When it comes to using documentation, I tend to get lazy and every distraction, no matter how small, can derail me from using it. Sometimes, it’s enough for the system to ask me to reenter my credentials or 2FA code. I came up with an easy way for centralising all our documentation, so it’s easy to access and use.
I’m using Microsoft Teams daily and I like it. Having all documentation accessible from Teams seemed like a very good idea and it turned out to be for real.
Here’s a screenshot of the end product:
I’ve used SharePoint Pages to collect all tutorial materials in one place. Let me show you.
Preparing the docs hub
In our main Team, which everyone is a part of, I’ve created a new channel called Documentation and Tutorials.
Then I created a new SharePoint Page which collects all materials. To access the SharePoint site behind the Team, you can use the files tab – use the “Open in SharePoint” menu button.
Then add a new page using the “Site Content” option:
This opens up the page editor, which is fairly user-friendly. The first thing you need to do, of course, is set a welcoming header image. I chose a sunset with olives, because they remind me of summer and the seaside 😊
Now add a new “Quick Links” block and change the layout to “Grid“:
This block allows you to add links to various types of documentation – Tangos, videos, other SharePoint sites, … everything.
If you have plenty of tutorials, the grid can start to feel overwhelming. Therefore, I’ve separated the page into multiple sections by adding multiple Quick Links blocks and adding a title to each.
When you’re done, just click Publish and you’re ready to go.
If you want to separate the content even more, you can create additional pages and link to them.
Adding the page to Teams
When you have your page ready, just go back to Teams and add a new Tab. Select “SharePoint page” as the tab type, select the page “Documentation and Tutorials” and press “Save“
Text and images
Apart from the links, you can also add text and images to your tutorials hub to spice up the content.
To add a text block, click on the plus icon and select “Text“:
Comments
One of the nice features in SharePoint are page comments. Your colleagues can use them to inform you about a missing tutorial or an outdated step.
Conclusion
Being able to access the documentation effortlessly is an important factor, which can greatly improve the overall employee experience. SharePoint and Teams are two tools you and your colleagues probably use every day and you can make great use of them to collect your documentation.