Forum Discussion
Microsoft Teams vs O365 Groups vs SharePoint
Hi Allison, this is the new world, a constantly change cloud service with lots of different ways to achieve the same thing. No one answer is right in all circumstances.
For us, Groups fully replace the need for DLs, Team sites, file shares, public folders and shared mailboxes. It saves us a fortune in admin costs by replacing all of these older, admin requiring service with simple self-service. There are specific reasons why you might still use the previous types of service, but I would only do this by exception.
The caveat here is that all organizations are different. Some can replace multiple older technologies with Groups, some can not. For instance, a hybrid organization with some on-premises servers will find it really hard to move DLs to Groups.
Think about it like this:
1. Groups is just a way of declaring that you have a set of people who need to communicate and collaborate (a group).
2. The group has different options as to the software they use, depending on their needs and backgrounds.
3. Groups that come from the world of Exchange and are email-centric will find that the Groups integration into Outlook probably matches the way their users work.
4. Groups that have used Yammer in the past will be happy to find that new Yammer Groups pick up the resources available to other groups, like SharePoint team sites.
5. Groups who might like the chat-centric communication that you see in Slack and Facebook will find the same kind of communication in Teams.
6. All of the various Groups share common resources (SharePoint, Planner, Exchange). The difference is how people interact within the group.
Microsoft has a hard time communicating this message because they:
- Need to keep existing communities (Exchange, Yammer) happy.
- Need to be seen as new and fresh in the collaboration space (Teams)
- Need a framework to build off for other applications (Planner, Stream, etc.)
The point is that you should look at how people work today and figure out how to bring these technologies into their work in as non-disruptive manner as possible. And because you know your users and your company better than any outsider, make your own mind up about which is the best route forward.
