A straightforward presentation of creating a document library in SharePoint Online and adding some documents to it | Blogging Thoughts on SharePoint and Office 365

The second demonstration included in a video tutorial titled Manage SharePoint Online Documents and Lists presents the steps required to “Create a Document Library and Upload Content”. The demonstration is led by Mr. Jamie McAllister, who leads most of the tutorial.

McAllister’s presentation begins as our SharePoint-Videos tutorials on SharePoint 2013 Document Libraries begin. McAllister explains adding a document library constitutes “adding an app”. So the steps he takes are consistent with adding any other type of out-of-the-box app to SharePoint Online.

He also points out how the app, once added, shows up in the Quick Launch, on the left hand side of the page, as a “Recent” item. But the demonstration does not include a presentation of how to add a newly added document library as a permanent destination on the Quick Launch (“Recent” items lose their freshness and will drop off of this section of the Quick Launch. So it’s best to edit the Navigation option under Site Settings and add the link, permanently, to the list of links).

Most of the remainder of this demonstration is targeted to end users likely to be called on to add documents to a document library.

For instance, McAllister clicks on the ellipses character appended to an item in the document list for his new document library, and explains the features accessible directly from the feature dialog, as well as the additional features accessible from a second ellipses character nested within it.

McAllister’s colleague on the presentation, Rob Latino (who is a Program Manager) prompts McAllister to present the ribbon to his audience, and to include an explanation of why items my appear greyed out in the ribbon.

The drag and drop capabilities of using Windows Explorer is also presented as a method of moving a set of documents into a document library. McAllister includes a caveat about the need to go back and add properties for items uploaded into document libraries in this manner.

A novel feature of the tutorial is a presentation of “Folder Based Collaboration”. Usually folders are presented as an impediment to collaboration efforts. So I found this section to be of interest. McAllister uses this approach to begin to introduce the concept of metadata.