Your SharePoint Trainer: J. H. Irwin
Author | Content Creator | Technology Strategist
The Augmented Life | Learn SharePoint Online | Module 1 | Updated August 2026
Somewhere in your organization there is a folder called Final. Inside it is a file called Budget_FINAL_v3_revised.xlsx, and next to that is Budget_FINAL_v3_revised_USE_THIS_ONE.xlsx. Nobody is entirely sure which one is current. The person who would know is in a meeting. Three people have copies on their desktops, each slightly different, and next Tuesday someone will paste the wrong numbers into a presentation and spend an afternoon figuring out why they do not add up.
If any of that sounds familiar, this section of the series is for you. I have spent a good part of my career watching capable, intelligent people build elaborate systems out of spreadsheets, email threads, and shared folders because those were the only tools anyone ever handed them. The systems work, mostly, right up until they don’t. And when they fail, it is never because the people were careless. It is because the tools were never designed to carry that much weight.
SharePoint Online was designed for it. That is the whole point of this section: to show you that the tool most people think of as “the place where files go” is actually the foundation of a connected workplace, one where documents, structured data, conversations, apps, automation, and reporting all live in the same house and know about each other. And, as with everything in this series, you will not need a development background to make use of it. If you can build a spreadsheet, you already have most of the instincts you need.
The Tool Everyone Uses and Nobody Notices
Here is something that surprises a lot of people: if your organization uses Microsoft Teams, you are already using SharePoint every day. Every file you upload to a Teams channel is stored in a SharePoint document library. Files uploaded to one-to-one or group chats are stored in the sender’s OneDrive, and sharing a link does not move the original file. Every team you belong to has a SharePoint site quietly standing behind it. Teams is the front door; SharePoint is the house. Most people only ever see the door.
That is by design, and it is also why SharePoint has such a strange reputation. It is simultaneously one of the most widely used business tools on the planet and one of the least understood. People form their opinion of it from a clunky intranet they were forced to use a decade ago, or from a colleague’s folder structure that went seven levels deep for no discernible reason. Neither of those is SharePoint’s fault, exactly, but SharePoint took the blame.
So let me offer a cleaner mental model. SharePoint Online is a service, included in many Microsoft 365 business and enterprise plans, that gives you sites. A site is a workspace for a group of people with a shared purpose: a department, a project, a committee, an entire company. Inside a site, you can keep three kinds of things. You can keep documents, organized in libraries that are considerably smarter than folders. You can keep structured data, organized in lists that look like spreadsheets but behave like databases. And you can keep pages, which are simply web pages you build without writing code, used for news, announcements, and pulling everything else together into something people actually want to look at.
That is the basic model: sites containing documents, data, and pages. Everything else in this section is about what happens when you connect those things to the rest of Microsoft 365.
Documents, Done Properly
Let me start with the part everyone expects, because even here SharePoint is doing more than most people realize. A document library looks like a folder, and you can use it like one. But underneath, it keeps a version history of every file automatically. When someone overwrites the budget with the wrong numbers, you open the version history, see who changed what and when, and restore the previous version with one click. The FINAL_v3_revised_USE_THIS_ONE problem simply stops existing, because there is only ever one file, and the file itself remembers its own past.
Libraries also support co-authoring, which means several people can have the same Word document, Excel workbook, or PowerPoint deck open at once, each seeing the others’ cursors and edits in real time. No more emailing attachments back and forth and merging changes by hand. If you have used this in Teams, you have used SharePoint’s co-authoring; it is the same engine.
The feature that most changes how people find and manage documents, though, is metadata. In a folder, the only thing you know about a file is its name and where it sits. In a library, you can add columns, exactly the way you would add columns to a spreadsheet, and those columns describe the file. A contracts library might have columns for Client, Contract Type, Expiration Date, and Status. Now you are no longer digging through folders named by whoever set them up. You are filtering: show me every active contract expiring in the next ninety days. You can save that filter as a public view and, with the necessary permissions, make it the library’s default view so the whole team sees it first. Folders make you remember where things are. Metadata lets you ask for them.
Permissions round it out. You can control who sees a site, a library, a folder, or a single document, and, when external sharing is enabled by your organization, you can share a file with someone outside the organization without giving them access to anything else. It is the difference between a shared drive where everyone can see everything and a workspace where people see what they need.
Lists: Where the Spreadsheet Goes to Retire
This is the part of SharePoint I most want you to understand, because it is where the “spreadsheet doing a job it was never meant to do” finally gets to rest. A SharePoint list is a table of rows and columns, and if you squint, it looks like a spreadsheet. The difference is in what the columns know. In a spreadsheet, every cell will accept anything. Someone types “next Tuesday” into a date column, someone else types “Done” where everyone else typed “Complete,” and six months later the data is unreliable and nobody trusts the totals. In a list, each column has a type.
A Date column only accepts dates and gives you a calendar picker. A Choice column can offer a fixed set of options with fill-in choices disabled, so “Done” and “Complete” cannot both exist. A Person column looks up real people from your organization’s directory, which means you can assign a request to a colleague and use that identity in notifications and workflows. There are columns for numbers with validation, currency, yes/no toggles, hyperlinks, images, and lookups into other lists.
Because the data is clean, everything built on top of it works. You can create multiple views of the same list: a calendar view of due dates, a board view grouped by status that looks and behaves like a Kanban board, a filtered view showing only what is assigned to you. Every row gets its own form for adding and editing, generated automatically. Version history is enabled automatically on newly created Microsoft 365 lists, so you can see who updated an item and restore an earlier version. Existing lists may differ if they predate that change or an administrator has disabled versioning. Several people can work in the list simultaneously without passing separate copies back and forth, which is the exact thing spreadsheets are worst at.
Microsoft also surfaces lists through an app called Microsoft Lists, available on the web, in Teams, and through a mobile web browser, with ready-made templates for things like issue tracking, asset management, onboarding checklists, and event itineraries. Under the hood, those are SharePoint lists. The app is simply a friendlier front door to the same thing. Microsoft retired the dedicated iOS and Android Lists apps in November 2025, but the mobile web experience remains supported.
Now the honest part, because this series does not do hype. A SharePoint list is not a full relational database. A list can contain up to 30 million items, and the 5,000-item List View Threshold is not a limit on the list itself. It limits resource-intensive queries that try to process more than 5,000 items at once, which is why indexed columns and filtered views become essential as a list grows. SharePoint is excellent at the kind of data most teams actually have: requests, assets, projects, contacts, checklists, inventories. It is the wrong tool for something with millions of transactions or dozens of deeply interrelated tables. When you get there, a tool such as Dataverse or a proper relational database is usually the better fit. Most teams never get there, and for most of the spreadsheets in your organization, a list is exactly the right size.
Workspaces People Actually Use
Sites are generally created from one of two main templates, and knowing which is which saves a lot of confusion. A team site is a workspace for a group that works together. It is usually restricted to members, and everyone in the group can contribute. This is where the documents and lists for that team live. When you create a team in Microsoft Teams, you get a team site automatically. When you create a Microsoft 365 group-connected team site directly in SharePoint, you can add Microsoft Teams to it later. They are two views of the same workspace.
A communication site is for broadcasting to many people. Think of a company intranet, an HR portal, or a project showcase. A small number of people publish; everyone else reads. These sites are built from pages, which you assemble from web parts: blocks for text, images, news, embedded documents, lists, calendars, videos, and much more. You drag them into place, and the result is a proper website that works on phones and laptops alike, without a line of code. News posts are pages with a special flag that makes them roll up across sites and appear in people’s SharePoint feeds. Depending on how the organization is configured, that news can also surface in Microsoft Teams and Viva Connections, so an announcement published on the HR site shows up where employees actually spend their day.
Hub sites connect related sites together with shared navigation, branding, and search, so a department with six project sites can present them as one coherent place instead of six islands. Search, incidentally, is one of SharePoint’s quietest strengths. It indexes the contents of documents, not just their names, and it respects permissions, so you find what you are allowed to find.
All of this is the “collaborative workspace” part of the promise. But the reason SharePoint deserves a whole section of this series, rather than one article, is what happens when you connect it to the four tools sitting right next to it.
SharePoint and Microsoft Teams
I have already given away the central fact: Teams and SharePoint are two faces of the same workspace. It is worth spelling out why that matters in practice. Files available in a Teams channel’s Shared tab are stored in SharePoint. For a standard channel, files are stored in a folder in the team’s default document library. Private and shared channels use separate SharePoint sites so their membership and permissions remain isolated.
Everything I described above about version history, co-authoring, metadata, and views is available to those files; you simply select “Open in SharePoint” to get the full experience. Many teams work in Teams for years without realizing that the library behind their channel can have columns, views, and approval workflows attached to it.
The connection runs in the other direction, too. A Team Requests tracker can be built as a SharePoint list and added as a tab within a Teams channel, so people can log a request, discuss it, and update its status without ever leaving Teams. SharePoint libraries, pages, and news can also be brought into Teams, depending on how the organization has configured the experience. The practical upshot is that you rarely have to convince anyone to “go to SharePoint.” You bring SharePoint to where they already are.
SharePoint and Power Apps
Power Apps can use a SharePoint list as its data source, making SharePoint an accessible place to begin in many organizations. You can start with the form already attached to the list and build outward from there.
The simplest integration takes about thirty seconds. A standard SharePoint list has an automatically generated form for adding and editing items, and it is perfectly serviceable. But you can open that form in Power Apps and customize it: rearrange fields, hide the ones a particular audience does not need, add conditional logic so that choosing “Hardware” as a request type reveals a field for the asset tag, and add validation that explains itself in plain language. The customized form replaces the default one, right there in the list, and nobody using it needs to know Power Apps was involved.
The fuller integration is a standalone canvas app connected to one or more SharePoint lists. This is how you turn a list into a mobile app for people who work away from a desk: field technicians logging inspections, event staff checking in attendees, a warehouse team recording stock counts with photos attached. The app reads from and writes to the same list your office colleagues see in a browser, so there is one source of truth no matter which screen someone is holding.
There are two cautions to remember as these apps grow. Formulas working with larger lists must use operations that Power Apps can delegate to SharePoint, or an app can return incomplete results. Sharing the app also does not automatically give someone access to its SharePoint data, so both the app and the underlying list must be shared with the right people.
Here is the part that matters for anyone watching costs. The SharePoint connector is a standard connector. Qualifying Microsoft 365 plans include limited Power Apps rights, so solutions that use only SharePoint and other standard connectors may not require a separate Power Apps Premium license. Premium or custom connectors, an on-premises data gateway, and other premium capabilities require additional licensing. Dataverse-based production apps generally require Power Apps Premium, pay-as-you-go, or qualifying Dynamics 365 rights, with Dynamics 365 use rights limited to apps operating within the context of the licensed Dynamics application. There is also an important exception for Managed Environments, where every active Power Apps user needs a qualifying standalone license, pay-as-you-go plan, or capacity-based entitlement even when the app uses only standard connectors. For a great many everyday business solutions outside that exception, SharePoint is not just adequate; it can be the lower-cost path.
SharePoint and Power Automate
Every Power Automate flow follows the same basic shape: when this happens, do these things. SharePoint is one of the richest sources of “this happens” anywhere in Microsoft 365.
A flow can trigger when an item is added to a list, when one is modified, when a file is uploaded to a library, when a file’s properties change, or on a schedule that checks a list for anything meeting a condition. From there, the actions are whatever you need. When a new request is logged, notify the right person in Teams and set a due date. When a request has sat in “Pending” for three business days, send a gentle reminder. When a status changes to “Complete,” email the requester and archive the item. When a contract in the library reaches sixty days before expiration, alert the account owner.
Approvals deserve their own mention, because this is the workflow every organization has and almost none have automated well. A document is uploaded to a library. A flow sends an approval request to a manager, who receives it in Teams or Outlook, reads the summary, and taps Approve or Reject without opening anything else. The flow records the decision, updates a Status column on the document, and notifies the author. That whole process, which used to live in a chain of forwarded emails and a spreadsheet someone maintained by hand, becomes something that runs itself and leaves a recorded history of the decision behind.
You do not even need to start in Power Automate. Lists and libraries offer built-in rules and an “Automate” menu with options such as reminders based on a date column, which you can configure in a few clicks. As with Power Apps, SharePoint is a standard connector. Qualifying Microsoft 365 plans include limited Power Automate rights for cloud flows that use standard connectors, while premium or custom connectors, an on-premises data gateway, and other premium capabilities require additional licensing. In a Managed Environment, every user who runs a cloud flow also needs a qualifying standalone license, pay-as-you-go plan, or capacity-based entitlement.
SharePoint and Power BI
The last connection closes the loop. Once your requests, assets, or projects live in a clean list instead of a messy spreadsheet, that list becomes reliable data, and reliable data is what Power BI wants.
Power BI connects directly to SharePoint as a data source. The SharePoint Online List connector brings in list data, while the SharePoint Folder connector works with files stored in document libraries. From a list, you can build the reports that spreadsheets never quite managed: requests by category over time, average days to completion by assignee, open items by priority, and a trend line that shows whether the team is keeping up or falling behind. You can also choose Export > Export to Power BI from a SharePoint list to create a semantic model in the Power BI service, or connect through Power BI Desktop when you need more control over transformation and modeling.
The reports go back into SharePoint, too. A Power BI web part lets you embed an interactive report or individual visual on a modern SharePoint page. Put it at the top of the team site, and the report becomes the first thing people see when they open the workspace, with data drawn from the same list at the semantic model’s latest refresh. Viewers still need permission to both the SharePoint page and the Power BI report. Data goes in through a list or an app, gets processed by a flow, and comes back out as a picture on a page. Nobody manually exported a spreadsheet or passed a file around.
One caveat, in keeping with the rest of this series: Power BI Desktop is free for authoring. To create content in a workspace other than My Workspace, securely share it, or embed it in SharePoint Online, the creator needs Power BI Pro or Premium Per User. Pro viewers can consume content in a shared Pro workspace, but a Premium Per User workspace requires Premium Per User for every viewer. Users with a Fabric Free license can view content on qualifying capacity, such as Microsoft Fabric F64 or larger, when they have Viewer access. Capacities below F64 do not remove the Pro or Premium Per User requirement. The building can begin for free; secure sharing has a cost, and it is worth knowing before you promise a report to your leadership team.
What It Looks Like When It All Connects
Let me put the pieces together with the scenario we will develop throughout this series: the Team Requests tracker. It will begin as a SharePoint list with columns for Title, Requester, Category, Priority, Assigned To, Status, and Due Date. The list will live on the team’s SharePoint site and appear as a tab in the corresponding Teams channel. We will customize the default form in Power Apps so that it asks only the questions that matter for each category. Field staff will be able to use a small canvas app on their phones to log requests from wherever they are, with those requests landing in the same list.
A Power Automate flow will watch the list. When a new request arrives, it will post a message in the channel and notify whoever is assigned. If a request is marked Urgent, it will start an approval with the team lead. If anything sits untouched for three days, it will send a reminder. When a request is completed, it will thank the requester and file the item away.
On the site’s home page, we will place a Power BI report showing the month’s volume, the backlog by priority, and how long requests are taking. The manager will be able to review it during the Monday meeting instead of asking someone to “pull the numbers.”
Every part of that can be built by people who do not write code, using tools many organizations already have available, on a foundation that keeps the history, enforces the rules, and scales as the team grows. That is what “a connected, scalable digital workplace” actually means, once you strip away the language that usually surrounds it. It is a list, a site, an app, a flow, and a report, all pointing at the same truth.
What It Honestly Costs
SharePoint Online is included in many Microsoft 365 business and enterprise plans, including Business Basic, Business Standard, Business Premium, and E3 and E5 suites, which means many organizations reading this already have access to it. As of August 2026, Microsoft no longer sells standalone SharePoint Online Plan 1 or Plan 2 to new customers. Those plans entered a phased retirement after May 31, 2026, and Microsoft 365 suites are now the primary path for new customers. Existing standalone contracts follow Microsoft’s published transition schedule.
SharePoint tenant storage is generally pooled at 1 TB plus 10 GB for each eligible license purchased, and additional storage can be purchased when needed. The integrations covered in this article use the standard SharePoint connector for Power Apps and Power Automate, but the exact rights depend on your Microsoft 365 plan, whether the solution introduces premium capabilities or connectors, and whether it runs in a Managed Environment. Power BI Desktop is free, while publishing, securely sharing, and embedding reports generally require paid licenses or qualifying capacity.
These licensing details are current as of August 2026, and I will update this module when Microsoft changes them, which Microsoft does. Before making a purchasing decision, confirm the terms on Microsoft’s current SharePoint plan, Power Platform licensing, and Power BI licensing pages.
Where SharePoint Is Not the Answer
I would be doing you a disservice if I left you thinking SharePoint is the right home for everything. It is the wrong choice for very large or highly relational datasets, where Dataverse or a proper database will serve you better. It is not designed as a customer-facing product; the audience for a SharePoint site is your organization and the guests you invite, not the general public. And it rewards a little planning. A site with no structure, no metadata, and folders nested nine deep is just a shared drive with a nicer logo. The next modules in this section will show you how to avoid that, because the difference between a SharePoint site people love and one they avoid is almost always decided in the first hour of setting it up.
Where We Go From Here
The reason I keep returning to that spreadsheet is not that spreadsheets are bad. It is that they were asked to do something they were never built for, and the people asking had no other option. That is no longer true. SharePoint Online gives ordinary teams a way to keep their documents honest, their data clean, their conversations connected, and their routines automated, using core SharePoint, Power Apps, and Power Automate capabilities that many organizations already license through Microsoft 365. Power BI sharing, Dataverse, premium connectors, and Managed Environments may add licensing costs, depending on how the solution is built and governed.
In the next module, we will create a site from scratch, build the Team Requests list properly, and set up the views and forms that make it feel less like a database and more like a place your team wants to work. Bring the spreadsheet. We are going to retire it kindly.
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