What is SharePoint?

In my position I spend most of the day, even while I am off-work, studying new implementations and abilities which are contained within SharePoint. Since I assume that the need for support on SharePoint will expand significantly as the transition to SharePoint 2013 takes place in the coming months, I tried to think of the most common question which I get in regards to SharePoint and the response has been a little distressing in conversing to people who we are preparing to bring into the system.

The question: What is SharePoint?

SharePoint is a product that has been added to the Microsoft package that allows for the extensive collaboration of an enterprise and brings individuals together. Most recently, Microsoft has come out with SharePoint 2013, which has improved abilities than previous versions which Microsoft has released, such as SharePoint 2010 or SharePoint 2007.

In simple, I've referred to this as the combination of the social networks to date as a whole. This means the soup of Facebook, MySpace, Google, and LinkedIn all in one. I thought about this a little bit more, and I think that what SharePoint is goes far beyond this explanation.

The aspects which surround SharePoint is the ease of communication and access to relevant documents and information which may arise throughout the normal business day. As many documents change hands throughout the day, it is often hard to monitor progress and determine where individuals are at. SharePoint also allows inter-communication and quick response through the mutual use of Lync and other Microsoft applications such as PowerPoint, Word, or Outlook.

As a place of collaboration, SharePoint allows the quick creation of sites which may designed to organize and display information which the users are responsible for while maintaining a level of security. In SharePoint 2010, users became increasingly familiar with the dynamic user-interface and web parts which allows the control of information and navigation. Though, some abilities from 2010 have been removed in 2013, newer applications and improvements have been made that supplement the decrease.

When learning to use SharePoint, I would recommend that users take a "Hands-on" approach instead of reading, as I feel that becoming more comfortable with SharePoint will teach more in the beginning than books will, though there is no substitute for the literature to access the full capabilities of SharePoint as a whole.