How to smoothly navigate from Teams to Sharepoint and vice versa (as if it were one environment)

Copper Contributor

Hello all! 

I hope you can help me! Currently I'm experimenting with a group of our students to use Teams in combination with Sharepoint as a digital learning environment. We have the Team to communicate and to use for the hand in of assignments and the Sharepoint page as a website to list the study activities for the students. The students navigate from the Sharepoint page to the Team and back again.  

At the moment this is done by a link I placed in the sharepoint menu named 'Teams' with a direct link to the Team, the navigation to from the Team to the sharepointpage is by a constructed menu button (not happy about that because it does not open in a new window and if it opens directly in Teams you only have the 'view' version of the sharepointpage which is not sufficient) or the regular option: clicking the three dots top right and choose 'open in sharepoint'.  All in all I have the feeling that this should run more elegantly. Some students have trouble navigating from the Team to the Sharepoint page. I would like this to run more intuitive, as a more cohesive environment. 

I hope my explanation makes sense and someone has a good solution! :) Of course a fully functioning sharepointpage embedded within the Team environment would solve all my navigating problems, but I'm not sure whether this is coming or not. 

Thanks in advance!

7 Replies

@Kim_TS   I am not sure if you have tried this option but that seems something to give it a try if you have not done so already;

 

Having the URL and putting that in the team as website tab not as Sharepoint since once you put that as the website it shows all the navigation etc.

 

Teams > Team > Channel > add new tab + > Select website > have your Sharepoint URL and tab name > click save.

 

 

@PDostiyar , Thank you so much for your reply! 

I did as you suggested, before, but I tried again to make sure. Unfortunately the navigation still does not show, so it did not matter if I added the link as a website or a sharepoint link. 

Thereby it is still an issue that the site often does not load correctly in Teams, users receive a message to open the site in a new window and end up at the sharepointpage anyway, forcing them out of the teams environment. One of the other ideas I had was to make channels corrsponding with the names of all my menu buttons in Sharepoint, and add one page per channel as a tab. The navigation of the sharepoint page opened within Teams would be solved for my purpose. But if it does not always load correctly and people end up outside the Team anyway... same problem all over :)  But if the website view within Teams would be reliable some day (even without the navigation) my world would be a little brighter :)

Untill that time I hope someone had a brilliant suggestion or idea! Thanks in advance!!! 

@Kim_TS  for sure as Teams is getting more and more integration with Sharepoint I am sure this will be soon released and will be on the road map as you don't need to leave teams to go to SharePoint you can do everything right from Teams.

 

as you said there might be few workaround people do with any external app or maybe using a PowerApps to embed the Sharepoint into that app and then put the app into Teams.

@Kim_TS 

SharePoint pages added as Tabs into Microsoft Channels (via either the SharePoint or Web Site Tab) are read-only (prevent editing) and elements of the full page are removed, for example the navigation.

 

A suggestion to address this limitation is to create a page in SharePoint that has links (quick links, test links, buttons, hero web part etc.) to key content, lists and libraries in the site, thus allowing visitors to navigate key areas. Alternatively people can use the "Go To Web Site" link in the top right corner to open the site in a web browser to get the full experience. (Some guidance on the page itself can help).

@PDostiyar , Yes I hope your right! That would be perfect! 

@James Mallalieu , thank you so much for your answer! 

I considered (and tried) exactly what you suggest. At the moment I am using the the top right 'go to website' link. I tried the option where I put links on the sharepoint page to navigate, but the same problem occurred:  the site often does not load correctly within Teams, and Teams suggests to open it as a separate page: consequently the users end up outside the Team environment again and will have to find their way back. Facing me with the same issue (how to navigate smoothly between Teams and Sharepoint) all over again :-). 

Thanks a lot for your suggestions!!!

 

@Kim_TS  makes a good point here.

 

Teams is designed for getting work done.

 

For SharePoint sites designed to be provisioned to larger audiences for the purpose of rendering documents to view, surfacing Forms, displaying Stream videos or accessing PowerApps apps, Teams offers absolutely nothing to them and in fact, makes doing any of these things much harder than simply using a well appointed SharePoint site. I am plagued by people who want to "use Teams" but really want something like what I described and are then confused why it it is so hard to work with. Most people where I work do not use the "posts" feature, sticking with their email, so Teams is really not doing a thing that they couldn't do in SharePoint. Some even are still using Zoom for the actual meeting cast!

 

In any event, being able to fully navigate SharePoint from Teams so they work together as opposed to be and "either or" situation would be a big improvement in my opinion.