When To Use What in Office 365- SharePoint

One of the biggest questions related to collaboration within Office 365 is – what services do I use, and when?

For a while now, Office 365 has had multiple services that overlap in terms of content storage and collaboration, but each of the services have a set of primary functions that is best suited for a particular set of use cases.  When we’re using Office 365, we can store content in the following locations:

• OneDrive for Business
• SharePoint
• Microsoft Teams

So let’s review when to use SharePoint.

If OneDrive for business is the “Me Space,” SharePoint is the “We Space.” SharePoint is meant to be used as a place for business entities to come together and collaborate on files related to a common business purpose. You could have a HR workspace, project workspace, client workspace or even some sort of cross-cutting function within your organization.

SharePoint workspaces define a set membership for the content within that workspace. If you belong to the workspace, then you will have access to the content within it. Files and folders can be locked down further or opened up to other users as necessary.

SharePoint workspaces can be Private, which means only those defined have access, or they can be Public – and these workspaces often form the basis for our Modern Intranet.

Unlike OneDrive for Business, SharePoint sites are more than just a document library. You can bring in all kinds of functionality to accommodate the purpose of your workspace. For example, you can have a shared inbox and calendar, a shared Kanban board called Planner, a shared Notebook and a host of other features all out of the box and ready to be utilized like what is shown below.

What SharePoint does not have are the robust communication tools that businesses need within their departments and teams. This is where the third and final service comes into play – Microsoft Teams.

In part 1 and 2 of this blog series, we talked about some great services that you can use for content storage and collaboration within Office 365, and we talked about what to use, and when.

OneDrive is for personal content – that’s your ME space

SharePoint is for shared content for a particular business entity – that’s your WE space

Microsoft Teams sits on top of SharePoint, and provides seamless integration between chat, conferencing, and file access – that’s your supercharged WE space that we’ll explore in more depth in our next blog. Subscribe to our blog for more Office 365 tips and tricks.