■ What Is a Document Library (and Where Is It)?

IN THIS CHAPTER:

■ What is a document library (and where is it)? ■ Creating a document library ■ Organizing document libraries ■ Working with document library files

■ What’s next

CHAPTER 6

Posting, Sharing, and Managing Files

HAVING AN ONLINE PLACE to gather is important, especially if you hope your team will gel into a productive group with members who enjoy each other’s company and work well together. But you can create groups in all kinds of places—blogs, social media sites, and even in your favorite instant messaging tools. Why do you need a tool as sophisticated as SharePoint Online to give your group that extra something it needs to succeed?

The file management capabilities of SharePoint Online enable you to create document libraries, share documents and pictures, check files in and out, and work with files in a way that will help your team be as productive as possible. This chapter shows you how to set up, manage, and work with team files in SharePoint Online.

What Is a Document Library (and Where Is It)?

When you first begin using your SharePoint team site, you’ll find a basic page already created for you—but that’s it. If you want to add a document library—a place to store, organize, and manage the files you’ll share with your team—you’ll need to add it yourself. This section shows you how to think through, create, and add files to document libraries in your site.

PLANNING YOUR LIBRARIES

What kinds of files will your team share? This depends on the types of projects you’re creating. If you’re preparing a marketing report, for example, you’ll probably work with files like these:

■ A set of notes about the project ■ Minutes from meetings about the project’s design ■ The schedule for delivery ■ Images of products that will be included ■ A document with the text for the report ■ A worksheet showing the budget for the project ■ Reviewers’ comments or review forms

And this might just be the tip of the iceberg. Your project might be much more complicated, or you could have several projects going on at once—in which case, you might want to create different document libraries on different pages to contain the files related to the various projects. One of the beautiful things about document libraries is that they enable you to cut down on the number of versions you have available for an individual file. Suppose that you write a draft of the text for the report and then post it to the site. Another team member can edit it; someone else can do a content review; the designer can apply the template and theme you want to use; a manager can do a line-by-line review—all using the same file. This means you won’t have six different versions of the file that someone will need to merge into the most recent copy. Using the file check-in and check-out feature in SharePoint, team members can each make their changes to the file in the file library so that all changes are incorporated in one file and you don’t run the risk of using the wrong file when it’s time to finalize the project.