As we talked about last week, Microsoft Teams is becoming Microsoft’s flagship product when it comes to facilitating communication in organizations.  In fact, during Microsoft Ignite The Tour, there is a whole track dedicated to dedicated to optimizing teamwork in your organization.  When it comes to Microsoft Teams, one of the most interesting aspects is how it integrates into the rest of the Microsoft Office 365 platform.  In this case, we are going to take a look at the integration between Microsoft Teams and Microsoft SharePoint.

One of the most interesting sessions in this track is entitled Architecting teamwork with Microsoft Teams and SharePoint.  It will be presented at at the Microsoft Ignite tour in Amsterdam this week, and has previously been presented at other Microsoft ignite tour events.

Why Microsoft Teams Integration is Important

If Microsoft truly wants Microsoft Teams to be the premier platform for teamwork and collaboration, integration with the rest of the Microsoft Office 365 applications is essential.  As more and more organizations migrate to Microsoft Office 365, they are looking to make the most out of their investment.  By creating tight integration with their products, Microsoft is able to help customers do this, as well as sell the promise of the Microsoft Office 365 suite.

Specifically, I want to take a look at the integration between Microsoft Teams and Microsoft SharePoint.  Both of these products have gone through a great deal of transformation from their inception.  While Microsoft Teams is relatively new, think back to the early days of Microsoft Office Communications Server and the Microsoft SharePoint of ten years ago.

Microsoft Teams and Microsoft SharePoint Work Together

Both of these platforms work together when it comes to Microsoft’s collaboration strategy.  By integrating these two products, it is easy for groups to share and edit files.  For example, a Team can create channels to meet their specific collaboration needs.  We can create a specific channel for our team to upload presentations to in general, or for a specific event.  We may even create a channel for something like newsletter distributions, and then be able to store our newsletters in the SharePoint associated with out team.

This has a major advantage over other communications platforms for both collaboration, and keeping track of files participants share with each other.  Instead of having to sift through sometimes hundreds for messages, all of our files are stored in our easy to use and navigate Microsoft SharePoint directory.

Beyond teams and channels themselves, the files you may receive from others over the chat platform are also stored in a personal Microsoft Sharepoint directory for your later use.  This is once again handy instead of having to sift through a chat history when you are looking for something that has been previously shared with you.

Microsoft Collaboration, Past and Future

If your organization has been a loyal user of Microsoft SharePoint for many years, a new deployment of teams will not hinder your ability to collaborate.  While you may be tempted to migrate massive amounts of files to the SharePoint environment, you can even add existing Microsoft SharePoint environments to your Microsoft Teams teams and channels.  This also helps make the transition to Microsoft Teams easier, when users can be assured they will have even easier access to their files as they begin to use the platform.

Microsoft Teams and Microsoft SharePoint integration is just one feature of Microsoft Teams that makes it such a powerful collaboration tool.  Be sure to stay tuned as we dive deeper into the features and functionality of Microsoft Teams/