As organizations continue to allow remote working possibilities, business communication software has experienced massive growth in demand. This increase in demand has reflected positively on Microsoft Teams, as it continues to become one of the most popular business collaboration software in the world.
With the COVID-19 pandemic making remote working obligatory across the globe, Microsoft Teams has more than doubled the number of daily users in the space of months – going from 32 million users in March 2020 to 75 million active users in April 2020.
Offering key integration with Office 365 allows Microsoft Teams a competitive edge, as O365 is one of the most commonplace office productivity suites in use. Not only are these applications highly compatible, but such integrations allow users to leverage advanced features and increase efficiency.
Before we read through Microsoft Teams-SharePoint integration's best practices, let's see the difference between them.
Microsoft Teams vs. SharePoint: What's the Difference?
SharePoint was released as an all-encompassing document management service, which gave users the ability to share workspaces, access dedicated storage space, and conduct presentations.
On the other hand, Microsoft Teams is a chat-based collaboration tool that permits users to conduct meetings through efficient multi-user audio and video calls. Released in 2017, it also enables users to share files and documents.
Until now, business collaboration on the internet would mean conducting video meetings on Skype, file sharing on SharePoint, and planning on Outlook.
Microsoft Teams brings these functions together to offer a complete business collaboration solution. SharePoint integrates with Microsoft Teams to become a superior document management service on an already optimized collaboration platform.
Among other things, integrating Microsoft Teams with SharePoint will allow you to:
- Lookup files instantly through a single search system
- Link documents straight into a conversation to keep the topic clear
- Generate automatic previews in Microsoft Team's channel tab through SharePoint
- Modify and review documents by placing them directly in tabs
4 Best Practices for Microsoft Teams Integration with SharePoint
Having discussed how well Microsoft Teams integrates with SharePoint, let's look at some of the best practices when using this tool to collaborate on a business project:
Manage Files in SharePoint
As a file managing service, it is essential to get the most out of SharePoint before integrating it with Microsoft Teams.
Unless you want to use SharePoint only as a file-sharing service, become familiar with certain actions to capitalize on the move to Teams effectively.
Some tricks here can be:
- Providing Metadata in columns
- Versioning files for easier access
Create a Consistent File Sharing Experience
Microsoft Teams allows you to share files by topic or by project. Integrating with SharePoint will allow you to share files in a way where all members of a certain team will be able to view newer files as they're created.
To do this:
- Create a tab using SharePoint for a document library on your Team Site
- Create another tab with the Website tab connector on the same Team site
Use Existing SharePoint Site to Create a Microsoft Team
If you are already managing documents for a project through a SharePoint team, you may want to evolve that platform into one that allows for seamless communication with your team.
To do this:
- Go to your SharePoint team homepage
- Set it to private
- Click on the 'Microsoft Teams' icon located at the bottom left
- Select 'Create a Team'
A 'Teams' link has now been added to the left panel of your SharePoint team page; use it to capitalize on Team's unparalleled collaboration tools.
Connect a News Source
Allow team members deployed on a specific project to stay up-to-date with relevant news. Give them the ability to stay abreast with any statistics or information about a project related news piece in a convenient format by:
- Build a SharePoint news site
- Add it as a tab on Teams
Conclusion
Office 365 offers a comprehensive office productivity and communication application suite for organizations to benefit from. Integrations between two of the most important applications can allow you to leverage increased efficiency.
In addition to these best practices, you can incorporate several more to make the best use of your Teams-SharePoint integration.
