What are SharePoint and OneDrive and How Do You Use Them?

We’ll start with OneDrive! OneDrive is a Microsoft cloud storage service that lets you store your personal files in one place, share them with others, and get to them from any device connected to the internet.  There are personal and business versions of OneDrive.  Let’s focus on the business version.  

All subscriptions for OneDrive include 1TB of storage per user, which some subscriptions offering unlimited storage.  This storage is a place for an employee to save company data such as office files, databases, and other data in the cloud where it is accessible from practically any device that can connect to the internet.  This includes Windows and Android or iOS devices.    

Users can also share files or folders within their OneDrive with internal or external users for collaboration.  Users can specify read/write permissions, set access expiration timers, block downloads of shared files, and revoke access at any time to secure content.  All data in OneDrive is encrypted in transit and at rest!  

“But all our users save files to their desktop or documents folder!  How do I convince them to move important data to OneDrive?!”  I’m glad you asked!  The OneDrive agent for Windows can automatically back up a user’s Desktop, Documents, or Pictures folder!  Even better, these folders will follow them to any Windows 10/11 computer they login to with their Microsoft 365 business credentials!  Talk about convenient!

Where OneDrive for Business is geared around employee storage, SharePoint is a collaboration system to empower business teams to work together.  Within Microsoft 365, SharePoint Online uses intranet sites (private web sites) to host things like dynamic web parts (components that are used to customize a site with things like visuals, news, and updates), lists (collections of data such as calendars, product inventories, asset management, travel requests, itineraries, and more), and document libraries (special lists used to store documents and files).  

“That sounds an awful lot like a file or network share.”  As a basic level, you’re right!  SharePoint takes that on-premises concept and expands it to allow for true collaboration amongst a team or department within the Microsoft cloud!  What’s more, you can leverage the OneDrive agent to sync SharePoint document libraries directly into File Explorer.  This allows users to interact with SharePoint document libraries in a similar way that they do with file/network shares.  

Did I mention SharePoint natively integrates with Microsoft Teams?  You can bring all those SharePoint collaborations tools and concepts right into Teams to further enhance how your “teams” work together.  

OneDrive and SharePoint are modern cloud solutions that allow your employees and teams to store company data, securely share it, and collaborate with others!  Want to know more?  Contact us here!