Digital Storage options with Office 365 provide business owners with convenient and efficient data management. But with new software added daily, it is easy to get overwhelmed by the variety of options. Keep reading to find out which Office 365 program will be your best option for organizing and sharing information: SharePoint or OneDrive.
Similarities between OneDrive and SharePoint
Both OneDrive and SharePoint applications utilize Office 365 to help businesses organize information and share it with employees and company heads. Documents are stored in a cloud drive for security, so employees can track changes between edited versions, as well as make comments and add information when necessary. This real-time collaboration is one of the favorite benefits of online file management. Since data can be synchronized to various forms of technology, it is portable and usable everywhere.
When to save documents to OneDrive for Business
- You don’t plan to share them. Documents you place in OneDrive for Business are private by default, unless you place them in the Shared with Everyone folder. This makes OneDrive for Business your best option for draft documents or personal documents that no one else needs to see.
- You plan to share files individually and with a limited scope or lifecycle. For example, you’re writing a blog post that may not be associated with a project, and you’d like a few colleagues to review it before you post it. In this case, you expect people to use the document once without needing additional storage or context information. All they need is a link to the document and editing permission.
- You can’t identify an existing team site where your document belongs, and you don’t think the purpose of the document warrants creating a new one.
When to save documents to a team site library
- You want team members to recognize the document as being relevant to an ongoing project or department.
- You want to spread ownership and permissions across a wider collection of people. If a document is important to the success of a project, it’s a good idea for there to be people other than yourself who can control what happens on the site.
- You want permissions to be granted on a site basis, instead of on individual documents. If people have access to the team site, then they have access to documents stored in the site.
- Other project-related documents are already saved to the team site library, and others expect to find it there.
- You want to create a check-in workflow that assigns the document to someone else.
Office 365 encourages businesses to increase their employees' usage of online storage and data options. SharePoint and OneDrive are just two of the many programs provided to improve how your business is run. For more information on how online document sharing programs can help you increase your company's visibility and productivity, contact us today.