Starting up a company. Teams, Onedrive or Sharepoint??

[ThomasSoete]

Hi guys,

I'm new to this so apologies if this is a question that doesn't belong here. I'm setting up a little construction company soon, and I want a cloud based server. The company I work for now works with a physical (I think that's the correct name?) server, so when you work from home you need a VPN, it's slow, sometimes buggy,... I don't like it.

I have office 365 so I would like to work with either Onedrive, Sharepoint, or Microsoft Teams. I just need a place where I can store all my files and syncs automatically, easily find them on my computer, smartphone,... for both me and my associate(s) as well. I've read that Onedrive is for personal use but you can also share documents, with Sharepoint it's always shared with colleagues, and Teams is something else but there I can also see the documents from my Onedrive,... Each option has its own advantages I guess but I'm confused. I just need the best cloud server, so I don't have to use the File Explorer anymore to save the company's files. 

What is the best solution please?

Kind regards,

Thomas

[#2]

Hello @ThomasSoete,

Yes, you are right if you are thinking to move away from On-Prem server for file storage and you can move to Microsoft 365.
With regards to you confusions with OneDrive, SharePoint and Teams, please see below.
Teams, OneDrive and SharePoint, these applications will be a part of your Microsoft 365 subscriptions.
Users can use OneDrive to store any work documents which should not be shared with everyone else, of course if you need to share, you can do that. But in simple words, you can store documents on OneDrive instead of storing it on local PC.

Teams, on the other hand, it a powerful chat and collaboration tool, where you can chat, calls (video/Audio), share files, have meetings, remote session and what not, apart from that, since it is a Collaboration platform, you can create Teams, for example, your 5 employees are working on a Project and you may want to have one place to communicate and share files, etc, this is where you will go. All the files you share, will be stored on SharePoint Site itself. Each Team on Microsoft Teams, has it's own SharePoint Site for storing documents.

Coming to SharePoint Online, OneDrive and Teams Sites are built on SharePoint Online itself, so if Microsoft Teams fits in your requirement, you can use that since the document is getting stored on SharePoint itself. However if you want to remove the on-prem server and wanted to migrate all data to SharePoint Online, in that case, please go ahead and create SharePoint Online Sites and Document Libraries (before migrating please asses the on-prem server document, how much data it has, on which SharePoint site you want to migrate) and then start migrating your documents using SharePoint Migration tool. As per your On-prem file server, you can create multiple departments (as SharePoint Site) and you can choose which documents should go where. Please make sure to not put everything on a single SharePoint Site or Document library.

Thanks!

[#3]

Good evening @Abhishek_kum1 ,

Thank you so much for the explanation, this helped me a lot! 

In the beginning it will be just my colleague and myself, so I don't need a complex server system with different teams. I made a test in Microsoft Teams where I made one Team, and in the "Files" section I would place all the documents, sorted for each project (see example attached). Like you said Onedrive I will keep using but only for my personal files.

I managed to place the Microsoft Teams folder also in my Windows File Explorer to have that "classic" feel, and with the Microsoft Teams app I also see everyting on my smartphone. Everything also synchronizes fast without problems. I think I'll give it a try like this, what do you think? And is it more recommended to work in Microsoft Teams or in SharePoint? Since the Team in Microsoft Teams also has a Sharepoint Site, I guess you can work in both?

Kind regards,

Thomas Soete

[#4 · Accepted solution]

Hello Thomas,

Thanks for your response.
It is great that you have started using the system already.

If you are using MS Teams, you are already using SharePoint Online, since all the files and everything are getting stored on SharePoint Team Site.
For now, you can use MS Teams as you are using and you can leverage the platform, no need to worry about SharePoint Online right away 🙂
Slowly your Organization will be there.

Let me know in case if you have any other queries.
If I was able to help you with the information i provided, I would like to request to mark it as a Response.

Thanks!

[#5]

Ok all clear, thank you again for the help!