Many of the functions in this product are designed around various legal, information management, and process requirements in organizations.

This capability is often used to replace an existing corporate file server, and is typically coupled with an enterprise content management policy.

It is a tool that helps an organization manage its internal communications, applications and information more easily.

Microsoft claims that this has organizational benefits such as increased employee engagement, centralizing process management, reducing new staff on-boarding costs, and providing the means to capture and share tacit knowledge (e.g. via tools such as wikis, media libraries, etc.).

SharePoint's custom development capabilities provide an additional layer of services that allow rapid prototyping of integrated (typically line-of-business) web applications.

[14] SharePoint provides developers with integration into corporate directories and data sources through standards such as REST/OData/OAuth.

A significant subset of HTML editing features were removed in Designer 2013, and the product is expected to be deprecated in 2016–7.

[15] Microsoft SharePoint's Server Features are configured either using PowerShell, or a Web UI called "Central Administration".

Configuration of server farm settings (e.g. search crawl, web application services) can be handled through these central tools.

A limited subset of these features are available by SharePoint's SaaS providers, including Microsoft.

In a shared (cloud) hosting environment, owners of these WAs may require their own management console.

"Tahoe", built on shared technology with Exchange and the "Digital Dashboard", targeted top-down portals, search and document management.