Microsoft regularly release updates to enhance SharePoint Online capabilities to meet the evolving needs of modern users. At its core, SharePoint Online serves as a centralized hub for storing and managing various types of contents from documents to presentations and beyond. Its versatility empowers users to effortlessly create, edit, and share files while maintaining control over access through robust permissions and versioning capabilities. Moreover, SharePoint Online fosters seamless collaboration through features like team and communication sites, facilitating teamwork, project management, and information sharing among team members.

Despite all the amazing capabilities, SharePoint has limitations when it comes to automating complex business processes. While SharePoint’s out-of-the-box functionalities cover the primary business needs of businesses, it can be challenging to utilize the platform to the fullest to meet an organization’s specific process automation needs. That’s where AgreeYa QuickApps comes in.

Overcome SharePoint Limitations with QuickApps

QuickApps is an innovative ‘No-code’ solution with pre-built templates and 21 powerful web apps that help users rapidly implement SharePoint process automation. It enables users to quickly and easily create forms, workflows, dashboards, and reports that meet specific business needs without writing a single line of code. It offers a range of features, including:

• Forms and Templates: QuickApps provides a range of pre-built forms that can be customized to meet specific SharePoint process automation requirements. With QuickApps, users can create forms for feedback, surveys, and more. Users can also use templates to create custom sites, lists, and libraries.
• Dashboards and Reports: QuickApps provides various tools to create custom dashboards and reports that allow users to analyze data and gain insights into the business. With QuickApps, users can create interactive charts, graphs, and tables to visualize data and identify trends quickly.
• Custom Web Parts: QuickApps provides a range of custom web parts that can be used to add functionality and customize the SharePoint environment. With QuickApps, users can add custom navigation menus, search boxes, calendars, and more.

By integrating QuickApps with the SharePoint Online environment, users can increase productivity and streamline business processes by automating tasks and workflows, reducing manual data entry, and improving data accuracy.

Benefits of leveraging QuickApps for Process Automation

QuickApps can transform the SharePoint Online experience with its innovative features. It enables organizations to push the boundaries of SharePoint and maximize the potential of a robust platform without compromising security and compliance. Some of the most prevalent advantages of QuickApps include:

• Empower Business Users: Allows business users to automate new processes or modify existing ones on SharePoint without relying on IT or SharePoint development resources. Business users (non-programmers) can quickly build or customize complex business applications on SharePoint Online or on-premises up to 80% faster using simple point-and-click configuration instead of writing long lines of code.
• Improve Deliveries: Enables organizations to shorten the process automation creation cycle using ready-to-use templates. Templates can be utilized to rapidly create applications such as new employee onboarding, sales reporting, helpdesk, project management, and CRM.
• Short Learning Curve: Empowers business users (non-programmers) to build SharePoint solutions and automate processes quickly by leveraging easy-to-use web apps, pre-built templates, and built-in video tutorials.
• Better Build: Helps extend native capabilities of SharePoint applications by delivering advanced functionalities. As an example, users can include tabular forms to save screen space, implement parent-child relationships to ensure reliable data entry and hide/show when logic governs what data users can see.

Use Cases of SharePoint Process Automation with QuickApps

SharePoint workflow automation is being used extensively across various departments and processes. Below we have enlisted some standard business processes that organizations can automate on SharePoint with QuickApps.

• Employee Onboarding: The onboarding process is a critical part of an employee’s journey and plays a significant role in job satisfaction and retention. However, the manual process can be cumbersome and time-consuming, often leading to delays and errors. QuickApps’s rich assortment of web apps and point-and-click configuration enable business users to automate employee onboarding processes on SharePoint quickly. The end-to-end automation process starts with a new employee filling out an onboarding form with personal details, family details, and mandatory documents. Once the HR team approves, the onboarding process starts, and the new employee is provided with all the necessary information, including their training schedule. The HR dashboard offers a quick reference to the count of new joiners, training status, etc.
• Roster Management System: Managing work schedules is critical for organizations with shift workers, and manually managing rosters can be daunting. QuickApps can be leveraged to build a powerful roster management system on SharePoint, reducing costs and maximizing the platform’s ROI. The system includes roster creation, review, approval, dashboard, present & absent report, and defaulters report. This enables managers, admins, and HR to manage shifts and people more efficiently, providing all the necessary insights to ensure seamless operations.
• IT Ticketing System: IT support ticketing systems are essential for organizations to ensure their operations run smoothly. A SharePoint-based ticketing system provides several benefits, including advanced search, familiarity with the use, easy customization, automated workflow, and maximization of SharePoint ROI. Building a ticketing system on SharePoint with QuickApps is a cost-effective solution as it provides seamless integration with existing systems. With QuickApps, enterprises can implement several features to automate the ticketing system end-to-end, such as approvals, delegations, notifications, email alerts, and escalations of requests.

Maximize SharePoint Online Investments with QuickApps

QuickApps is a powerful tool helping organizations enhance their SharePoint Online experience by adding more functionality and customization options. By integrating QuickApps into the SharePoint environment, users can increase productivity, streamline business processes, improve data accuracy, and create custom solutions that meet the organization’s specific needs.

The post Enhance SharePoint Online Experience with QuickApps appeared first on AgreeYa Solutions.

Most organizations are looking to reduce their supply chain costs in the present scenario. Organizations with large operations create thousands of purchase orders annually. Each of these purchase orders leads to extra expenses for the organization. With automation, organizations can cut significant PO processing expenses, which can be re-routed to other business growth areas. Before moving any further into this topic, let us take deep dive into the Purchase Order Process.

What is Purchase Order Process?

A Purchase Order (PO) is an official business document sent by an organization to its external supplier/s (vendor/s) confirming the intention to buy certain goods or services. The document contains all information about the purchase. After the supplier approves the purchase order, it becomes a legal document binding the organization and the supplier. PO process is an essential part of the procurement lifecycle. The process commences whenever a department/individual raises a request for material, and the approver approves the order. The vital elements in the Purchase Order Process workflow are mentioned below:

At first glance, the purchase order process might seem simple and linear. However, organizations can add many steps into the mix, based on the scale of operations. When done manually, the process can be hard to manage, cause unnecessary delays, be prone to errors, and require substantial manual efforts. Therefore, automating the PO process is imperative for organizations to run successful operations.

Manual vs. Automated Purchase Orders Processing

A manual Purchase Order Process involves the conventional ways of using emails and spreadsheets, which is a long, time-consuming, and error-prone process. Some of the drawbacks of manual purchase order processing are:

• Slow order processing, as all the data is entered and validated manually.
• Manual verification of all the records takes a longer time.
• Human intervention at different stages of processing makes the process error-prone.
• Employee dependency at the workplace.

On the contrary, automating the PO process can help cut down on delays in procurement and the costs associated with it. Some of its discernable benefits are as follows:

• The system can indicate whenever the inventory reaches a lower level and automatically generate procurement requests.
• Reduced dependency on employees and chances of manual errors.
• Enhanced efficiency in PO management, with no lost or delayed Pos.
• The entire process becomes faster and more efficient.
• Prevents fraud during the Purchase Order Processing, as the digital system cross-verifies invoices and requests against the original purchase orders generated.

Automating the Purchase Order process ensures transparency in the system and data accuracy. Thus, it helps in building better relationships between buyers and vendors.

Processes that can be Automated

The purchase order process includes many steps leading up to each other. Some of the steps can be automated, while others can’t. Typical stages of a purchase order process flow that organizations can automate include:

• Purchase Orders Creation based on existing inventories
• Inviting Quotations from multiple vendors
• Identifying the most suitable vendors
• Sending the finalized POs for approval
• Raising an invoice for payment processing after the order is received
• Refiling the inventories in the system
• Closure of the purchase order process

Why Automate Purchase Order Processing on SharePoint Online?

An automated Purchase Order Processing System delivers various benefits to organizations, including faster PO processing, enhanced supplier relationships, cost savings, and liberating internal staff from mundane tasks. As a very flexible platform, SharePoint enables organizations to build automated systems to streamline and enhance their business processes. SharePoint allows seamless integration with existing line of business (LOB) applications. Consequently, organizations already leveraging SharePoint as their Intranet, Document, and Content Management solution can build an automated SharePoint-based Purchase Order Processing System to deliver a familiar system for users and maximize technology ROI. Following such a route, organizations can avoid the high costs associated with purchasing a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) product. Other benefits of automating purchase order processing on SharePoint online include:

• Data Repository: Most of the data required to build a robust Purchase Order Processing System might already be available in SharePoint. Data from other systems can be easily integrated with the platform. Additionally, users can submit their orders through various channels (phone, email, web, SharePoint, and Microsoft 365), which can further be assigned to the appropriate departments for fulfillment.
• Customization: SharePoint is a highly customizable platform. Organizations leveraging SharePoint can quickly build a purchase order system and customize it according to their business requirements. Users can create purchase request forms, assign administrative roles, set up multi-level approval flow, and classify purchase orders based on departments, vendors, location, type, cost, etc.
• Seamless Communication: With many features and capabilities, SharePoint ensures seamless communication and collaboration among different departments. Whenever a user raises a purchase request through the SharePoint-based Purchase Order Processing System, employees of the concerned department get notified. Similarly, the order requestee gets notified whenever the order is ready.
• Interactive Dashboard: SharePoint dashboards enable organizations to view all pertinent data related to the PO process. Decision-makers can view the history of purchase requests per department, the percentage of approvals and denials, and track the status of orders. SharePoint dashboards make it simpler to view and work with data from several sources by showcasing the data in a visually appealing format that is easy to interpret.
• Integration with External Systems: SharePoint can be easily integrated with third-party systems and LOB applications used by different departments such as admin, finance, accounts, and IT infrastructure.

Build Purchase Order Processing System on SharePoint with QuickApps?

QuickApps is an innovative ‘No-code’ solution with a set of pre-built templates and 21 powerful web apps that help business users to rapidly automate business processes on SharePoint and Microsoft 365. Leveraging QuickApps, organizations can seamlessly build a robust automated Purchase Order Processing System on SharePoint without any coding and save up to 80% of development time. Business users can leverage the below web parts to create a Purchase Order Processing System:

• qListView: Combines data from multiple lists over multiple sites and site collections.
• qChartView: Creates 3D graphs and charts with data from databases.
• qCalendarView: Organizes all schedules into one view, including data from non-SharePoint calendar lists.
• qSIChartView: Summarizes data with interactive 3-D charts.
• qMediaView: Arranges pictures, videos, and audio files from different sites, site collections, and web applications into a centralized list, slide show, or gallery.
• qSIListForm: Enables users to create, read, and edit external data in a form.
• qDiscussionView: Shows the topic and responses of multiple discussion lists in a single tree view and previews selected items in a preview panel.
• qDynamicLayout: Displays multiple web apps on a page efficiently using tabs to maximize screen real estate.

Talk to your experts today to get started with Purchase Order Processing System development on SharePoint. Procurement professionals can quickly process purchase orders, monitor transactions, minimize financial risk, and control cash flow by automating the PO process.

The post Automate Purchase Order Processing on SharePoint appeared first on AgreeYa Solutions.

What Is a Sales Dashboard?

A sales dashboard is a visual representation of data that shows how an organization’s sales department is performing, highlighting the areas that need attention, and showing scope for improvement. It provides analytical insight that can help stakeholders and managers to control sales KPIs and monitor them in one central place while assisting the teams in reaching sales goals through detailed analyses of sales performance, cycle lengths, and sales funnels. Leveraging sales dashboards, organizations can understand the current health of their business and strategize to future-proof their business and increase revenue.

Why should organizations leverage SharePoint to create a Sales Dashboard?

A SharePoint-based Sales Dashboard delivers organizations with detailed sales reports, scorecards, and widgets that are accessible from the web. A SharePoint-based sales dashboard can help sales professionals visualize the voluminous data they have and get analytical insights that can help them make better sales strategies and improve decision-making. Some qualitative business benefits of such dashboards are:

1: Accessibility of data at a centralized location

Unstructured data spread across different platforms is of no use to any department. SharePoint-based sales dashboards ensure that all the data is aggregated from different sites and site collections and presented at a centralized location.

2: Improved decision making

Having accurate and up-to-date sales data in one place enables sales professionals to make informed decisions easily. Leveraging an impactful sales dashboard, sales managers can analyze how their teams are performing in different demographics, check out the sales, identify the areas lacking, predict market demands, and improve decision-making.

3: Accurate and faster reporting

Generating sales reports manually can be time-consuming and cumbersome, especially when employees do not have all the data in one place. By leveraging SharePoint-based sales dashboards, sales professionals can generate reports faster. Employees get notified in real-time as new data is available, ensuring the reports generated are up to date.

4: Reduces human errors

With so many tasks at hand, humans are bound to make mistakes sometimes. But with a sales dashboard, sales professionals have real-time visibility into all processes and the data that drives them. This means fewer human errors, less time spent trying to put together the right information, and more time for solving problems that matter.

5: Seamless Customization

One advantage of the SharePoint-based sales dashboard is that it can be customized and tailored according to organizations’ needs. Leveraging No-code SharePoint solutions, organizations can aggregate, filter, and display data on the dashboard based on their specific requirements at any point in time.

6: Maximization of Technology Investment

Most organizations continue to leverage SharePoint solely for Content management and Intranet. As a flexible platform, SharePoint delivers organizations with many options. With a SharePoint-based sales dashboard, organizations can attain more than utilize SharePoint for Intranet and collaboration. It allows them a chance to automate a business-critical process without the need for purchasing a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) product.

Sales Dashboard creation made easy with QuickApps

QuickApps is part of AgreeYa’s award-winning suite of solutions that simplify customization and process automation on SharePoint. It is an innovative ‘No-code’ solution with a set of pre-built templates and 21 powerful web apps that help sales professionals aggregate data from multiple sources and analyze and visualize the data in the form of compelling lists, tables, charts, and more. Leveraging QuickApps, sales professionals can seamlessly build sales dashboards on SharePoint, visualize data, and generate reports rapidly, enabling improved decision-making. Some of its popular web apps are:

• qListView: Combines data from multiple lists over multiple sites and site collections
• qChartView: Creates 3D graphs and charts with data from databases.
• qCalendarView: Organizes all your schedules into one view, including data from non-SharePoint calendar lists.
• qSIChartView: Compellingly summarize your data with our interactive 3-D charts.
• qMediaView: Organize pictures, videos, and audio files from different sites, site collections, and web applications into a centralized list, slide show, or gallery
• qSIListForm: Create, read, and edit external data in a form.

Take QuickApps 30-day free trial to empower your sales team, helping them streamline sales reporting and realize the true value of data.

The post Build a Dynamic Sales Dashboard on SharePoint with QuickApps appeared first on AgreeYa Solutions.

– HubSpot

Over the past few years, there has been a tremendous transition in the way organizations operate. Businesses are embracing new technologies to meet the new workplace norms and adjust to the market realities in the digital world. Tedious manual processes are being automated at an incredible speed across functions. One such area which requires automation is the IT ticketing system. Automation can help stakeholders save time and allows them to focus on other business-critical aspects.

What is IT Support Ticketing System?

An IT support ticketing system allows organizations to provide service to customers and internal employees by assigning a ticket to every inquiry. Helpdesk professionals can use it to track the inquiry to its resolution whether you are the customer, partner, service agent and manager. A robust IT support ticket system streamlines and accelerates the resolution process.

The Benefits of IT Support Ticketing System

A robust ticketing management system is more proficient and functional than conventional customer service tools like email. Here are reasons why enterprises should consider automating IT support ticketing:

1: Increased efficiency

An IT support ticketing system can help streamline your organization’s helpdesk process by automating many of the tasks associated with managing support tickets. This can free up staff’s time so they can focus on more important tasks.

2: Improved communication

An IT support ticketing system can improve communication between your organization’s support staff and its users. By centralizing all your organization’s support information in one place, everyone will have better access to the latest updates and status on each ticket.

3: Dynamic ticket routing and escalation

An IT support ticket system enables the team to route troublesome tickets to the appropriate personnel. It allows organizations to utilize rule-based automation to manage the escalation process better. Rule-based automation improves accuracy, efficiency, and delivers employee satisfaction.

4: Greater visibility

An IT support ticketing system can give your organization’s management greater visibility into the performance of your support staff. By tracking key metrics such as response times and resolution rates, you can ensure that your team is meeting its SLAs and consistently providing quality service to your users.

5: Delivers self-service options

When Chatbots are integrated with an automated ticketing system, they can deliver self-service options and prompt employees to resolve their basic issues themselves, saving time for service teams.

Why should organizations leverage SharePoint to build an IT Ticketing System?

The basic aim of a support ticketing system is to help an organization solve problems with its existing process and not create new ones! Purchasing a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) product might appear to be a quick fix, but your internal users will need fair handholding before leveraging the new tool. Then there is also the compatibility issue with existing line of business (LOB) systems. Such concerns often keep an organization from introducing a new system to automate and transform its support ticketing.

However, over 250,000 organizations leverage SharePoint to boost employee collaboration, document management, project management, etc. Internal employees are familiar with SharePoint and its various features. Moreover, as a flexible platform, SharePoint enables seamless integration with existing LOB systems. The cost of developing a seamless support ticketing system on SharePoint is much less compared to COTS products’ prices. Consequently, building your automation solution on SharePoint makes excellent sense. Other benefits of implementing a SharePoint-based support ticketing system include the following:

1: Security

SharePoint offers strict security features such as data encryption, user permission level, multifactor authentication, strong passwords, etc. It ensures that your data remains safe and well-governed.

2: Advanced Search

SharePoint offers an advanced search feature. Specific metadata and full-text ticket searches are permitted; this helps helpdesk professionals find complete information quickly. It has a significant impact on minimizing the issue resolution time of users.

3: Familiarity with the use

A SharePoint-based ticketing system is more familiar for the employees utilizing SharePoint or Microsoft 365. Users will have a short learning curve and start using the system to get prompt resolutions or offer support.

4: Easy customization

SharePoint enables organizations to create solutions adapted to the organization’s established process. These solutions consist of Intranet, portal, and document management. Whether an organization is already using SharePoint or only considering implementing a SharePoint-based solution, customizing would help design an intuitive UI/UX to motivate the workforce to use SharePoint actively.

5: Automated workflow

With a SharePoint-based ticketing system, enterprises can implement several features to automate the ticketing system end-to-end, for example, approvals, delegations, notifications, email alerts, and escalations of requests.

6: Maximization of SharePoint ROI

According to an AIIM Report, nearly 50% of organizations struggle with maximizing the utility of SharePoint beyond an Intranet tool. A SharePoint-based ticketing system enables organizations to get more value from their investment. It also helps organizations save costs on the purchase of expensive COTS products.

Build a Robust Support Ticketing System with QuickApps

By now, you know that a supporting ticketing system on SharePoint is the way forward for your organization. Let us introduce you to QuickApps – a No-code SharePoint process automation solution. QuickApps slashes SharePoint development time by up to 80% and reduces costs significantly. The solution features a rich assortment of web apps for SharePoint on-premises and SharePoint Online. QuickApps’ qListForm and qSIListForm web apps can be utilized by the users to capture ticket requests. While the qListView, qChartView, qSIListView, and qSIChartView can be leveraged to create various roles-based dashboards. Additionally, the qCalendarView web app can be used to see meetings related to IT tickets. Organizations can leverage QuickApps’ web apps to create a perfect support ticketing system to meet their requirements.

The post Build a SharePoint-based IT Support ticketing System to Save Costs and Complexities appeared first on AgreeYa Solutions.

For organizations leveraging SharePoint (on-premises or cloud), this progression towards “digital perseverance” and modernization of operations is often impeded by their traditional development approaches. Applications are a big part of SharePoint’s appeal. However, even today, many organizations rely on the traditional coding approach to create new applications and customizations on SharePoint. This is a complicated process consuming much time, effort, and money and requiring multiple rounds of iteration. No-code application development solutions deliver a mechanism for organizations to build apps and automate processes on SharePoint on-premises and online without any coding.

Organizations that utilize modern web apps can empower business users to build applications and simplify their work. It can enable organizations to maximize their SharePoint investment and deliver a modern workplace experience to employees. Moreover, businesses adopting the No-code approach to SharePoint custom app development can promptly stay ahead of the curve by addressing their business requirements. Even though the No-code SharePoint development trend, utilizing Web Apps, has existed for some time now, many organizations are still hesitant. So, we thought of helping our readers understand the value of web apps and some of their most discernable benefits.

What Is a Web App?

Custom web apps are small, easy-to-use, stand-alone business apps that empower organizations to perform tasks or address specific business requirements beyond the capabilities of their existing application. Users can integrate these apps with their existing business application to customize it or to interact with the database to retrieve and display information whenever required.

Benefits of Custom Web Apps for SharePoint for Modern Business

As the demand for SharePoint-based business applications is constantly growing, the pressure on SharePoint developers and IT departments is increasing. To mitigate these challenges, businesses across industries have started embracing custom web apps and unlocking the benefits below.

• Round-the-Clock Accessibility: Today’s workforce demands flexibility – to work anytime from any corner of the world – and seamless access to real-time data to operate efficiently and perform crucial actions. Custom web apps make that possible through their 24X7 accessibility. Leveraging web apps, users can quickly access business-critical data from SharePoint sites and site collections, glean insights, and take necessary actions anytime.
• Increased Efficiency: Traditional business processes, such as managing and accessing data manually through spreadsheets or documents, are exhaustive, error-prone, and ineffective. They impede scale, waste precious man-hours, and create inefficiencies that derail performance and profitability. Web apps help significantly increase process efficiency and business performance as they allow the automation of repetitive yet business-critical processes and avoid plenty of human errors. Additionally, by leveraging web apps, organizations can manage their data at a centralized location, retrieve it quickly, and visualize it in the form of tables, charts, and graphs whenever required for better visibility across different business segments.
• Easy-to-Customize: Adopting off-the-shelf software can be tricky for organizations as they are complicated to use. Custom web apps, as the name suggests, are easily customizable according to the business requirements. Custom web apps are code-free, meaning no complex coding is required to customize the applications. Business users or citizen developers can quickly build or customize complex business applications up to 80% faster using simple point-and-click configuration instead of custom coding.
• Short Learning Curve: Generally, software or application development requires complex coding. As custom web apps are a No-code solution, users (even non-technical) can build business applications much faster without long hours of complex coding.
• Easy Integration: Custom web apps bring data together from all your LOB applications that are ODBC compliant. It can connect to multiple external sources like SQL Server, Oracle, Web Services, etc., without manually copying the data. Therefore, organizations can quickly adapt and implement custom web apps with their existing legacy applications and IT infrastructure to maximize ROI.
• Quick Installation: Custom SharePoint web apps are installed on one of the web front-end servers. It does not have to be installed on all the servers in the SharePoint farm.

Maximize Your Technology Investments with QuickApps

Leveraging SharePoint solely as document management and an Intranet platform is not enough to optimize your SharePoint investment. QuickApps, as a No-code solution, enables organizations to swiftly develop use case-specific web applications in SharePoint that can help organizations gain a competitive advantage.

Download the 30 days free trial to see the innovative solution in action. You can also download the Trial version from Microsoft Appsource.

The post Benefits of Custom Web Apps for SharePoint appeared first on AgreeYa Solutions.

Organizations leveraging SharePoint Online as their primary document and content management can utilize the data stored in the platform to transform their operations. SharePoint Online enables organizations to utilize third-party SharePoint application development tools to create impactful dashboards. These dashboards enable the management and the employees to glean essential insights from the data in real-time and access it anytime anywhere. It also empowers them to make critical business decisions based on analytical insights while staying in sync with corporate strategy.

Adopting a data-led decision-making approach is essential in today’s competitive market. It enables organizations to get ahead of changing customer trends and market volatility by boosting speed and agility. However, despite all the obvious benefits many organizations are struggling with data visualization on SharePoint Online. Improper or ineffective visualization of voluminous data stored in a SharePoint environment is one main reasons organizations fail to get the most out of their data.

What is Data Visualization?

Data visualization is defined as the graphical representation of data in a visually appealing and comprehensible format. The representation intends to show complex sets of data straightforwardly so that the stakeholders can get the insights they require from the data at a glance. It gives stakeholders an upper hand in today’s evolving industrial landscape, giving them clarity, increasing engagement, and improving decision-making with narrowed information. The importance of data visualization is not only for the employees, but it also helps the organizational leaders to:

• Identify new opportunities
• Stay on top of deliveries
• Prevent risks
• Improve operations
• Serve customers better

What are the challenges of data visualization on SharePoint Online?

The voluminous data generated in an organization usually lies in an unstructured format at different locations. It can be stored in various SharePoint sites, site collections, web applications, and external software. The presence of unstructured data scattered across multiple locations buries data insights under complex organizational structures. Some other significant data visualization challenges are:

1: Lack of data visualization literacy

Misrepresenting data using the wrong chart types will do more harm than good. There are numerous representation options available for users to showcase the data, such as tables, charts, graphs, etc. However, a major challenge for most data analysts is understanding what type of visual format should be used to present a specific data type.

2: Excessive simplification of data

At times, to enhance the look and feel of the visualized data, users try to simplify the data sets and pick up the information they feel is necessary for the leadership. This might facilitate data visualization, but the chances of critical data points being left out of consideration increase exponentially. The leadership might not get all the information they require for effective decision-making, which ultimately beats the overall purpose of data visualization.

3: Balancing visual appeal with accuracy

Visual appeal in the context of data visualization is a worthy goal to pursue, but balancing it with critical information and accuracy can be hard to achieve. This is also one of the most common reasons why users fail to visualize and make use of their data to improve business outcomes.

While there are several tools available in the market for data visualization, a No-code SharePoint Online app development solution helps organizations create engaging and impressive dashboards rapidly without writing a single line of code or IT dependence. It empowers the users to create visualizations based on their understanding of a specific process.

Leverage QuickApps to visualization data on SharePoint Online

QuickApps is an innovative No-code platform that enables business users to customize their SharePoint environment and visualize data seamlessly. It comes with a suite of 21 powerful web apps that make it easier for users to aggregate data from multiple sources and present it in an impactful format without needing custom coding. Some of its popular QuickApps web apps that help in data aggregation and visualization are:

qListView

qListView enables the users to view, group, and filter the SharePoint data in relevant and meaningful ways without writing a single line of code. Users can roll up information from multiple SharePoint lists, sites, site collections, and web applications. Features include:

• Customizes the look and feel using pre-packaged skins or by creating a custom skin.
• Exports aggregated data into Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, PDF, or CSV formats.
• Configures parent-child relationships in a two-level hierarchical list view.
• Creates complex filters and sort list view data in meaningful ways.
• Delivers unlimited grouping capabilities.
• Enables point-and-click roll-up of data in multiple lists.

qChartView

qChartView allows users to quickly create visually compelling SharePoint charts and dashboards with features such as dynamic filtering, drill-down reporting, and a rich user experience. Given that there is no native chart web app in SharePoint, QuickApps’ chart solution is ideal for BI and dashboard scenarios. Its features include:

• Aggregates chart data from across multiple SharePoint lists, sites, site collections, and web applications.
• Customizes chart elements, such as fonts, labels, backgrounds, canvas, logos, and tool tips.
• Delivers an assortment of 40-plus chart types to satisfy a wide range of visual, BI, and dashboard requirements.
• Filters values from other QuickApps web apps that allow for powerful dashboard capabilities.

qCalendarView

qCalendarView combines all calendars into one view, including data from non-calendar lists. Differentiating features of the web app include:

• Rolls up multiple calendars across different sites into a single view.
• Configures event color-coding based on a SharePoint list name.
• Enables users to drag and drop an event to another time slot in the calendar and change the end time of an event by dragging the bottom of the event up or down.
• Allows users to delete an event or an instance of a recurring event by simply clicking the red “X” icon on the selected event

QuickApps, when integrated with SharePoint Online, immensely improve the capability of business executives and other knowledge workers to represent data with impactful visualizations.

Take QuickApps’ 30-day free trial to overcome your SharePoint data aggregation and visualization challenges and realize the true value of data.

The post Effective Ways to Visualize Data On SharePoint Online appeared first on AgreeYa Solutions.

Over the past few years, there has been a tremendous change in the way organizations operate. Businesses are embracing new technologies to meet the new workplace norms and adjust to the market realities in the post-COVID world. Mundane manual processes are being automated at an amazing speed across functions. One such area which requires automation is the Roster Management process.

According to research, managers spend a tremendous amount of their creative time in manually creating shift schedules for their employees. Automation can help managers save all this time and enable them to focus on other business-critical aspects. With that being said, let’s understand more about Roster Management.

What is Roster Management?

Roster management is the process of managing employee shift schedules – clock-in and clock-out timings, operational hours, and leaves. It ensures the availability of employees according to their preferences at any time they are required while preventing burnout. A Roster Management system empowers an organization to keep track of the duration for which the employees work, assign employees to specific tasks, and generate reports on employee productivity and efficiency.

What are the benefits of Automating Roster Management?

Roster management ensures that an organization uses its workforce and other resources optimally to deliver consistent results, maximize employee productivity, and boost overall employee satisfaction. An efficient Roster Management System enables automation of the process and delivers various benefits:

• Increases Efficiency: Enables managers to make the best use of their valuable resources and ensure the right employees are assigned to work on the right tasks at the right time.
• Improves Productivity: Allows employees to plan better, manage their work-life balance, and give their undivided attention to work whenever required, as they have the rosters beforehand.
• Reduces Costs: Helps managers to utilize their staff more efficiently and the administration department can maximize utilization of the infrastructure and resources.
• Enables Better Planning: Delivers a clear idea about the resources available in real-time. Thus, it improves planning within an organization.
• Increases Employee Satisfaction & Retention: Empowers employees to give their hundred percent and enjoy their work. Automation allows them to schedule their work better and maintain a good work-life balance.

What is the need for a Roster Management System?

A system that seamlessly automates the Roster Management process is essential for organizations that operate in various shifts to match the business requirements. In the present hybrid working scenario, a Roster Management system enables an organization to track employee working hours, view in-office and work from home schedules, assign employees to specific tasks or projects, and generate reports on employee hours and project completion.

Additionally, having a roster management system allows organizations to stay compliant with the new employee scheduling laws regulated in several states — including Oregon, New York, California, and even some provinces in Canada. These new laws require employers to provide the employee shift schedule two weeks in advance, and an efficient Roster Management System helps organizations make employee rosters ahead of time.

Why build a Roster Management System on SharePoint?

While there are many Roster Management Systems available in the market, off-the-shelf products will add to the operational costs. Organizations leveraging SharePoint as their Document Management and Collaboration engine can leverage the platform to build a powerful Roster Management System. Such an approach enables the maximization of SharePoint ROI and reduces costs.

Leverage QuickApps to Build a SharePoint-based Roster Management System

QuickApps is a No-code application development and Business Process Automation solution enabling organizations to automate various manual processes on SharePoint. Its suite of powerful web apps can be leveraged to build a Roster Management System and manage the work schedules seamlessly. The product enables organizations to implement a SharePoint-based Roster Management System with features such as Roster Creation, Roster Review, Roster Approval, Roster Dashboard, Present People Report, Absent People Report, and Defaulters People Report. The system delivers Managers, Admin, and HR with all the requisite insights to manage shifts and people better.

Ready for Smart Employee Scheduling?

A robust Roster Management System is a win-win for both the employer and the employees. It streamlines how employers build employees’ shift schedules and makes schedule communication effortless and instantaneous. QuickApps enables organizations to build a Roster Management System to track employee information, track hours worked, eliminate missed shifts, and avoid last-minute shift cancellations. CONTACT US to learn more.

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– IDC

Today, the volume of data produced in an organization has grown incrementally. It is stored in various formats across their SharePoint Servers and Farms. When analyzed properly, this data can help organizations to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of their existing business processes, giving them a competitive advantage over others. However, converting data available in SharePoint into insightful reports is not an easy job. It requires both time and effort from the business user, and has huge dependencies from the IT department. Such roadblocks often deter organizations from leveraging SharePoint data to transform their operations.

Below we have enlisted some of the most common data aggregation and visualization challenges faced by SharePoint business users and how web apps can help in data analysis.

Common Challenges of SharePoint Online Data Aggregation

1: The amount of data being collected

Data-driven decision-making is the norm of the times. New data analytics technologies simplify the process of deriving actionable insights from business data. As the most popular document management and collaboration platform, SharePoint Online holds terabytes of business-critical information that can have a huge impact on profitability and growth. However, organizations are often overwhelmed with the voluminous structured and unstructured data collected in their SharePoint environment. Consequently, the data analysts or IT engineers are often overwhelmed with customization requests to fetch SharePoint data into a single report. This is one of the reasons why requests for data can’t be delivered on time. SharePoint Online web apps enable business users to create impactful reports with voluminous data without any coding.

2: Aggregation of data from multiple sources

Organizations using SharePoint as their organization’s information hub have data stored across multiple SharePoint sites and site collections. Additionally, because SharePoint is easy to integrate with third-party data management systems, the data can be stored in them too. However, to analyze the data and get accurate insights, real-time data need to be aggregated from various systems and locations. Organizations that do not have a data aggregation strategy in place, risk developing bottlenecks that can disrupt data analysis while also slowing the productivity levels, wasting time and money while also causing frustrations for the top-level decision-makers. Products with System Integration (SI) web apps allow the business users to easily bring together data from multiple third-party systems.

3: Interpretation and visualization of data accurately

Having bulk of data available is not what makes an organization data-driven. Organizations need proper tools and strategies in place to make sense of their data and then present it to the decision-makers in a visually appealing format. However, this becomes a challenge when the data present is in large volumes, different formats, and at different locations. SharePoint web apps help business users to view, group, and filter data available in different lists and farms.

4: Real-time availability of accurate and updated data

When the information is stored in disparate systems, it is hard to keep all of them updated in real-time. However, for data analysis to be effective and accurate, its quintessential that all data aggregated is up to date, then only the insights will be reliable. Organizations that do not have solutions integrated with their SharePoint environment to support real-time data updates, face issues with data redundancy, quality and governance. SharePoint web apps can help organizations keep their data updated.

5: Lack of support from other departments

Data siloes are a leading challenge for organizations. While every department is creating a huge volume of business-critical data, it can’t be brought together to create a comprehensive report. As a result, the stakeholders or managers are unable to view a holistic report to make data-driven business decisions. For an organization to reap maximum value from their SharePoint data, all departments need to collaborate. With SharePoint web apps in pace, organizations can bring together data across multiple locations and systems together seamlessly.

How No-Code web apps help in Data Aggregation?

No-code solutions for SharePoint deliver a suite of web apps that empower business users to bring together data and create visually stunning reports without any IT dependence. Users with business knowledge can leverage such solutions to simplify data aggregation and reporting. Leveraging web apps, organizations can significantly reduce the costs and complexities involved in SharePoint data reporting. Powerful web apps for SharePoint help business users to aggregate, customize and represent data in compelling 3D charts, list views, graphs, etc. by leveraging data from multiple lists, calendars, discussion forums, and more such avenues.

Using QuickApps for Data Aggregation

QuickApps is an innovative ‘No-Code’ solution with a set of pre-built templates and 21 powerful web apps available for SharePoint on-premises and SharePoint Online. Leveraging these QuickApps’ No-code web apps, organizations can create visually appealing reports utilizing data from multiple sources within SharePoint. Users can build powerful reports in minutes, without the need for custom coding, based on SharePoint content, Microsoft SQL databases, business connectivity services, and third-party data sources. Some of its popular web apps that helps in data aggregation and visualization are:

• qListView: Combines data from multiple lists, even across sites, site collections and web applications.
• qChartView: Creates compelling 3D Charts with data fetched from multiple lists across sites, site collections, and web applications.
• qCalendarView: Syndicates all calendars into one view, including data from non-calendar lists.
• qExcelView: Displays data in Microsoft Excel based on criteria passed from qListView, even when that data is not shown in the qListView.
• qDiscussionView: Shows the topic and responses of multiple discussion lists in a single tree view and preview selected items in a preview panel.
• qSIChartView: Display external data in compelling 3-D charts
• qSIListView: Display external data in a SharePoint list
• qSIListForm: Create, view, and edit external data in a form

Take QuickApps 30-days free trial to overcome your SharePoint data aggregation and reporting challenges and realize the true value of data.

The post How to Aggregate your Data with Web Apps on SharePoint Online? appeared first on AgreeYa Solutions.

Why Businesses Rely on SharePoint-Based Dashboards for Data Visualization & Reporting

SharePoint is used by more than 200 million users and 250,000 organizations around the world, according to Microsoft, making it the most popular platform for enterprise information management and collaboration on the market. It contains vital data and insights that can completely transform business operations and catalyze growth. However, most businesses face challenges in managing and analyzing such data to derive business value. The answer to this problem lies in SharePoint-based dashboards.

A SharePoint-based dashboard displays vital information on a single screen in a visually appealing and easy to comprehend manner. SharePoint also enables organizations to create and use dashboards to view key performance indicators (KPIs) in real-time, in a centrally managed and easily accessible location. Furthermore, corporations can leverage SharePoint server tools to transform complex data sets into digestible tables, charts and graphs.

Impactful Dashboards for Informed Decision-Making

According to Bain & Company, stakeholders that leverage data visualization and reporting are 5x more likely to make decisions faster than market peers. SharePoint-based dashboards allow organizations to view crucial reports and scorecards in a single-screen display. With the data clearly presented, it enables stakeholders to make well-informed decisions quickly. These dashboards not only provide users with intelligence-based data insights but also allow managers in organizations to discover information timely without complete dependency on other teammates.

How Organizations Can Use Dashboards?

A SharePoint-based dashboard displays complex data in real-time visuals and charts, while also providing interactive options to make it easy to manipulate based on goals and objectives or for comprehension. Depending on the business requirements, users can customize dashboards and charts to explore data in individual reports and scorecards. Users can also view the default information on their dashboards and then customize it using various web parts or apply filters to view higher or lower levels of information.

How to Leverage a Chart?

Once an organization aggregates the data, it is important that users can easily comprehend the information. Charts are often the best medium to simplify information. With SharePoint, users have various charting options to showcase information based on the specific use case. Not only can users customize the charts available on SharePoint, but they also have the option to embed charts from other sources.

How to Create a Dashboard?

Building a hyper-responsive SharePoint-based dashboard that displays the full list of the company’s KPIs is both straightforward and uncomplicated with several tools like Performance Point Dashboard Designer, Chart Web Part, Excel, web part page, etc. Depending on the requirement, users can choose from the list of extended tools offered by SharePoint and create a dashboard that reports updates, helps with big data analysis and business intelligence. The table below outlines the key tools and applications available to help users get started with a customized SharePoint-based dashboard tailored to meet your business needs.

Apart from the out-of-the-box SharePoint tools, organizations can leverage a plethora of no-code SharePoint application development solutions to build powerful dashboards. Such solutions enable organizations to pull data from various SharePoint sites and external sources and display information in elaborate dashboards using 2D and 3D charts.

Get Started with Microsoft SharePoint Dashboard and Charts

The SharePoint-based dashboards and charts enable organizations to get maximum value from collected data. With a huge volume of vital enterprise information stored, SharePoint can serve as a great source of prompt data-driven decision-making. It also enables organizations to automate the reporting process, remove dependencies and liberate employees from mundane tasks. Dashboards and charts can be connected with Microsoft SQL databases and other Microsoft Services to deliver insights constantly and keep the business ahead of the curve.

As a Microsoft Gold Partner, AgreeYa has been enabling organizations to maximize their SharePoint investment, leverage SharePoint data to transform decision-making and gain a competitive edge. QuickApps, a part of AgreeYa’s award-winning product suite, accelerates time and reduces costs of SharePoint dashboard creation.

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– Deloitte Survey

The financial services industry (FSI) is on the cusp of digital transformation. Many firms are becoming holistically digital to improve customer experiences and enhance the efficiency of their business processes. They realize the significance of innovation for the competitive positioning of their firm. Therefore, many financial institutions are adopting SharePoint (On-premise or Online) to digitize and automate their business processes to address their challenges.

However, the road to digital transformation isn’t a cakewalk for financial institutions. Developing an application or automating a process on SharePoint leveraging the traditional approach is a time, resource, and cost-intensive undertaking. As a result, many financial services providers are holding back and persisting with their outdated legacy systems. The new-age No-code SharePoint application development solutions provide a panacea for such problems.

With No-code solutions, financial institutions can swiftly develop applications and automate processes on SharePoint. Such solutions empower the organizational users to build apps leveraging their business knowledge and without a single line of code. No-code solutions enable financial organizations to extend the out-of-the-box capabilities of SharePoint and leverage it to automate time-consuming yet business-critical operations. No-code solutions allow financial institutions to leverage SharePoint to achieve their digital transformations goals

Benefits of No-code Solutions for Financial Institutions

1: Creating a more valuable customer experience

According to Gartner, “banking customers are increasingly demanding authentic human interactions.”
Customers are no longer loyal to financial brands. The unfulfillment of their ever-increasing expectations to get personalized experiences is making them switch to a different financial brand. To boost the level of customer satisfaction and retention, financial service providers need to be present for customers anytime anywhere.

Though the concept of automation doesn’t seem to help in the cause directly, it is a way that can make human interaction with customers possible. By automating redundant backend operation processes, financial institutions can free up their employees for tasks that require human intelligence or interaction. While the employees are free, they can have one on one interaction with the valued customers, give them an amazing customer experience, increase their loyalty, and help the brand gain a competitive advantage.

2: Identifying and resolving business inefficiencies

Identifying inefficiencies in existing business processes can be a challenge for financial institutions as they have loads of manual tasks. Back-office tasks such as routine check validation procedures, bank account maintenance, customer data updates, address changes, accounting reconciliations, loan processing, KYC updates, etc. are done manually. Manual data entry leads to longer business processing time and inaccurate report generation.

By automating such paper-based manual tasks, financial institutes can not only reduce the risk of human errors which otherwise would go unnoticed but also get the tasks completed faster.

3: Removing legacy barriers to digital innovation

Legacy software and applications are reliable, but to keep up with the changing market scenario and customer demands, the applications need to be updated and maintained regularly which costs financial institutions 70% of their IT budgets. These outdated systems also deliver poor customer experiences which lead to decreased customer retention. Removing such legacy solutions on time by replacing them with new-age solutions enable firms to stay ahead of their competition.

4: Harnessing Innovation and delivering rapid time to market

Today, technology is moving at a breakneck speed and financial institutions need to keep pace or risk losing out in the market. Consequently, innovation has become an imperative for the growth of financial institutions. Irrespective of what an institute aims to achieve; customer loyalty, profitability, reduce inefficiencies, or digital adoption, innovation is the key.

No-code solutions allow business users to leverage their process knowledge to build applications and automation that solve longstanding problems. And this can be achieved without any reliance on costly SharePoint development resources or reliance on the IT department. Additionally, a robust No-code solution empowers organizations to launch an application or automation on SharePoint up to 80% faster than the traditional development approach. With No-code solutions, financial institutions can achieve the agility required to thrive in the present-day market.

Transform Business Operations on SharePoint with QuickApps

AgreeYa’s QuickApps is an award-winning No-code SharePoint application development and business process automation solution enabling financial institutions across the globe to transform their business operations and gain a competitive advantage. The solution delivers a suite of web apps and pre-built templates that accelerate the application development time and reduce efforts.

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