What is SharePoint? Definition and examples

What is SharePoint?

SharePoint is Microsoft's collaboration and content management platform. It's built to create intranets, organize information, centralize documents, share knowledge and support team collaboration. Because it's part of Microsoft 365, it connects naturally with Teams, OneDrive, Outlook, Viva, the Power Platform and Copilot.

In one sentence: SharePoint is the document and intranet backbone of Microsoft 365. For many organizations, it's where company information lives. How to explain it simply? Picture a central, secure space where your company's documents, news and sites live. That's SharePoint. In practice, it lets organizations build communication or team sites, publish and manage internal news, store, version and co-edit documents, automate workflows and approvals, create searchable knowledge bases, and deliver a complete, scalable intranet.

One useful clarification: a SharePoint "space" or "site" is an area dedicated to a team, a project or a department, with its own documents, pages and access rights. A company assembles several of them to form its intranet. And the difference with OneDrive? OneDrive is your personal space; SharePoint is the organization's shared space. Both run on the same technology, but one stores your files, the other the company's. We break down the nuances in our comparison of SharePoint Online vs OneDrive.

SharePoint isn't a niche tool either. Launched in 2001, it's one of Microsoft's longest-running enterprise products, and it quietly powers the file layer behind every Teams channel you use today.

What is SharePoint used for in a company?

SharePoint covers five main use cases. That's what makes it a Swiss Army knife of the digital workplace.

1. Internal communication (the intranet)

SharePoint is the base for running internal communication: news, strategic messages, HR content, videos, team pages, campaigns. Comms teams get a simple CMS, ready-to-use templates, targeted distribution and usage statistics. It's the most common starting point: turning SharePoint into a company intranet. And the stakes are real: according to Gallup's State of the Global Workplace (2024), highly engaged teams are about 23% more profitable.

2. Collaboration and project management

Team sites centralize all of a project's content: documents, schedule, tasks, versions. Paired with Teams, SharePoint becomes the single document base that eliminates duplicates and endless attachments. For department-wide announcements, communication sites play the same role on the publishing side.

3. Knowledge management

Knowledge bases, wikis, glossaries, lessons learned: SharePoint structures know-how. Microsoft Search, enriched by AI, makes it accessible and usable. There's a good reason to take this seriously: McKinsey, in its Social Economy report, estimated that employees spend 1.8 hours every day searching for information, nearly a full workday each week. To go further, see how to turn SharePoint into a real document management system.

4. Digital portal and access hub

The SharePoint intranet often becomes the entry point to the entire internal ecosystem: business apps, forms, HR resources, Power BI dashboards. One front door instead of twenty bookmarks. That matters in a workday Microsoft's Work Trend Index (2025) describes as interrupted every two minutes by a meeting, an email or a notification.

5. Workflows and automation

With Power Automate, SharePoint automates document approvals, notifications, validation cycles, reminders and archiving. Less friction, more rigor.

The building blocks of SharePoint

Six concepts cover most of what you'll touch in SharePoint. Master them and the platform stops feeling abstract.

• Sites. A SharePoint site is a container: a mini website for a team, a project or the whole company. Your intranet is a set of sites organized under a hub.
• Pages. Pages are built with a block editor, no code required. They carry your news, your department content, your homepage.
• Document libraries. A library is a folder with superpowers: metadata, version history, co-authoring and fine-grained permissions. When someone shares a file in Teams, it actually lands in a SharePoint library.
• Lists. Lists are structured tables: tasks, tickets, calendars, directories. They plug into Power Automate for automation and Power BI for reporting.
• Permissions. Access is controlled at site, library, folder or even file level, tied to Microsoft Entra ID. Powerful, and worth governing carefully.
• Search. Microsoft Search indexes files, pages, lists and people across Microsoft 365. On a large intranet, search is what separates a living platform from an archive.

SharePoint vs a file server: why migrate?

Many companies still use a shared file server. SharePoint breaks through its limits.

SharePoint Online vs SharePoint Server: what changed in 2026

One question used to come up in every SharePoint project: cloud or on-premises? In 2026, the answer is settled.

Microsoft ended extended support for SharePoint Server 2016 and 2019 on July 14, 2026. No more security patches, no more fixes. Every farm still running those versions is now exposed, and the modern capabilities (Copilot, agents, Viva) never reach on-premises anyway. For a new project, SharePoint Online is the obvious choice; if you're planning the move, start with our guide on SharePoint Online vs On-Premise.

Why use SharePoint as an intranet rather than an external solution?

Many vendors offer "non-Microsoft" intranets. But when you're already on Microsoft 365, SharePoint keeps decisive advantages. We compare them in depth in our article on why choose SharePoint for your intranet.

Native integration. SharePoint lives in the same environment as your daily tools. No integrations to code, no fragile syncs, no duplication. Everything works together from day one. A consistent experience. Your employees spend their day in Microsoft 365; a SharePoint intranet extends those habits naturally. An economical choice. SharePoint is included in your licenses, while an external solution adds a subscription and one more tool to an already dense stack. Unified governance. Documents, data, identities and rights stay inside the Microsoft ecosystem: Entra ID, compliance, archiving, DLP. An ambitious roadmap. Modernized pages, Viva Connections, Copilot for Microsoft 365: choosing SharePoint means aligning with one of the most active roadmaps on the market.

SharePoint adapts to every company

SharePoint is a "toolbox" platform. A small business deploys an intranet in a few pages. A multinational manages dozens of sites, navigation hierarchies, complex permissions and several languages. The same platform absorbs both realities, thanks to its modular pages, configurable web parts, libraries, lists, workflows and reusable templates.

Usage also varies by team. In practice:

• Communication teams run the intranet: they publish news, target audiences and measure engagement.
• HR teams centralize policies, onboarding kits and self-service resources, one source of truth instead of email chains.
• IT teams manage governance: permissions, site lifecycle, compliance and integration with the rest of the stack.
• Operations teams track processes with lists and automate approvals with Power Automate.

What SharePoint is NOT

Let's be clear to scope a project well: SharePoint is powerful, but it doesn't replace everything. SharePoint is not an ERP, an advanced CRM, a full BPM tool for complex processes, or a project manager like Jira or Asana with advanced planning. On the other hand, it excels at structuring information, organizing documents, building collaborative sites and automating routine processes. Well scoped, it's a foundation; poorly scoped, you ask it to do what it can't.

Being honest also means naming where SharePoint falls short out of the box. Default pages look like SharePoint, not like your company. Governance takes discipline: without clear rules, sites and permissions sprawl. And adoption never comes free; an intranet that looks like a 2015 team site gets ignored. None of this is fatal. All of it is fixable with the right layer on top.

How to get started with SharePoint

Approaching SharePoint for the first time? Four steps save most of the pain.

1. Check your licenses. SharePoint Online is included in Microsoft 365 business and enterprise plans. Sign in at office.com: if SharePoint appears in the app launcher, you already own it.
2. Pick one use case. Intranet, team collaboration or document management. Start narrow, prove value, then expand. Trying to build everything at once is the classic way to ship nothing.
3. Skip the blank page. Starting a site from zero takes longer than expected and rarely looks professional. Use templates, or follow our step-by-step guide to create a SharePoint intranet.
4. Plan governance and adoption from day one. Decide who creates sites, who owns content and how often it's refreshed. A clear editorial rhythm beats a perfect architecture nobody maintains.

SharePoint and AI: the foundation for Copilot and agents

Since 2025, SharePoint has taken on a new role: it's the content layer that feeds Microsoft 365 Copilot and SharePoint agents. Ask Copilot a question about a policy, a project or a client, and the answer comes from the documents and pages stored in SharePoint.

Which leads to a simple truth: an AI agent is only as good as the information it can access. Scattered, outdated or ungoverned content produces wrong answers. A structured SharePoint intranet, organized, current and governed, is exactly what agents need to respond accurately. So the order of operations matters: tidy the house before deploying agents. The intranet isn't competing with AI. It's AI's foundation. That's also the thinking behind Jint Genius, which lets employees query the company's structured knowledge in natural language.

Concrete examples: SharePoint enhanced by Jint

SharePoint lays the foundation. But used alone, it quickly shows its design and engagement limits. That's where Jint SharePoint comes in: a native extension that turns SharePoint into a modern, living, genuinely used intranet. Today, more than 300 organizations and over a million active users run their intranet on SharePoint enhanced by Jint SharePoint. A few project examples.

A complete communication intranet. News pages, rich editorial modules, rethought navigation, polished mobile experience, templates aligned with brand identity.

Ready-to-use team sites. "Project management," "communication," "community" templates, with libraries, lists and workflows already configured.

A Knowledge Hub. Organized knowledge, enriched search, dynamic FAQ, glossary, Viva Connections integration. And with Jint AI, your employees query that knowledge in natural language.

Overlays to accelerate. Simpler editing, clearer navigation, more complete templates, a more intuitive experience. Everything native SharePoint lacks.

Ready to see the result? Learn how to create a SharePoint intranet step by step, or book a demo.