Should I pay or should I use free? AI tool options and rationale
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Documents make up the majority of what typical organisation produce, probably more so than data, but this is dependant on the industry and outputs.
The Document Library has always been the cornerstone of SharePoint and users' interactions with SharePoint. They store documents they need there. The edit documents. They read documents. And hell, they sometimes even need to retrieve documents too.
An estimated 90% or more of user digital activities in a typical medium to large organisation are working with documents, creating, reading, sharing, and deleting. This is why we care.
If you haven’t dug deep into a SharePoint library lately, a few things have shifted to make the whole experience feel a lot faster and less cluttered. Or so they say.
What's new?
The Command Bar Makeover: The top menu got a major glow-up. Instead of hunting through endless ribbons, the options change contextually based on what you click. It’s clean, snappy, and actually makes sense.
Creating files at-source With the advent of Office365, the user can now just create MS Office files straight on SharePoint. No need to save and upload, those days are gone.
Smarter Filters: Finding stuff is way easier now. The right-hand filter pane lets you slice and dice your files by modified date, file type, or custom tags without having to build complex views.
Direct Drag-and-Drop: You can drag files—and entire folders—straight from your desktop into the browser window, and it just works. No more clunky upload wizards.
Improved workflow and integrations: Drastic improvement of the document workflow feature, and including native integrations with Power Automate, Power BI apps. Also integrations with third parties like DocuSign.
AI - Yes, AI. Like everything else in the world, Document libraries also has AI integration which is good and bad. A more detailed article about this to come.
Sharing - Microsoft has gone all "happy clappy" about collaboration, and sharing internally and externally is all the fuss. Real-time collaboration on documents, sharing files and folders with other users. These are all powerful tools, but they do come with heavy caveats and potential minefield of security problems.
What's gone?
Classic View Clutter: The old 2013-style "Classic" interface is largely a thing of the past. And though it can still be accessible, we don't really know for how long. Such is the life on the cloud! SharePoint has fully embraced and double-down on the clean, modern look.
The Rigid "Check-Out" Requirement: While you can still check out a file to lock others out, it’s no longer the default standard. Modern co-authoring means you can jump into a Word doc at the same time as a teammate without blowing up the version history.
Open in Windows Explorer RIP. Ability to open a document library in Windows Explorer app. Originally this was left on using the old IE browser version, but this was subsequently scrapped for reasons unknown. Was amazing to use when it was active, but my guess is that this feature would overshadow users operating files in Teams or SharePoint.
What's New? What's Gone?
When you click the three little dots (...) next to a file name, a massive dropdown appears. You don't need most of it, but here are the heavy hitters that you will remember.
Version History: With Office365 being incredibly good at auto-saving and collaboration being so instant, you're going to find this handy, especially when multiple people are working on multiple files.
Pin to Top: For those files that you know you're going to lose track of. Pin that to the top and it stays there for later retrieval. Pin too many things and well, you've got yourself a fine mess.
Preview: Have a quick perv at a document completely incognito. This brings up a pop-up view of a file without a) launching the app and b) affecting changes to the document itself. Rather than worrying about auto-save kicking in at the worst time, you can have a peek at a file and rest assured that you won't have an angry co-worker wondering what changes you made to their file.
And here are a few things you'll likely NEVER use:
Alert Me: Sends you an email whenever an action or event takes place. Sounds like a good idea, but the crippling amount of email spamming your inbox will say otherwise. Yes, you can schedule alerts for day/week/month type schedules, but you honestly will never want to click this on for anything.
Check In/Check Out: Honestly, this was very seldom used in on-premises version of SharePoint due to the clunky operations and the "file is checked out and user goes on holiday" problem. Everyone is trained to use it, but no-one actually used it.
Version History: Yes, it was in stated as a "must use", but statistically, a lot of users will never need to revert versions and not need any version beyond the last 10. This makes the 100 version minimum limit seem a little overblown.
Menu Items You’ll Actually Use (Probably)
SharePoint doesn't live on an island; it’s basically the foundational skeleton for the rest of Microsoft 365.
The Teams Connection
When you drop a file into a Microsoft Teams chat or channel, guess where it actually goes? Yep, straight into the backend SharePoint document library. It means you can edit files right inside your Teams window while chatting, but they stay safely organized in your main document storage.
Automation Made Easy (Power Automate)
You don’t need to be a programmer to automate the boring stuff. Built right into the library menu is an Integrate tab that hooks up to Power Automate. With just a few clicks, you can set up workflows like:
"When a new invoice is uploaded, ping my manager for approval."
"Convert this completed Word document into a PDF automatically."