We have listed some common business needs that can be solved by using a SharePoint Services 3.0 site. Maybe you’ll find some things here that you’ve been trying to find a solution for within your own organization.

I’d like to share with you the top 20 ways SharePoint can solve your common business needs. And I want to emphasize that these 20 are just a few of the many ways to use SharePoint Services. Once you start using it, you will begin to realize the many other valuable benefits that the everyday user can easily achieve.

Shall we start? Let’s see if you can find some productivity solutions here that you’ve been trying to find for your own organization.

With SharePoint you can:

1. Store all your emails on a secure, centralized website for easy archiving.

2. Maintain a central task location to assign tasks to team members. These tasks will automatically appear on your team’s Outlook 2007 to-do list. Those tasks will also be linked to your projects so you can easily find out which tasks are still open for each project.

3. Organize large events and store related documents, homework assignments, and generally post everything related to events. It will also integrate with Outlook for more efficiency.

4. Collaborate with team members on all documents and keep track of who did what. Older versions can be easily restored in case someone made too many mistakes. Projects can also be linked to related documents.

5. When team members are assigned tasks, they will be automatically notified that they have just been assigned a new task. Alerts are sent when there have been updates to tasks.

6. Use SharePoint as a robust yet simple project management solution for your organization or team.

7. Use the efficient input/output management function to classify your documents.

8. Implement a help ticket resolution for your organization or team without breaking the bank.

9. Start a private company blog to communicate and share ideas with your team that can only be seen by those you give them access to.

10. Get more control over your business documents with the content approval feature.

11. Offer training materials to your teams, customers, and/or partners on a password-protected website that can be accessed from anywhere in the world.

12. Offer a secure and private place to share documents and other information with clients and/or partners.

13. Access and work with your data using your web-enabled mobile phone for added convenience while traveling or out of the office at client meetings.

14. Create better team communication and brainstorming sessions where everyone can participate when their schedules allow.

15. Centralize where company and team project announcements are posted. Everyone will receive a notification by email or mobile phone automatically, anywhere in the world.

16. Take project tasks, team discussions, company contacts, centralized calendars, team blogs, and archives offline. and then sync the updated information later.

17. Create “central” documents (and sync), so all team members, clients and/or partners can work on the same document and make changes. Updates are accessible with a click of a button. Then everyone can sync to the “central” document and merge all edits into that one document.

18. Easily add custom fields to any area and capture the information most important to your business, all without the help of a web designer or IT person.

19. Extract and update the Microsoft Access 2007 database from a local desktop and synchronize the information in a central location that can be accessed from anywhere and at any time.

20. Create a project dashboard where on one page you can view and filter common project items such as: project details, project documents, project tasks, project issues, project schedule, project milestones, project lessons learned , project risks, project change requests and more.

On top of it all, you won’t spend a fortune to meet these communication, collaboration, and organization needs.

Don’t get me started on the integration features between SharePoint Services 3.0 and Microsoft Office 2007 products, especially Outlook 2007. That’s great! Some of the above ideas require Office 2007.

Keep in mind that a little training goes a long way in increasing the productivity of the products you use in your business. I highly recommend taking the time to learn this efficient and effective tool and watch your productivity, along with your profits, skyrocket!