Skills required for SharePoint Administrators and Developers

Posted by Jacob Daniel on December 3rd, 2019

To help organizations coordinate, maintain, and exchange files, Microsoft SharePoint certification helps you to centralize file management and collaboration. Currently, it’s one of the top business collaboration platforms, as two out of three enterprise's use SharePoint. As more businesses migrate to SharePoint (Microsoft claims it adds 20,000 users a day), demand for experienced administrators and developers of SharePoint will increase. Organizations need to ensure that the highly technical SharePoint system is handled and configured by their IT departments.

SharePoint assists businesses to work more quickly and collaboratively, but it is a sophisticated platform that requires knowledge in a variety of fields. Below are some of the essential skills of SharePoint Administrator and Developer that will help professionals and their organizations to implement SharePoint solutions effectively.

SharePoint Administrator Skills

A SharePoint Administrator is the first line of support for administration, user education, and security. They are held accountable for day-to-day management, understanding the site’s purpose, and delegating tasks to other SharePoint employees to resolve issues quickly. They also appreciate some SharePoint architecture.

SharePoint Administrators manage the content hosted on SharePoint and help facilitate user adoption within a business organization. They are responsible for maintaining and securing the platform and monitoring system usage to optimize their performance. Their other basic tasks include:

• Building and configuring new sites
• Adding document libraries
• Creating and set lists and forms
• Backing up SharePoint sites
• Core Microsoft Skills for SharePoint Administrators

SharePoint integrates with several core Microsoft products, so Administrators should be familiar with the following:

1. SQL Server: Most of the SharePoint data is stored here, so you should know how to interact with them
2. Power BI: This tool is useful to centralize data, simplify it with queries, and share it in highly visual reports
3. PowerShell: There are instances where you are performing repetitive tasks and that can be scripted using PowerShell
4. Office 365: Office 365 is a set of online apps/services that encompasses email, calendaring, file sharing, Technical Skills for SharePoint Administrators

Companies utilize SharePoint to manage and store documents across the organization. SharePoint Administrators also require a combination of business and technical knowledge to resolve potential roadblocks and user issues. This also includes:

• Windows operating system and hardware
• Software management
• Networking infrastructure services, which includes encryption, security zones, and firewalls
• Business Analysis skills to organize and execute SharePoint projects that align with the business workflow
• Essential SharePoint tools like ULS Logs, workflows to automate business processes, and SharePoint forms for tasks, such as creating expense reports video, collaboration tools, and more.

SharePoint Developer Skills

While SharePoint offers distinct features, various companies customize the platform for their needs. SharePoint Developers create custom code and applications. Developers have in-depth knowledge of programming languages and technologies that work with SharePoint and design, implement, and troubleshoot new apps and integrations. Although the lines between an Administrator and Developer often blur, developers possess advanced SharePoint skills to code custom applications and websites to meet specific business needs.

The best SharePoint developers have a knack for understanding end-user problems and discovering the right solutions. They understand how users access and organize information in SharePoint and implement processes that streamline and simplify information management and collaboration.

Core Microsoft Skills for SharePoint Developers who take SharePoint Training

As a SharePoint Developer, you’ll be responsible for creating and customizing SharePoint websites. Seek out experience with these core programs to elevate to a Developer role:

• SharePoint Designer: This user-friendly tool is perfect for quick building integration solutions or simple workflows.
• Visio: This program is useful for drafting and collaborating on workflows before exporting them to SharePoint Designer.
• PowerShell: This tool allows you to run and automate scripts in SharePoint.
• Visual Studio: Visual Studio provides project templates for SharePoint sites and helps bring complex site requirements to life.

Programming Languages for SharePoint Developers

Microsoft is moving away from server-side rendering in favor of client-side web technologies. This allows the SharePoint Developers to provide more productive, more interactive user experiences. Understanding different programming languages is essential to learning SharePoint.

Developers should know as many programming languages as possible to make business goals come to life through SharePoint solutions. However, here are the most important ones to learn: .NET, C#, CSS, HTML5, JavaScript, & jQuery.

Conclusion:

As SharePoint increasingly becomes hybrid or Cloud-based, job requirements and skill sets are shifting too. SharePoint roles and responsibilities will merge and overlap, depending on the needs of the organization. If you want to become a SharePoint Developer, you should also develop project management and administrative skills with Microsoft Certification.