OneDrive - MS Teams Comparison

Microsoft 365 - including OneDrive, Teams & SharePoint Online - is designed to be a universal toolkit to give your team members integrated and flexible ways to work.

 

  OneDrive MS Teams MS Teams + SharePoint Online Enhancement

Description

Personal files or documents that only you are working on 

Think of it as your personal repository – a cloud version of My Documents

Files are always in sync and available to access even when you’re offline 

Available right where you are having conversations and meeting

Your team can own them together 

MS Teams is actually a chat layer over SharePoint Online

Great for storing files in the cloud and making them accessible to a broad audience

Take advantage of robust file permission management, document process flows and more 

Great For…  

Storing and syncing files in the cloud and accessing them from anywhere on any device.

Ideal for work in progress and sharing with specific individuals 

Project-oriented teams to have a conversation, work together in files, call, and meet right where the work is happening.  

Storing files in the cloud and sharing them with your team or organization, using robust permission management, and creating feature-rich available to be added to your Teams channel 

Audience 

Individual and team 

Team Informal 

Team, group, organization Formal 

Collaboration,
Conversation and
Communication 

Comment on documents and use the @-sign with someone's name. The person you mention receives mail with a link to your comment. 

Lightweight collaboration.  If you are not quite sure if your files are related to any project yet, this is a good fit. 

Communicate in real time with teammates in a chat-based environment and online meetings 

Communication using SharePoint News. News can be added to your Teams channel, too, add comments and likes to SharePoint pages

Looking from more than just a document repository – features like a custom list and web pages 

Require advanced document features like metadata entry and customized views  

Typical Use
Scenario 

Great option for draft documents or personal documents that no one else needs to see, with the ability to share to individuals for comment. It is particularly useful if you haven’t created a team yet

Store your own content and sharing with select individuals

In control of your own files 

Small to medium sized teams

Smaller functional teams or specific initiative 

Create attractive and effective site pages to organize information, post news, provide contact information, provide navigation to documents, media, and other types of information

Storing team / department files, workflow is needed, online “lists”, formal document management, or more “custom” configurations to support requirements 

Sharing and Access Control 

Documents are private until you share them. 

Share files individually and work on Office documents with others at the same time.

Easily shared to individuals

Users sign in to their own OneDrive accounts,  no shared interface

Accessed from a browser, local folder, or OneDrive App 

Teams can be public (open to anyone in your organization) or private (managed membership)

Easily shared: Information is shared within a specific group of people in various formats and methods (shared library, notebook, chats, or app integration)  

Share files with your team, organization, and external users

Use Office 365 Groups to control access on team sites, or set up more robust permissions for sites and documents

Grant permissions on a site basis, instead of on individual documents

Usually accessed via a browser to use all the features 

Knowledge
Transfer 

Not easily Transferred: knowledge contained within the user’s account

Lost once user’s account is deactivated

Easily Transferred: Change in membership has no impact on content availability.  Newly added members have access to conversations and files accumulated from the start. 

Easily Transferred: Data is organized for new team members to easily locate and leverage even if the content producer’s account is deactivated 

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