SharePoint vs Microsoft Teams: Better to Use Them Together

Last Updated on November 17, 2023

The post-COVID-19 era has witnessed a transition of structure and procedure by a lot of companies all over the world.

One of the biggest transitions has been in the area of how teams operate with a lot of companies embracing the digital transformation of shifting to remote work.

This has led to an increase in cloud adoption with companies moving their operations to the cloud.

SharePoint and Microsoft Teams are undoubtedly two of the biggest collaboration tools anyone is likely to come across while undergoing this transformation.

While both tools have similarities that make them work better together, there are differences between both tools.

In this article, you will learn about the basic features of SharePoint and Microsoft Teams, their differences, and why they work better together — if they even do at all.

What is SharePoint?

SharePoint is a collaboration tool that has been a huge part of many companies’ business procedures for more than a decade.

Many companies use SharePoint for organizing, storing, and sharing documents between colleagues from the same company and other companies as well.

SharePoint is a powerful document management tool and has basic features such as:

• The OneDrive sync client that makes it easy for all the files needed to be synced together. It works on both Windows and Mac.
• The document co-authoring feature that allows you to co-author documents with the online versions of the Office applications.
• A preview function that enables you to preview as many as 300 file types.
• The document versioning control feature for workflows approval
• A comprehensive data governance and compliance feature that ensures data loss prevention, automatic classification and labeling, eDiscovery and legal holds, and document retention.

SharePoint also allows you the freedom to organize and customize your sites and also document your folders and libraries based on your needs and preferences.

What is Microsoft Teams?

Microsoft Teams is a unified communication and collaboration tool that combines persistent chat capabilities, file storage, video conferencing, and integration with different Microsoft 365 products including:

• OneNote
• Exchange
• Planner
• Power BI
• SharePoint Online

Using Microsoft Teams, you can create offline documents within the browser, incorporate both internal and external content with different tabs, and have private chat-based conversations with the collaboration tool.

Related: Microsoft Teams Best Practices Guide: Focus and Management

This flexibility makes Microsoft Teams the modern workplace tool which brings together the best parts of Microsoft 365 integrated into a single tool and allows users to work smoothly across the Microsoft 365 Groups.

With companies transitioning to remote work, the Teams tool allows you to call, chat, email, share files, have meetings, and use other products in one central location with all products sharing the same security context.

You can easily create collaboration within teams, departments, and even colleagues outside the company and create channels within the teams for different project groups.

Microsoft Teams however does not store files but instead incorporates the advantage of SharePoint in file storage as files shared are stored in SharePoint Online.

Files shared in one-on-one chats are however stored in the sender’s OneDrive.

Why do they work better together?

Although SharePoint and Microsoft Teams are tools used for collaboration, they are not in competition as they both have clear distinctions and cannot best be used as replacements for each other.

Rather, they work better together to better enhance the overall experience for the users.

Below are two reasons that show why both tools work better together:

1. SharePoint-Teams Integration

Microsoft Teams work better with Microsoft Teams SharePoint integration because SharePoint offers an advanced set of features that Microsoft Teams can utilize.

While Microsoft Teams allows users to communicate and collaborate, SharePoint provides a centralized place where all the content and files shared between users on Teams can be stored.

This means that with the Microsoft Teams SharePoint integration, users can collaborate, communicate, and share files with all parties gaining access to the documents they need when they need them.

Note: Can Microsoft Teams replace SharePoint as an intranet? Read more here: Microsoft Teams: Intranet Alternative to SharePoint Online?

2. Permissions in SharePoint and Permissions in Microsoft Teams

Both tools are similar in terms of the permissions they both have. However, the way permissions work isn’t exactly the same.

Permission on Microsoft Teams allows teams to communicate and collaborate in real time. However, users who are part of the team but are not active online at the time of the communication will miss it.

Permission on SharePoint is intended to allow for various levels of communication, collaboration, and storage, and combining both tools as extensions of each other makes the users’ experience so much better.

The combination of both tools together brings the robust document management system of SharePoint and the real-time collaboration and communication environment of Microsoft Teams creating a perfect collaboration solution.

This means that team colleagues can easily:

• Sync and access all the files for their specific team all on the same platform.
• Protect and secure all their files by adhering to document retention strategies and providing for data loss retention.
• Create and customize features within their internal network depending on their personal needs and preferences.
• Connect documents directly within conversations to make the flow of the conversation clear and easy to understand.
• Place documents in tabs directly for them to review and modify them without having to switch tabs back and forth unnecessarily.
• Leverage Microsoft collaboration products that you are either familiar with or not to create solutions.
• Discover and search for files and documents through a single and combined search system.

Note: For more security best practices for MS Teams, go here: Microsoft Teams Security Best Practices: Compliance & Governance.

Both work best when used together

It is quite obvious that utilizing both tools together is a much better option than choosing one tool over the other based on which is better.

However, depending on your need, you can decide to choose one tool over another when making your choice.

Microsoft Teams is a great choice for teams that have to be involved in a lot of collaboration daily.

That’s because the tool simplifies things by giving you a centralized point for all your conversation and meetings enabling you to have more focus and productivity.

However, conversations on the Teams tool are only in real-time as the tool does not store files by itself.

SharePoint on the other hand stores files and documents.

Meaning, team members who are unavailable at the time of the communication can have access to those files.

What do you think about SharePoint and Microsoft Teams? Are you using them both for collaboration and communication with your team?

If you have any questions, feel free to comment below. For other inquiries, send me a message through my contact page.