It’s no secret that SharePoint is a useful collaboration tool for all kinds of enterprises. In 2009, SharePoint was a $1.3 billion business with more than 100 million users, and 20,000 workers have joined the ranks of SharePoint every day for the past five years. Today, it’s estimated that one in every five knowledge workers has access to SharePoint.

But while the success of SharePoint for businesses has been widely known for years, some of its best features still sit in the shadows, all but forgotten—even by those who’d consider themselves SharePoint experts.

Here are 5 of the most underutilized SharePoint features and their potential value to your business…

5. Smart Searching with Analytics

One really cool, but inexplicably unused search feature within SharePoint is search analytics. Through search analytics, SharePoint admins can determine what terms are used to look up content, which queries produce zero results and which searches result in no clicks. Search analytics essentially provides administrators with the tools they need to fix their SharePoint search, instead of constantly hear complaints about it.

4. RSS Feeds

RSS, an acronym for Rich Site Summary (or more commonly known as Really Simple Syndication), is a standard format for publishing regularly updated content such as news stories, blogs, video, etc. However, while news syndication is the most common application of RSS feeds, it has much larger capabilities. In SharePoint, RSS feeds can be used to instantly distribute content published in your internal site to applications across the entire enterprise network, or the specific applications where you want the content to appear. Maybe RSS should instead stand for Ready, Set, Streamline!

3. Wikis and Blogs

You probably come across wikis and blogs frequently in your personal searches, but not too many enterprises take advantage of how well wikis and blogs can distribute information and content across their business. Blogs are produced by individuals and good for when an expert wants to share advice or knowledge; whereas wikis are more collaborative and used for helping a group work together to complete a project. SharePoint supports both.

2. Social Networking for Your Business

Though wikis and blogs are valuable tools for enhancing workplace collaboration, when it comes down to it, they aren’t what will ultimately drive an enterprise’ social engagement—it’s people. Social is mostly people-powered. So if you can get a few people in your office to see value in the enterprise social network, others will jump on board.

SharePoint allows you to add a wide range of features that your employees will love, including:

• Facebook-esque social experience, complete with Newsfeeds, “Like” buttons, messaging and sharing, mobile platforms, and more
• Social tagging
• Community sites to encourage group conversations
• Reputation points to encourage participation
• And much more…

Click on the link to learn more about going social with SharePoint 2013.

1. Security through the Data Connection Library

Lastly, one of the best kept secrets of SharePoint is how it can help clean up your data connections. Through SharePoint’s data connection library, a knowledgeable administrator can easily create a secure location for storing pre-built data connections—that way, each specified user type can gain access to data in your database for local analysis, without every user creating a unique connection to your data.

Are you sure your business is achieving the maximum ROI from SharePoint? Stop wondering and start getting answers by contacting the Microsoft Gold-Certified SharePoint professionals here at Innovative Architects today.