Most businesses using SharePoint barely scratch the surface of what it can actually do. They use it as a glorified file dump—a place to store documents that’s slightly better organized than email attachments. Meanwhile, features that could save hours of work every week sit unused because nobody knows they exist or understands how they work.
The problem isn’t that SharePoint is bad at these things. It’s that companies implement it without proper planning or training, so teams never discover the tools that would actually make their work easier.
Metadata and Content Types That Make Finding Things Easy
Here’s a common scenario: someone needs a document from six months ago. They know it exists. They spend 15 minutes clicking through folders trying to remember where it was saved. This happens multiple times a day across an organization.
Metadata solves this, but most companies don’t set it up. Instead of relying on folder structures that only make sense to whoever created them, metadata tags documents with searchable information. Department, project name, document type, date—whatever makes sense for the business.
Once metadata is in place, finding documents becomes searching for “Q3 budget” or “client proposals from marketing” rather than guessing which nested folder might contain what you need. The time savings add up quickly when you’re not constantly hunting through folder trees.
Content types take this further by standardizing how different document types are handled. All meeting minutes follow the same template with the same required information. All project proposals have consistent metadata fields. This consistency makes information retrieval reliable rather than a guessing game.
Version Control That Actually Prevents Disasters
Most people treat SharePoint documents like they would files on their computer—downloading, editing, and uploading new versions. This creates the exact problem SharePoint was designed to prevent: multiple versions floating around with no clear indication of which is current.
SharePoint’s version control means documents can be edited directly in the browser with every change tracked. Who made the edit, when, and what changed are all recorded. If someone makes a mistake or deletes something important, rolling back to a previous version takes seconds.
This feature alone prevents the “final_version_3_ACTUAL_FINAL_USE_THIS_ONE.docx” situation that plagues organizations. There’s one document, one location, with a complete history of changes. Yet many companies never enable this properly or train staff to use it, so they continue emailing documents back and forth like it’s 2005.
Workflows That Automate Repetitive Tasks
Approval processes eat up time across most organizations. Someone creates a document that needs sign-off from three different people. Emails go back and forth. The document sits in someone’s inbox for days because they’re busy. Nobody’s quite sure where it is in the process.
SharePoint workflows automate this entire chain. A document submitted for approval automatically routes to the right people in the correct order. Reminders go out if someone hasn’t reviewed it. Everyone can see exactly where it sits in the approval process. Once approved, it automatically moves to its final location or triggers the next step.
The same applies to holiday requests, expense claims, content publication—any process that follows predictable steps. Getting support from experts like Silicon Reef helps businesses identify which workflows would deliver the most value and implement them properly rather than trying to figure it out through trial and error.
Setting up workflows requires some initial thought about processes, but once they’re running, they save enormous amounts of time and eliminate the confusion about where things stand.
Alerts and Notifications That Keep Teams Updated
Information silos happen when people don’t know what’s changing in areas that affect their work. Someone updates a policy document. Another team continues following the old version for weeks because nobody told them it changed.
SharePoint’s alert system solves this if it’s configured properly. Team members can subscribe to notifications for documents, folders, or lists they need to monitor. When something changes, they’re automatically informed. No more wondering if the budget spreadsheet has been updated or if new guidelines have been posted.
The trick is setting these up strategically rather than creating notification overload. Alerts for truly important changes are valuable. Alerts for every minor edit become noise that people ignore. Proper implementation requires thinking about what information actually needs to flow to whom.
Power Apps for Custom Solutions
Many businesses have processes that don’t quite fit standard software but don’t justify building custom applications from scratch. These gaps often get filled with complex spreadsheets or manual workarounds that nobody enjoys maintaining.
Power Apps, integrated with SharePoint, lets companies create simple custom applications without needing software developers. A custom form for incident reporting, a simple project tracker, an equipment booking system—these kinds of tools can be built relatively quickly to solve specific business problems.
Most companies don’t realize this capability exists within their SharePoint license. They continue using clunky spreadsheets or paying for separate software when they could build exactly what they need using tools they already have access to.
Search That Actually Works
Out of the box, SharePoint search is mediocre. But configured properly with metadata, content types, and some customization, it becomes genuinely powerful. The problem is that this requires setup work most IT teams skip during initial implementation.
Good SharePoint search means typing “risk assessment template” and immediately finding the current approved version, not scrolling through dozens of results trying to figure out which one is right. It means being able to filter results by department, date, or document type. It means finding information in seconds instead of minutes.
This only works if the foundation is right—proper metadata, consistent naming, organized structure. Without that groundwork, search remains frustrating no matter how good the search engine is.
The Real Barrier to Using These Features
The features exist. The capability is there. So why don’t companies use them? Usually it comes down to three things: nobody knows they exist, nobody understands how to implement them properly, or there’s no clear plan for rolling them out in a way that makes sense for the business.
Buying SharePoint and assuming it will magically improve collaboration is like buying a professional kitchen and expecting to suddenly cook like a chef. The tools are excellent, but they require knowledge and planning to use effectively.
Getting proper implementation support, training staff beyond just “here’s where to upload files,” and actually planning which features solve which problems makes the difference between SharePoint being a useful business tool and it being an expensive file storage system that frustrates everyone.
The features that could save your team hours every week are already there, waiting to be switched on and configured properly. The question is whether anyone’s actually going to do that or if they’ll continue sitting unused while everyone complains about how hard it is to find documents.
