This guide focuses on the capabilities of Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive – each working together to boost productivity.
Most will be familiar with the core Microsoft Office apps of Excel, Word and PowerPoint, but combined with the use of Teams, SharePoint and OneDrive, document collaboration is a breeze.
Microsoft Teams
- Primarily used by organisational teams
- Great for project-oriented teams to work together on documents, hold meetings and make calls
- Teams can be public (open to anyone in the organisation) or private (with managed membership)
- Communicate in real time with colleagues in a chat-based environment, including reactions and emoji support
When collaborating, a great deal of time can be saved by having documents important to your project instantly accessible. Teams allows for shared files to be available directly in conversations and meetings and the shared documents are stored in SharePoint, giving the best of both worlds.
Communicate through threaded and persistent chat conversations; Teams allows you to also chat one-to-one with any contact, even when they are not online – offline contacts can receive email notifications of messages awaiting their attention. Co-author documents in real time and continue collaborating after calls and meetings are over.
Microsoft SharePoint
- Used by whole organisations, but allows for more granular support for teams and groups
- Great for storing files in the cloud and sharing them with your team or organisation. Use Groups to control access on team sites, or set up more robust permissions for SharePoint sites and documents
- Share files with your team, organisation and external users
- Communicate via SharePoint News, which can also be added to your Teams channel. Add comments and likes to SharePoint pages
For every Teams channel, a SharePoint team site also exists, and every SharePoint team site has a Teams channel, providing ideal two-way functionality. SharePoint is ideal for securely storing documents in the cloud. Document process flows and retention policies can also be introduced if required.
Collaborate on documents in Teams, create pages and use a shared notebook. Use the integrated Office 365 groups to bring together conversations, calendars, and tasks. Attractive and effective site pages can be created to organise information, post news updates and provide navigation to documents and media.
Microsoft OneDrive
- Primarily used by individuals and teams
- Great for storing files in the cloud and being able to access them from anywhere on any device. Ideal for work-in-progress files and sharing them with specific individuals
- Documents are private unless shared; shared files can be worked upon with others at the same time
- Comment on documents and use @ mentions to notify other people of your comments. The mentioned person will receive an email with a link to your comment
Think of OneDrive as your personal repository – a cloud version of ‘My Documents’. Files are always in sync across devices and can be accessed even when offline. This makes OneDrive a great option for draft documents that no one else needs to see. For example, you may be writing a blog post that may not be associated with a project, and you’d like others to review its content before publishing. With OneDrive, you can simply share the document with your colleagues and all that the need is a link to the document and editing permissions – no copies of the document needs to be sent around.
Summary
With the power of the Microsoft 365 tool set, including Teams, SharePoint and OneDrive, colleague collaboration is easier than ever, with straightforward options for file sharing, security and content creation. If you want to find out more about how these tools can help your organisation, get in touch with one of our experts today.
