We wanted to take a closer look at what features you can find in the Clik Service SharePoint integration. We’ll also explain what SharePoint is and the difference between SharePoint and OneDrive.
What is SharePoint?
It’s the next big thing for Clik Service users. But if you’re not familiar with SharePoint, here is a quick run-down of what it can do.
SharePoint is an online system that can help with file storage. The cloud-based system, hosted by Microsoft, allows businesses to create their own document storage site. Here, you can share documents with colleagues in one central location.
You can then access these sites on any device, so you can edit work and access documents on-the-go. Your team can share news and updates for everyone to see and it’s easy to view all the site’s contents in one place.
They work in conjunction with other Microsoft products, including Teams and OneDrive. You can see the items shared in your Teams, including any recent activity and document edits. This makes collaborating straightforward. You can see who can access documents and quickly share them with your team.
The Difference Between OneDrive and SharePoint
It’s a question you might’ve asked yourself before. But what actually is the difference between Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft OneDrive?
With so many options within the Microsoft family of products, it can be hard to keep up sometimes. Let’s look at what you can use OneDrive for and how it differs from SharePoint.
What is OneDrive?
Microsoft OneDrive is a hosting system for your documents. It’s an online place where you can store and access your personal files. You can also find any files that have been shared with you across Microsoft 365 platforms.
The version typically used for business is ‘OneDrive for work or school’, previously called ‘OneDrive for Business’.
Unlike SharePoint, files shared to OneDrive are private to you, unless you choose to share them. It’s a solution that is great for solo projects as you can keep your work separate from other projects. Or perfect if you haven’t got your team set up yet. You can later share everything with your new teammates when you’re ready.
What’s the difference?
So that’s two cloud Microsoft products, but what is the difference?
For a quick comparison of the two: SharePoint is the web-based site to help your business manage and protect your files. OneDrive is your personal file experience where you can access all your own files, as well as the files that are shared with you.
Ultimately, you can use whichever product works best for your business or use both in conjunction for the best of both worlds.
Saving Documents in Clik Service
There were a few options available in Clik Serice for saving documents. This enables you to add documents to a customer record such as images, spreadsheets and PDFs.
You can link documents and folders to a customer in your CRM. This is great if you want to link a folder dedicated to the company or if you have a shared file location that you want to link to for everyone to find easily. It makes it easy to find relevant documents for the company, saving you time searching through large drives.
The second option is to store documents in your database. This method is good if you would rather store the document itself in Clik Service, rather than a link to the file. This requires the full version of SQL to function, but your engineers can then access the documents when onsite using Clik Remote.
The Clik Service SharePoint Integration
As mentioned, Microsoft SharePoint is a solution for you and your team to collaborate. With the Clik Service integration, you’ll be able to take collaboration to the next level.
Microsoft SharePoint further expands our existing Microsoft 365 integration in Clik Service. You can already email from your Outlook account/s, link your calendars and search for what you need, but we wanted to add even more options.
With the addition of SharePoint, you’ll also have the choice to store your documents in the cloud, rather than in your local office database. This way, you can add necessary files to your relevant team sites, and everyone has access.
Benefits of Integrating with SharePoint
In a nutshell, the SharePoint integration adds a new way for you to store your documents in the cloud. Sounds beneficial already, but what are the other main benefits of using this new tool?
1. More Space in Your Database
This is probably the number one reason for switching over to SharePoint. Storing your documents in Clik Service keeps everything together in one place, but it can have size limitations. If you’re a smaller company, this may not be a noticeable issue at first, but once you start to grow and use Clik Service more and more, it might be time to expand.
The full version of SQL needed to store documents in the Clik Service database does have storage limitations. Depending on your Microsoft plan, your organisation can store up to 1TB in the cloud, (plus 10 GB per license purchased). That’s a lot of room for a lot of documents. Microsoft also takes care of everything for your files, so you don’t have to worry about hosting your work locally.
2. Collaborative Working
SharePoint makes it easy for people to work on one document at once. All updates and edits are visible in real time, so you don’t have to worry about saving and exiting the file before someone else can view it.
Adding a SharePoint document to Clik Service gives you a direct link to the file to work on and view. After linking a file, you don’t need to search for it in hundreds of other similar documents. You just need to find the right customer and open the web link in the documents tab. It’s as simple as that.
From there, multiple users can edit the document, provide comments and collaborate as you usually would on SharePoint. This way, everyone sees the most up-to-date version of the document, without having to pass the file back and forth. Saving time and headaches.
3. Access Documents Onsite
Hosting your documents in the cloud makes it easier to access them whenever you need to. You don’t always have to be in the office to access and view your customer’s notes, certificates, PDFs and other related documents.
Your engineers can use Clik Remote to find documents linked to a job. From there, they can then view the live web version in SharePoint. This way, they don’t need to carry any loose paperwork with them or search their emails for the notes sent to them the previous week.
Any edits made to the web version will instantly be visible to everyone in your team. Make collaboration easier, even when your team are apart. It’s not just when engineers are onsite, it can also help your team work from home.
There’s so much you can do with Microsoft SharePoint. Integrate SharePoint with Clik Service and you can bring everything together in one place for your entire team.
Want to find out more about the Clik Service SharePoint integration? Watch our live webinar to run through how to use the new features.
Further reading:
- Microsoft: Should I save files to OneDrive or SharePoint?
- Microsoft: Share SharePoint files or folders