SharePoint in Practice: SHARED CONTACT LIST

A SharePoint Contact List is a one of the best “quick wins” for your intranet. As a collaboration tool, SharePoint has the word “share” built right into the name. Why not make it easy to for everyone to reach each other? And if you have an email and phone number for a suggested vendor or consultant,  why not allow the rest of my team to access that information easily. Let’s make contact information centrally available, always current, and persistent regardless of staff turnover.

I am a strong believer in “I don’t need to know everything, I just need to know people who know stuff”. With that thinking in mind, let’s set our teams up for success and make sure people can easily contact each other. A high-priority feature of our communication and collaboration intranet is a well-designed and well-promoted Contact list.

Business Problem

How can we centrally manage all contact information, share it among all staff, and easily search, update, and access it through Outlook?

Practical Solution

The contact list is another out-of-the-box SharePoint feature that is sometimes underutilized. With a few customizations and some education, it can do a lot.

The most obvious use is the “one source of truth” place to keep names, phone numbers and email addresses for all the people you might need to contact. This could include internal (managers and colleagues) and external (vendors, travel agents, media contacts, etc.). And then there are the less obvious uses, like listing committee membership, emergency contacts, and even generation an organization chart.

I suggest you download the hand-out to follow along with the video and refer to the details.