Forum Discussion
OneDrive vs SharePoint - when should a shared folder in OneDrive be moved to a SharePoint site?
- Aug 11, 2021As Pydel mentioned, it's not how many files necessarily. It's who, what and where.
If you think of the files in the traditional paper filing cabinet sense, what does that look like? Does each person on the team have their own filing cabinet, and everyone shares a little with all the others? Do I have to remember that Sally has one file I want, Bill has another, and John has yet another? Each one of them would then have to share with the individuals on the team, and each individual would have to remember where everything is. SharePoint allows for that one-stop location, without loss of business continuity when team members leave or new ones join.
you can overcome some of this by picking one person that stores all of the files in a single location, and then shares with the team, but what happens when that person leaves? For a team, solely using OneDrive has the potential of being an organizational nightmare.
Check out Matt Wade's jumpto365 where he answers what to use when
https://www.jumpto365.com/blog/which-tool-when-sharepoint-onedrive-or-microsoft-teams
Good luck
Another important factor is training, and practice, and more training. Maybe a weekly or bi-weekly 15 minute session that demonstrates the expectations of how file sharing should be done, the benefits of when it's done right, and the challenges created when it's not.
To me, it's a lot about organization: being organized -- or not. And the reality is, some people are highly organized, and some seem to excel in the midst of apparent chaos -- they can go and pluck that file out of a buried folder with an ambiguous name, no problem. Where it becomes a problem, however, is when organized and "disorganized" people have to work together on a team; this is where a standard needs to be set. If the whole team knows that all the files they need for a given project can be found in the team's channel(s) (SharePoint) that's going to make life a lot easier, less frustrating, and more efficient.
An example I like to use is to imagine a family of four who all take turns washing dishes and clearing up the kitchen. Imagine if everyone had their own idea of where things should go. One thinks the silverware should be in the pantry, another puts mugs in the cupboard under the sink, another thinks the oven is the best place to store bread, and butter will last longer in the back of the freezer, etc., etc.; the result is that no one ever really knows where anything is. Good luck cooking in that kitchen! I'm a firm believer in the French idea "Mise En Place": Everything in its place! It can be applied to files too.
- Paul LindsayAug 27, 2021Brass ContributorI love this kitchen analogy!
- TerenceRabe1Aug 27, 2021Brass Contributor
Loving all the input on this conversation!
As a counterpoint, imagine a magical kitchen where you can just say "butter" and it comes flying from the back of the freezer (or wherever) and lands on the counter in front of you... Search tools in Office 365 mean we are less reliant on knowing where data is (so that we can navigate to retrieve it). A topic for another thread perhaps 😉
But...
As Graham says, it's about the team agreeing how they are going to work. Check out https://sway.office.com/tewankw51rkJ0E2w to learn about something I was only introduced to today - Collaboration Contracts.- Graham_McHughAug 27, 2021Iron ContributorSearch is mighty in 365 nowadays, but, to me, it's still no match for knowing exactly where a file lives. While "the searcher" is going through the 20 files that were returned in the search results trying to determine which is the correct one, or, worse yet, opens the wrong one and bases important decisions upon it, "the knower" has opened the correct file, gone over it with the team, and headed out to lunch. This will likely result in the searcher resenting the knower, but that's probably a topic for another convo. 😉
The Collaboration Contract link that you shared is excellent! Right on target!- ShaunJenningsAug 27, 2021Brass Contributor
But wouldn't having a Champions program do just the same as a collaboration contract? Part of the Champions program is to keep a consistent message going during adoption and throughout the life cycle of the application. I believe we need to keep the focus on how our end users want to function and make sure we point them in the right direction.
While some companies are more comfortable with the chat functionality of Teams and can do their collaboration through that chat, others want to use the team to its fullest capacity and really trick out the team and all of the connections that come with it.
We should make sure that our governance that we put in place matches the culture of the organization. That way we can mold the use of those applications and then start to move them into more of the MOCA model. It is a slower process, but it is easier on the end user experience.
If we try to force a way of thinking that our end users reject, they will find something else that they feel more comfortable in using.