Creating a shared folder - what's the "official" method?

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stsm_glen wrote:

Hello fellow admins,

 

I recently embarked on trying to move our organization to a standard cloud file-hosting solution. I'd like to create several shared folders available to employees, although the process seems more complicated that it could be. I'm wondering if there's supposed to be an "official" way to create a shared folder for an organization, emphasizing that the folder is not owned or controlled by any one particular member?

 

[...]

 

Am I doing this whole process wrong, or are there better ways other people use?

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I wouldn't say that you are "doing it wrong" but I want to emphasise that you want to achieve something with a specific outcome in your mind.

You are talking about "a standard cloud file-hosting solution". Sharepoint is not a file-hosting solution but can be used as one. After you've created a Sharepoint document library and gave "All user, except external users" the access rights you are all done. Your users can use this document library automatically. If they want to sync the files to their computer they can do it. If they don't want to sync they can skip this part.

I know that many companies want to have exactly one file server where all documents are available in one (huge) folder structure. But be aware that you still have restrictions about how many files can be stored in any one library. The limits have been increased drastically over the last few years but there are still restrictions and recommendations to not store more than 300000 files in a single team site library or sync more than 300000 files across all document libraries.

From this point of view it makes sense to split a (huge) list of files and use more than one document library. Your users can later choose which ones they want to sync and which they don't. This means that you have to educate your users how to do this manually but at the same time you could also show them other features of Sharepoint.

But this would propably change the way how your company works with shared files.