Displaying the Team Site

Although working in the cloud poses particular contact challenges, it also offers many great benefits. The first advantage, of course, is that you can create a shared workspace where your team can access the files they need to complete their work. They can also use familiar programs, thanks to Office 365, and log in and complete their tasks whenever it’s convenient.

Some additional benefits Office 365 offers help bridge the gap between your “real world” needs and your productivity goals. You can find out when others are online— there’s the possibility for that “face-to-face” meeting—by using the presence technology available through Lync Online. And you can create a shared workspace—the familiar board room table—by designing a SharePoint Online site where you can post events, comments, files, and more.

SharePoint Online is the place where you’ll find everything you need to create your shared site. To find SharePoint Online in Office 365, follow these steps: 1. Log in to Office 365 with your user name and password. 2. Click on the Team Site tab at the top of the window. The SharePoint Online team site appears, ready for you to modify things to suit your needs. (See Figure 4-1.)

Edit tool

Click the Edit tool (located just to the left of the Browse tab) to display editing mode. The ribbon at the top of the page changes to include a set of editing tools you can use to add pages, change the page layout, and add site elements, such as tables, pictures, video clips, document libraries, a calendar, and other web parts. See Also You’ll learn more about customizing your team site by adding web parts and other elements in Chapter 5.

PLANNING THE WORK OF YOUR TEAM

Knowing in advance what you want your team to accomplish will have some bearing on the types of elements you add to your team site. I’ll cover this in more detail in Chapter 5, when you actually create the team site, but thinking through what you want to accomplish will plan the overall work of your team. Here are a couple of ideas along this line: ■ If your team is coming together to do a specific project—for example, the launch of a new exhibit—you might need to plan to include the following things in the site: shared calendars with regular team meetings; a document library for storing marketing materials and designs; announcements so that team members can see when new items are posted or updated; a way to view overall deadlines and your progress toward the goal; and online meetings with presentations and chat, to make sure everyone is headed in the same direction. ■ If your team is working remotely over the long haul—perhaps you are a small business with offices on a couple of continents—your needs for your team site might be a little different. You still would benefit from a shared calendar and regular meetings, but you might also create document libraries for each member of the team, a public site you all work on, announcements and tasks, and other web parts that help you socialize as well as complete business-critical tasks independently and as a team. Whether your team is working together for a short time or for an indefinite period, be sure to include the basics—calendar, document library, and announcements—as you start out. You can always add to the features of the site as you go along, when you notice what’s missing that might make your teamwork a little smoother.