■ Sharing Calendars Securely

WHAT ELSE CAN YOU DO IN SHAREPOINT?

This section has given you a few ideas for the types of things you might want to do first with your SharePoint team site, but you can add all kinds of elements and customize the look and feel of the site to your heart’s content. You can even create a public website (not simply a team site) where you share your creations with the world. Some other tasks you might want to do in SharePoint include these: ■ Add files.

■ Change page permissions. ■ Change the site layout. ■ Set alerts so that you know when content is updated or added. ■ Rename the site.

■ Add a site description. ■ Customize the HTML for the site.

■ Add pictures and tables. ■ Create a new contacts list.

■ Check files in and out.

■ Add a calendar.

■ Add special web parts to increase the functionality of the site. ■ Edit the site in SharePoint Designer.

One of the challenges to working with a group of people you rarely see is that it can be tough to get everybody in the same place at the same time. For that reason, being able to share calendars so that your colleagues can see at a glance whether you’re available for a team meeting is an important way to stay in touch. With Office 365, you can easily manage your calendar and share it with other members on your team. (See Figure 4-5.) The appointments and meeting announcements you save and send are secure in your cloud environment while still being easily accessible to those with the permissions to share your information. You can also change your permissions at any time, so if you have team members who come and go, you can easily add others to your share list.

FIGURE 4-5 You can easily share your calendar in a secure environment using Office 365.

SCHEDULING FOR TEAM SUCCESS

So how often do you need to schedule team meetings, group meetings, project meetings, and post-meeting meetings? One of the nice things about working in the cloud is that you can avoid being meeting-ed to death, which is sometimes hard to avoid in the face-to-face business culture.

The number of times you meet—and the topics you meet about—will depend in part on the type of team you’re creating, what your focus is, and who your leaders are. Truly collaborative teams might enjoy getting together for some creative time and status updates once a week or so. Teams that have a top-down management style might be more regimented, with mandatory team meetings once a week at a specific time. Of course some teams—especially high-performing sales teams—meet each morning to go over the plan for the day. So it’s your call—and your need—that should determine how often you meet with your team.

Whatever timeframe you choose, try to be consistent with your meetings, at least while your group is going through the forming and storming stages. Once you get to norming, the meetings will sort themselves out, but having some kind of structure to hold to—such as, “We’ll have a team meeting every Wednesday at 9:00 a.m. EST”—can help the group begin to get organized.