What are the Best Practices for Administrators for SharePoint Document Libraries?
In SharePoint, the core is of course the Document Library – and the tasks of an administrator can be simplified by its proper management. However, administrators can still feel slightly swept over at the numerous options available in the platform. However, there are some best practices that can easily be followed by administrators in order to get optimal returns and reduce the hassles. Read on and know about some of these best practices that you can follow as a SharePoint administrator.
Enforcing Document Check Out
Check Out on documents is not enabled by default in SharePoint document libraries, but happens to be supported. In case a document library is accessed at the same time by multiple users and also quite often, enforcing a check out can assist them in tracking which specific documents are being edited and who are editing them. It is also a useful idea to add a Checked Out By column to the document library default view. Although any user can hover the pointer over the icon “Checked Out” and view in the tooltip which user is editing a particular document, it is not really an intuitive action.
Once the column is added, anyone can easily who is currently editing a document at only a glance. This can make the task of administration simple as well. It is also important to train users about the exact way to Check In and Check Out documents, and the ways to discard the Check Out process.
Proper approach to versioning
For SharePoint administrators, versioning can be an extremely robust tool – considering the way it can easily allow them to roll documents back following data corruption or a goofed up edit. Each time there is editing of a document, irrespective of how insignificant the edit might be, a copy of the document is automatically saved by SharePoint so that it can be recovered by administrators if required.
However, versioning has only one problem – in the sense that the whole file is saved each time it is edited. Over a period of time, this can eat a lot of storage space – particularly when many big-sized files are stored in SharePoint. Naturally, in case versioning is enabled, it is sensible to also set a specific limit over the disk space that would be used by SharePoint. This will ensure that only the most up-to-date versions of any document are kept in store.
Content type creation and configuration in SharePoint document libraries
Administrators can lower the risk of technical problems arising by setting up content ‘types’ for various kinds of documents existing in a library and then uploading templates for the same, which can make the document creation process simpler for them. All that users have to do is click over the button named “New” and then choose the document type. This will automatically lead to the creation and launch of a new document with the aid of a preloaded template. It can also make the administration process simplified, given that administrators can update the templates at any given times. The updates would be reflected by each document that is created after that point.
