March Theme - Microsoft SharePoint & OneDrive

The first quarter of 2020 is shaping up to be an exciting one at SoftwareMedia and Total Cloud IT. In February, we successfully launched our Microsoft Teams campaign, with a focus on building a better awareness of Teams, and how to successfully launch a collaboration platform. Yes, collaboration has become a bit of a buzzword, but recent studies are showing that organizations that collaborate tend to be more financially sound, more aligned to the organizations goals and objectives, and client engagement rates are higher and deeper, creating longer term success. The following is what we covered: 

• Building a modern workplace with Microsoft Teams empowers teams to be creative and work together, securely. The modern workplace is evolving at lightning speed, with distributed teams, brand-new business models, and complex security issues.  

• A webinar highlighting the Teams features, how to help employees interact more efficiently and how to manage Teams to remain impactful to your organization. 

• A two-part video following the webinar, interviewing SoftwareMedia’s owner, who transparently discusses their experiences adopting Microsoft Teams company wide.  

If you would like to view the Teams Webinar or SoftwareMedia’s Team Adoption Interview, please visit our Cloud Mechanics YouTube Channel at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvo0FQXTv6-QiRlRlfSJuxA  

Our focus in March is: Microsoft OneDrive & SharePoint – Maintaining document integrity in a cloud world. During February, we briefly touched on document integrity within a Team, access control, and live editing. But, as clients begin transitioning to O365 to utilize more cloud resources, they are immediately faced with the decision, “Which platform should I use? OneDrive or SharePoint?” The answer depends on the use case. Utilizing both platforms can be beneficial but understanding “the why” is key. 

Both platforms make use of Office 365 to help companies organize information with the ability to share with others. To keep things secure, documents go to a cloud repository, so employees can easily track changes in a single file that is stored in one central location. One of the main reasons these platforms are so popular is because users can edit documents and add notes using real-time collaboration. Since data can be synchronized and is readily available, everyone sees the most up-to-date information regardless of how they view the document. 

A key differentiator and the easiest way to understand how to use the two platforms is to ask yourself:  is this a personal/business document or is this one that will eventually require collaboration and team input?  The difference is that OneDrive is made for an individual, and the user remains in control even if the file is shared to different people. With SharePoint, employees throughout the company can view and edit the stored file. Changes are tracked and executives will know who is working on the document. This is ideal for business documents or building new processes that need the attention of other team members. 

In March we will cover the following topics: 

• Collaboration plays a big part in our lives, both in and outside of work. We collaborate with our colleagues across teams and departments on all sorts of projects. What does all this collaboration have in common? Content.  
• Content collaboration has become so important that it's spawned a whole category of apps and services. Microsoft, of course, came out with its’ own solution. As content collaboration is an essential element of Teams, employee, and business productivity, there can be some challenges with master and sub-master documents.  
• During an upcoming webinar we will share (and show) document best practices within a cloud world, so efficiencies remain high and your organization reaps the benefits of the services you are using.  
• Additionally, towards the end of the month we will share a real example of document sprawl and how we realigned OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams document libraries to match our business processes.    

We hope you will find this very informative, opening new ways to look at the technologies you currently have and new ways to incorporate the solutions tighter into your business structure. As always, we are here to help you integrate these solutions into your operations as our team has done many times. There is no better partner than the one who has lived the adoption cycle.   

George Phipps 

Vice President, Strategy