SharePoint Tips & Tricks
Champion began implementing SharePoint collaborative sites in 2012 to increase information sharing among business units. Since then, we’ve developed the system to accommodate each department and business unit to ensure all Champions have access to a collaborative platform.
SharePoint offers Champions a way to find pertinent information about the company, project documentation, and intellectual property reuse items without having to laboriously search through the champ-fs network or have access to all business units’ site-specific servers. Since we don’t have immediate access to each other’s project folders, each business unit can instead share examples of excellent documentation or helpful custom-created applications. If you need to develop project documentation, the PM (Project Management) section of the site provides helpful examples of project plans, Functional Requirements Specifications, FAT procedures and SAT procedures.
SharePoint also stores tools that project managers, engineers, and designers can leverage to be more efficient and effective during project development.
Page Highlight: Human Resources
While we use SharePoint to help us utilize our collective knowledge, we can also find information that is pertinent to our lives outside of the office as well. The Human Resources site, for example, contains information about Champion’s 401k, insurance, benefits, holiday policies, and tuition reimbursement forms, to name a few.
You can find these documents by their Document Type. Under “Payroll,” for example, you can find PTO request forms, the Wellness Program Reimbursement Form, and other documents.
To get the most use of the site, spend some time browsing and becoming familiar with key features, such as searching, the Explorer View option, linking libraries to your Outlook account, downloading files, and editing a document directly in SharePoint.
Searching
Use the Search bar 
to enter key words or search terms in SharePoint. All documents that contain the search term will populate the screen. You can filter the results by site by using the list box located to the left of the search bar.
Explorer View
Once you’ve found a document or Library you want to peruse, if you’re not a fan of using the SharePoint Library interface and prefer to browse files using Windows folders, you can access files using Explorer View. Follow these steps:
- With SharePoint open, choose a site.
2. Choose one of the libraries listed to the left.
3. Click the Library tab under “Library Tools.”
4. Click Open with Explorer in the “Connect & Export” toolbox.
5. Use Explorer View to modify, reorganize, or edit documents.
Link to Outlook
A convenient way to ensure you receive up-to-date information that’s uploaded to the site is to link your Outlook to the libraries that are most pertinent to your role. Champions in each business unit may want to link their office’s Shared Documents to their Outlook for easy access to items such as Standard Client Mileage or other documents stored into your business unit’s libraries. To connect a specific folder to Outlook, follow the same steps 1-3 above. At Step 4, click Connect to Outlook. These items will appear in your Outlook navigation under “SharePoint Lists.”
Downloading Files
The best way to download a document such as a Safety Quiz or The Champion newsletter: find the document, right click, and choose “Save target as…”
Note that if you download a non-PDF file, it may be modified at a later date. Make sure that you’re always using the most up-to-date information.
Editing in SharePoint
Sometimes you’ll want to modify an already-existing file in SharePoint. This is encouraged if minor changes are made to shared documents.
To make sure that you’re the only person making edits at any given point while you have the document open, and to let others know that on-going edits are being made, make sure you:
- Click the checkbox next to the document you want to edit;
- Check Out the document;
- Click the document you want to edit. After you’re done, save your updates and close the file.
- Click Check In.
Others will not be able to edit the document if it isn’t returned.
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ProTip: While many use Chrome as their browser of choice, SharePoint works best with Internet Explorer. If you’re not accustomed to using IE, try pinning it to your taskbar and setting the homepage to Champion’s SharePoint site.