What is SharePoint used for? A best practice guide

SharePoint in plain English

SharePoint is your organization's intranet. Think of it as an internal website that only your employees can access, built to share information, store files, and connect teams across the company.

It's part of your Microsoft 365 license, which means if your org already pays for Microsoft 365, SharePoint is there waiting to be used.

The challenge is that SharePoint is flexible enough to do almost anything, which means a lot of organizations end up with a messy, inconsistent setup that nobody knows how to navigate. Done right, though, SharePoint becomes the single place everyone goes to find what they need.

The two types of SharePoint sites and when to use each

This is the most important thing to understand before you build anything.

Team sites

A team site is for a specific group of people working together. Your marketing team. Your IT department. A project group. Team sites are designed for collaboration: shared document libraries, task lists, shared calendars, and private discussion.

Only team members typically have access to a team site.

Communication sites

A communication site is for broadcasting information to a wider audience. Company news, HR policies, executive updates, benefits information. Anyone in the organization can view it (depending on your permissions setup), but only specific people create and edit content.

Why this distinction matters

Most SharePoint confusion comes from using the wrong site type for the job. Building a communication site when you need a team site, or vice versa, creates a structure that doesn't fit what people actually need.

Before you create a site, ask one question: is this for a specific team working together, or is this for publishing information to a broader audience?

How to structure SharePoint for the whole organization

Start with your hub site

Your hub site is the top of the SharePoint architecture, typically your main intranet home page. Every communication site you create should be associated with this hub.

When a site is associated with your hub, it inherits the hub's color scheme and navigation bar. This keeps everything visually consistent and makes it easier for employees to navigate between sites.

Use SharePoint as your single source of truth

One of SharePoint's most practical uses is hosting documentation that changes frequently. HR policies. IT procedures. Compliance requirements.

Instead of emailing updated versions of documents every few months, you maintain one live document on SharePoint. Anyone who needs it goes there. No version confusion, no outdated attachments floating around in inboxes.

Power your unified communications plan

SharePoint communication sites are dynamic enough to be actual communication channels, not just file storage. Embed videos. Add news posts. Display quick links. Create a custom home page that looks like a proper intranet, because that's exactly what it is.

Your internal communications team can use SharePoint as the main channel supporting company-wide updates, layered with Teams and Viva Engage for more conversational communication.

Accessing SharePoint through Microsoft Teams

Most employees don't need to navigate directly to SharePoint. They can access SharePoint content from where they already spend their time: Teams.

Every Teams channel has a Files tab that connects directly to a SharePoint document library. Adding a SharePoint page as a tab in a Teams channel brings your intranet content right into the flow of work.

Viva Connections, available directly inside Teams, provides a curated dashboard experience that surfaces relevant SharePoint content for each employee based on their role and location.

Common SharePoint mistakes and how to avoid them

No governance plan

Without a governance policy, anyone can create sites, and many organizations end up with dozens of orphaned, outdated, or duplicated sites. Establish who can create sites, what naming conventions to use, and who's responsible for keeping content current.

Obsolete content

SharePoint pages with outdated information erode trust. Users stop going there because they can't tell if what they're reading is current. Assign owners to each site who are responsible for regular reviews.

Duplicate documentation

If the same policy document lives in three different places, people won't know which one to trust. Consolidate. Use SharePoint as the source, and link to it from other places rather than copying the content.

Missing a champion or owner

Every SharePoint site needs someone who owns it. Not IT. The team or department it belongs to. That person is responsible for keeping it useful and current.

SharePoint and Copilot in 2026

With a Microsoft 365 Copilot license, SharePoint content becomes even more useful. Copilot can search and reason across your SharePoint documents, giving employees quick answers to questions like "what's our current parental leave policy" or "find the Q3 budget template" without having to dig through folders.

This makes a well-organized, up-to-date SharePoint even more valuable. The better the structure and the more current the content, the better Copilot performs.

The adoption piece that most organizations miss

You can build a beautiful SharePoint intranet and watch it go unused because no one knows it exists, or no one knows where to start.

That's a software adoption and usage problem, not a technology problem.

BrainStorm helps organizations drive real adoption of Microsoft 365 tools including SharePoint. Through Flows, Packs, Analytics, and Events, we create learning experiences that change how people actually work, not just what tools they technically have access to.

Most employees are using 20% of what software can do. We help you move that number. Named Microsoft Technology Partner of the Year and Most Innovative Solution Provider by CLN, we've done it for organizations of all sizes.