SharePoint & Intranet Setup

When your shared files become a free-for-all

Most businesses don’t decide to have a messy file system — it just grows. A shared drive fills up over years, folders get nested ten deep, three people save three versions of the same document, and nobody’s quite sure who can see what. Then someone works from home, can’t reach the office server, and starts emailing files around instead.

SharePoint fixes this properly, but only if it’s set up with a plan. A SharePoint site built in a hurry — everything dumped in one library, sharing links handed out one by one — is often worse than the file server it replaced. We design the structure and the permissions first, then move your files into it, so your team gets shared documents that are easy to find, safe to share, and reachable from anywhere.

What we set up

• A document library structure that matches how your business actually works — by department, project or client, not one giant folder tree
• Permissions designed from the start — each team sees its own space, sensitive folders stay locked down, and external sharing is controlled rather than accidental
• File-share migration — we move your existing server or shared drive across, keeping the files and their history, and retire the dead folders on the way
• OneDrive sync so key libraries appear in File Explorer or Finder — staff work in the folders they already know, but the files live safely in the cloud
• Teams integration — the files a team discusses in Teams are the same files in SharePoint, not a separate copy that drifts out of date
• Version history turned on so an overwritten or deleted document can be rolled back in seconds, not restored from last night’s backup
• An intranet home page — a simple company hub for policies, forms, contacts and news, so people stop asking where things are

Who it’s for

Small and mid-sized businesses across South London, Croydon and Surrey that have outgrown a shared drive or a pile of email attachments. It suits professional firms — accountants, solicitors, agencies, care providers — where several people work on the same documents and it matters who can see them. It’s also for teams that have gone hybrid: home-workers who need the same files as the office, without a VPN or a slow remote-desktop link.

If you already use Microsoft 365 but SharePoint sits unused because nobody set it up, this is the piece that makes the rest of it pay off.

How it works

1. Audit — we map your current folders, who uses what, and where the permission problems are
2. Design — we agree a clean library structure and a permissions model before touching your data
3. Build — we create the SharePoint sites, libraries and the intranet home page in the background
4. Migrate — we copy your files across with their history, then check nothing is missing
5. Sync & cutover — we connect OneDrive and Teams, switch the team over, and keep the old drive read-only for a short while as a safety net
6. Show your team — a short handover so people know where files live and how sharing now works

Problems we commonly fix

• A shared drive that’s unreachable the moment someone works from home
• The same document saved five times with “final”, “final2” and “FINAL-use-this” in the name
• Sharing links handed out one by one until nobody can say who has access to what
• Files stuck on one person’s laptop or personal OneDrive with no backup
• A half-built SharePoint site that got abandoned because it was confusing
• Sensitive folders — payroll, HR, contracts — visible to the whole company by accident
• Teams channels full of duplicated files that no longer match the “real” version

Getting SharePoint right is closely tied to your wider setup, so we often pair this with Microsoft 365 setup or a broader cloud migration. If you’d rather we handle the whole thing day to day, it fits neatly into managed IT support. Tell us what your file mess looks like and we’ll suggest the simplest way out — get in touch.