Microsoft Teams vs. SharePoint Team Sites: Know the Difference?

Microsoft Office is a large ecosystem with a great suite of software. Included in the suite are a number of collaboration options including SharePoint Groups, Yammer, SharePoint Teams and Microsoft Teams.  While business users have many options when it comes to collaboration, Microsoft has done the best job in detailing when to use which platform.  

For this blog post I hope to clear up the situation around Microsoft Teams and SharePoint Teams.  In general, businesses will end up using both tools, but they were created for different jobs in mind. Before I get started, I feel that it is important to define what both of these tools are.

What are SharePoint Team Sites:
  
First and foremost, it is a document management and collaboration platform that provides a number of use cases including managing data in a list, workflow approvals and document publishing.  

What is Microsoft Teams:
 
Microsoft will tell you that is the collaboration tool that brings together the full breadth and depth of Office 365, to provide a true chat-based hub for teamwork and give customers the opportunity to create a more open, fluid, and digital environment.

When should you use Microsoft Teams?

• When there is a need for group conversations and discussions.  To organize meetings and share files all in one place.
• To post announcements and have conversations with the team rather than using emails.  You can introduce channels to discuss different topics
• For small project teams

When should you use SharePoint Team Sites?

• When document governance is required (I.e. versioning, metadata, restricted libraries, etc.)
• When you need a tool to store and mange documents that have a lifecycle
• For more static content.

So, it comes down to what kind of communication and collaboration is your group primarily dealing with?  Do you need to share information with large groups that require more control or are you working with smaller, more agile groups?  Ultimately, organizations generally use both. It just depends on the use case.