[Two-Minute Read] Behind the Scenes: SharePoint Makes Teams and OneDrive Stars

In my recent 'Graduation Day' article, I described how we can move documents from OneDrive to Teams to S

harePoint. Interestingly enough though, behind the scenes, the documents are stored in SharePoint all along. How? Because OneDrive and Teams both use SharePoint sites to store their documents. You never really have to know this though, as the sites are created automatically in the Office 365 tenant, and users typically interact with the files through the OneDrive and Teams interfaces.

So how does this make any sense? Since its earliest versions, SharePoint has always been very good at document storage, offering versioning, metadata, views, search, recovery, record and lifecycle management, notifications, and workflows. However, its user interface hasn't always been so great. Ever hear anyone ask 'is there any way to make it look less SharePoint-y,' or 'do I have to get to my files using a web browser now?' Me too (a lot). So we need better user interfaces, without losing the power of SharePoint - enter Teams and OneDrive. Both offer modern apps, intuitive web interfaces, and mobility, while storing documents in SharePoint. The casual user gets much easier ways to work with files, while the power user can still work with the extra features in the corresponding SharePoint sites (notice things like the 'Open in SharePoint' button within Teams 'Files' tabs).

Of course, Teams in particular offers additional functionality of its own, with conversation threads, document viewers, meetings, and calling. Plus, the informed user can add tabs to channels to bring in and organize content from other tools like Planner, Stream, Forms, PowerApps, and OneNote. Microsoft has even made recent improvements to make it easier to bring in further content from SharePoint, like pages, news, list views, and library views. Combine those elements, and users can get most of what they need done without ever leaving the Teams interface, far beyond chats and documents. In fact, this concept is so powerful, and offers such an improved user experience, that you should factor this into your SharePoint migration strategy - create Teams for existing on-prem SharePoint sites, then move content into the new connected SharePoint Online sites, and expose the key elements through tabs in the Teams UI. On top of getting an easier user interface into SharePoint now, your users will also gain the ability to control their core navigation (remember that they can organize which Teams display in their navigator, and in which order) - this alone can be a big win for many.

So Teams and OneDrive are making a big splash, but SharePoint isn't going away. In fact, SharePoint is a key component working behind the scenes to make these two new players the stars of the show!