The retirement of Box at IU officially concluded on May 10th, 2021. Many OVPUE offices including IT and Marketing have adopted Microsoft Teams and Office 365 for daily communications and collaborations over the past year with positive results.
This blog serves to address some possible questions OVPUE staff may have about the following:
- The relationship between SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams
- How to share files with OVPUE colleagues, other departments, or non-IU personnel
- How to get started and optimize your setup in Teams
If you have a question about Teams that this post doesn’t address, or if you have encountered a challenge that you’d like the IT team to know about, please click here to access a one-question Microsoft form to tell us about your experience. We will review all submissions and follow up with solutions wherever we can.
SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams Explained
The differences between Microsoft tools and what they mean for file storage can be confusing.
OneDrive is your personal cloud storage space from Microsoft and is connected to your University ID, while SharePoint is an organization-wide cloud storage solution.
Microsoft Teams is an interface that allows you to organize, view, and edit files from multiple sources right in the same platform where you can chat your colleagues or conduct audio/video conferencing.
One way think of the relationship between the three tools is that Teams is a window into SharePoint and OneDrive. You can edit files in Teams and the changes will save in real time in their source locations.
For more on how these three tools differ, check out this article.
OneDrive and SharePoint are always accessible via Office 365 which has a One.IU task here. If you ever have trouble locating a file in Teams, OneDrive and SharePoint are searchable and navigable just like a drive on your computer.
Nearly all OVPUE Teams are Secure ([Sec]). What does this mean for permissions and sharing?
Like the previous Box Entrusted accounts, Secure Teams maintain a higher level of security that makes them compatible for critical data storage.
Every member within a Team (i.e., a unit or office) has access to the files stored within it, so sharing files of any data classification with someone within your Team is easy. Simply upload a file via the Teams application or via SharePoint in Office 365 and direct your teammate to the file. You can collaborate in real time on any Microsoft files (Word, Excel, Powerpoint) and the changes will save automatically: no more deleting a file and re-uploading it every time you make an edit, as was necessary with Box.
For OVPUE-wide sharing, we created a Team called 0365-[Sec] BL-VPUE-ALL and added all OVPUE staff as members. Files can be added to the appropriate Channel and all OVPUE staff will have access to them.
What about sharing outside of OVPUE or outside of IU?
Secure Teams do not allow you to add a non-member to a file, even if they are IU personnel. Only Team site owners can add members and manage permissions.
For any type of sensitive data that must be shared with non-OVPUE users, please submit a ticket to Information Technology to find a solution that can ensure proper security from start to finish. It is important never to store sensitive data in a non-secure site.
More help: Clinton’s recorded Teams demonstration
We’ve added Chapters to Clinton’s live Teams workshop from last November in which he goes into detail about getting started in Teams and optimizing the tool for your daily experience. Click the hamburger menu in the top left of the video to scroll through the chapter options. (Hint: you can change your playback speed by clicking the Settings gear icon in the bottom of the player.)
Some helpful chapters for viewing may be:
Getting Started 3min
File Storage 5min
Benefits of Teams 5min
Quick Tour of the Platform 4min
Tips for Implementation 20min
What Works Well for OVPUE IT 13min
Remember to submit any questions or challenges you’ve encountered with Teams here to help us best serve you.
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