Microsoft Teams is a popular platform that offers many services for businesses at the touch of a button—or the click of a mouse. Instead of using a Microsoft Outlook inbox for communication and a SharePoint Team site to individually store files, Teams does all those tasks for you. All you need to do is create a group—also known as a “Team”—within the platform. Combined with clear objectives and right planning, Microsoft Teams is an effective tool for hassle-free collaboration and improved productivity in the workplace.
When Can You Use Microsoft Teams?
Businesses can depend on Microsoft Teams if they need a safe, secure platform for all their employees to share, discuss, and collaborate on different projects. It’s ideal for large businesses, businesses with remote employees, and organizations that have offices spread all over the globe. Microsoft Teams is your best bet if you want different groups or departments of your business to hold discussions, conversations, and meetings simultaneously.
File sharing, organization, and collaboration are just some features that make Microsoft Teams great for improving productivity and increasing daily output and/or KPIs.
You can also rely on Teams for fast and easy communication when it comes to updates, daily tasks, or sharing of related links and documents. Rather than using emails, Teams can be used to post announcements and discuss a variety of topics in your channels.
When Can You Use SharePoint Team Sites?
SharePoint Team sites work best if you want more static content, or if you’re looking for tools to manage and store documents with a lifecycle. It’s also a perfect platform if you need document governance like doc templates, versioning, metadata classifications, restricted libraries, and more.
If you want to implement more content and structure within a specific site, SharePoint Teams is a great app to use. It gives you access to automated business processes on libraries and lets you implement Document Management System as well.
Difference between Microsoft Teams and SharePoint Team Sites
1. Number of Teams
You need to be wary of the number of Microsoft Teams you create. Coming up with too many teams can lead to confusion on what needs to be done (and what can be done) where. SharePoint Teams, on the other hand, lets you create a new SharePoint team site for every project you have.
To give you a better idea, Microsoft Teams is the main space where your group collaborates. You can create multiple channels on one platform. SharePoint Team sites, on the other hand, are meant to be small, separate sites that focus on certain areas.
2. Access
Being active in a SharePoint Team site is possible even if you don’t have a client program that’s compatible with it. This is different from Microsoft Teams, where guest access is turned off unless you decide to turn it back on. While both platforms give access to outside team members, the SharePoint Team sites make it a default option.
3. Connections
Connecting Calendar, Document Libraries, and Planner are allowed on both platforms. This integration is a key feature because team members can access important information without being required to exit the site. It’s worth noting, however, that you have an app that connects to SharePoint when you’re using Microsoft Teams.
At the end of the day, there is no right or wrong when it comes to using either or both platforms. It might be even best to use them both, depending on your requirements, seeing as SharePoint Team sites and Microsoft Teams were designed for different purposes.
