generally best practices for users to individually configure their own alert settings.

If the option is available it may be possible to configure the alert to be sent via SMS, in which case you would need to enter the mobile phone number. However, in most cases you will select the E-Mail option.

The email address to the right will automatically be taken from the Office 365 profile of the current user.

Depending on the frequency of change that occurs in this location you may wish to not receive alerts for every change that occurs. You can use the Change Type selection to determine what you wil be alerted to. Remember that the default All changes option means you will receive an email alert when anything changes in that location, that is when new items are created and when items are changed and when they are deleted.

Best practice is to use SharePoint email alerts only to inform you of the important changes that take place in that SharePoint location. Having the frequency of alerts set too high can result in a significant volume of emails. Best practice is therefore to start with the most infrequent option and increase the frequency as required.

You can of course edit and adjust any of these alert settings at any point in the future.

The Send Alerts of These Changes option allows you to further customise the frequency of receiving alerts from this area. Again, best practice is always to set the least frequent alert option and adjust if required.

The final option allows you to determine when an email will be sent informing you of the changes you selected previously. Electing to be alerted immediately can be very distracting when set on an area in SharePoint that is changing regularly. In most cases best practice is to set the option for a daily summary.

When you select either a daily or weekly summary you will be prompted to enter a time when the alert will be delivered. The suggested times for a daly summary are either first thing in the morning or last thing in the evening.

Once you have made all the desired configuration changes, scroll down to the bottom of the page and select the OK button to save you changes.

You should immediately receive an email notifcation confirming the settings that you have just configured. If you did not receive an email firstly check you junk e-mail folder and then verify the configuration settings via the process above.

This email is your confirmation that your alert settings for the area in SharePoint have been set. The email should provide a link to the area in SharePoint that you configure the alert on (here Demo) and a link to where you can change all the alerts you have configured for the SharePoint site.

Now when an appropriate change is made to this area you will receive an email advising you of the change as shown above. These notification emails are not sent instantaneously, they are sent by a regular job that runs on the SharePoint server every few minutes so they may take a few moments to appear in your inbox.

As noted previous, it is generally best practice to avoid using many emails alerts with SharePoint as the volume of notifications can become overwhelming. You can return to the Alert Me button at any location and select the Manage My Alerts option.

You will then see all the alerts you have configured across yoru SharePoint site. You can select and delete any you wish easily or by simply clicking on the name of the alert you can modify its configuration.

Not only can you create an alert on an app inside a SharePoint Team site but you can also create an alert on an single item, in this case a file in a Document Library.

In this case you select the individual file in the Document Library and then File tab in the top left of the window to reveal the Ribbon Menu as shown above.

In the middle of the ribbon you will again find an Alert Me button you can select. Once selected you will follow through the same process as outlined previously about setting an alert, only in this case the alert will be on a single item in SharePoint.This single item could be an appointment in a calendar, a single line in a list etc..

In summary, alerts are set on a per user basis and provide a way to let you know, typically via email, when information in a SharePoint location has changed. You can customise these alerts to provide information about varying levels of change, for example, all changes versus just deletions. You can also customise how often these email alerts are sent, immediately versus a daily summary. The notification you receive in you inbox will provide you information about what has changes as well as links to the locations in SharePoint.

Best practice is always to minimise the amount of alerts utilised on a site and their frequency to avoid being overwhelmed with emails. They however, provide an excellent method of being notified when specific SharePoint information changes.