When and for what do you need Teams or SharePoint? Mastering today's business challenges requires a lot of things, most importantly communication. That's why many organizations are grappling with the question of which platform is best suited for uniting document management and collaboration within the company. But what are the differences and which of the two platforms from Microsoft is best suited for which company?
To help make the decision, this article discusses the respective strengths and weaknesses of the two applications for key use cases.
As the older of the two applications, SharePoint was designed primarily to organize and share files and documents with colleagues and external parties.
Especially in the area of collaboration, SharePoint offers many possibilities to make collaboration easier. For example, it is possible to assign users specific rights for managing different versions of a document and to set up approval workflows. With SharePoint, users can also manage co-authorships and thus work synchronously with each other on the same document without having to subsequently merge separately created content. Furthermore, the preview function of SharePoint allows users to access the desired files without any further restrictions - regardless of whether they have installed the necessary file applications on the respective end device or not.
This makes it easier to collaborate on documents in SharePoint - but SharePoint doesn't offer integrated solutions for cross-application collaboration, so users must switch to the appropriate applications.
With a focus on creating an application that brings together the collaboration aspect with the communication aspect, Microsoft launched the Teams application in 2017, which would replace Skype as the market leader.
Teams is provides features such as chat, video conferencing, data storage, and application integrations to facilitate collaboration among both internal and external people. By creating a separate Office group for each channel created within the application, Teams makes multiple Office products available to each team member, such as OneNote, Planner, SharePoint Online, Power BI, and automatically exchanges shared mailbox content and calendar entries. Within each created team, users are able to create different channels for each form of collaboration request. These include exchanges via video conferencing, voice call, chat or email, or even document sharing.
With this multifunctional approach, Teams enables more seamless collaboration than SharePoint could with the necessary app switches.
The application offers user-friendly operation thanks to the templates that have to be selected initially. Among other things, users can already define the directory structure in the standard library here, set the archive system for compliance-relevant documents and deactivate certain features that are not required.
Besides these presets, the application offers numerous features to organize documents and files as needed.
Teams, on the other hand, automatically creates a separate SharePoint collection for each instance. On the one hand, this saves the user from manually creating document libraries, but on the other hand, Teams does not offer the range of ECM features that SharePoint does. For example, the workflows and templates as well as different views are missing.
Via SharePoint, news, updates, reports, status information and other messages can be shared with the entire company or with individual departments or locations in a clear format as a post in the newsfeed on one's own homepage. This makes the use of SharePoint particularly suitable when messages are to reach a large number of people.
However, SharePoint does not offer the option of exchanging messages directly with other users, so that other applications have to be used for exchanges in pairs or groups.
Microsoft Teams, in contrast, offers a range of direct communication features such as chat or video conferencing, where participants can even use a series of hand signals to send responses without interrupting the speaker. This allows communication to take place on different levels, which can support the atmosphere and collaboration within the team. Teams also save users from having to search for contacts for a long time. Whenever a new communication is to be started with another group of people, the user is able to start a team with separate communication channels from existing or new contacts. It is also possible to assign tasks and set deadlines for each meeting group, which each team member can access and view. The dynamic dialog that made teams so popular can be created in the application via direct messages or in comments and group conversations.
Nevertheless, sometimes it is not advisable to communicate every information via teams. Managers or project leaders who have an important announcement to make should not do so via teams because only team members active at the time will actually receive the message. In fact, there's a high chance that team members who aren't online at the time will miss the announcement altogether, because by the time they launch the application, the message will have moved down the feed.
2.4 Document management
SharePoint can be described as an application for the static storage of documents and files. Teams, on the other hand, as a dynamic, easy-to-grasp application, facilitates rapid communication and thus cooperation. This is possible because documents made available in a team are both easily available and can be edited synchronously by all team members.
However, due to the almost exponential increase in the use of Teams and the simultaneous storage of large amounts of files in the channels, arranging and organizing them proved to be problematic for the user in many places. The rudimentary structure of the SharePoint site created by Teams is also not much help in creating a clear tabi.
Therefore, it makes perfect sense to involve SharePoint as an organizational repository and access store if the desired clarity is not available in Teams.
Accordingly, there is no one application that is recommended at all times and for all purposes. Which platform is ultimately suitable depends solely on the user's requirements - both could even be recommended for simultaneous use. In the following, the advantages are clearly presented once again.
Communication: Teams +++ SharePoint +
For all daily collaboration processes that require a lot of communication and dynamics, it makes sense to use teams. This is especially true for synchronous communication between two or more team members.
Document Storage: Teams + SharePoint +++
Anyone looking for a static data warehouse is very well advised to use SharePoint. The platform is the best choice whenever an advanced structure of subpages as well as multiple document libraries and user-defined folders is needed.
Handling: Teams +++ SharePoint +
In terms of handling, Teams is the obvious choice. The application simplifies the key components of communication, promotes personal productivity with its easily accessible design, and increases work focus by eliminating the need to switch between multiple applications to make edits.
Visibility of information: Teams + SharePoint ++
When it comes to visibility of information, it makes sense to share announcements via SharePoint on the personal homepage. The information cannot be displaced by newer messages in the feed, as is the case in Teams Chat, so that inactive users may miss the announcement altogether in the worst case.