How to Manage and Collaborate on Files in Microsoft Teams

What is Microsoft Teams?

Microsoft Teams is a hub for teamwork. The product provides a robust feature set including collaboration, group chat, meetings, calls and more! When you want to meet with an associate, you can start a video call and collaborate like you are in the same room.

If meeting with the entire team, use the video conferencing capabilities. Sharing files is done via posts, links, SharePoint and OneDrive.

In MS Teams, tabs may be added for your favorite tools and important files. You can collaborate real-time on documents, and store or share them using the seamless integration with SharePoint.  

How does SharePoint Come Into Play

SharePoint Online is primarily a document management platform, It is where you store, collaborate, and share information seamlessly across the organization. The file management and collaboration in Microsoft Teams is largely facilitated with the capabilities in SharePoint.

You see, each time you create a new Team a SharePoint Site is automatically created in the background. This SharePoint Site is used to store your documents.

Therefore whenever you store, create, have a conversation, and work with files, they are stored in the associated SharePoint Site. "Teams Files" are not directly stored in Microsoft Teams.  

The exact file folder where you files are stored depends on which Team channel you and your team may be using. There's a General channel by default that cannot be deleted. The files shared in this channel will be stored in the Document library of the SharePoint site.

Say for example you decide to create a Team channel named "PMO Office". Then the files stored and shared in this channel will be stored in a SharePoint Site under the folder called "PMO Office". Therefore each time you open a file from the files tab in MS Teams, it is actually an open from SharePoint.

File Collaboration in Office 365

Are the users in your organization storing files locally or on network file shares. They then are sending them to various team members via email? And this is occurring while you have a Microsoft 365 subscription you're paying for?

When you use Microsoft 365 cloud storage, you will be taking advantage of the powerful SharePoint file storage and collaboration capabilities. With Microsoft Office 365 there is no need for another file-sharing service.  And on top of it all SharePoint provides for granular security and compliance requirements.

Using the Microsoft 365 cloud team members can simplify the task of managing changes in files. They may collaborate on a single version by using either the desktop apps or the web versions of Office. The Office desktop apps need not be installed to edit Office files. There is even coauthoring available.

Three Powerful Technologies

Microsoft Teams

When collaborating in real time, being able to easily access files that are important to your project is a real time saver. Microsoft Teams file shared documents are available directly where you are having conversations and meeting with the team.

You can communicate via chat, comments, and more, and keep everyone aware.  You can also use private chat to use the co-authoring capabilities for real-time collaboration.

SharePoint

Every Teams channel has a SharePoint team site. SharePoint is great for storing files in the cloud and making them available for project teams and more. Take advantage of robust file permission management, create robust document process flows and more.

OneDrive

Personal files or documents can be securely stored on OneDrive. If you choose to, files are always in sync and available to access even when you’re offline.  You will always have access to your personal files across a myriad of devices.

Documents you store in OneDrive are private until you share them. It's easy to share files if you need to.  OneDrive is great for home, work, or even home work.  And it's easy to share your OneDrive document.  Just send them a link!

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