A Guide to Workplace Optimization With Microsoft Tools

When building out your company’s technology and telecom stack, you have plenty of options to choose from. Microsoft is almost always near the top of the list. But with so many different tools and systems under one umbrella, it can be confusing to make sense of them all.

In this article, we’ll attempt to explain the differences, features, the relationships between, and how to optimize Microsoft 365 Groups, Microsoft Teams, and Microsoft SharePoint. When you know how this trio works together, you can enhance productivity and collaboration throughout your organization.

Microsoft 365 Groups vs. Teams vs. SharePoint Explained

If you want to strip it down to the basics, Microsoft 365 Groups is a membership service that empowers individual users within your organization to collaborate and leverage the Microsoft 365 suite of tools. Teams builds on top of this foundation by giving you a hub for teamwork. And then there’s SharePoint, which helps you maximize the full potential of Microsoft Teams by creating a centralized location for storing content and files. That’s the basic gist, but here’s a more detailed breakdown:

What is Microsoft 365 Groups?

Microsoft 365 Groups is basically a membership service that powers various Microsoft 365 apps. This includes apps like Power BI, Planner, SharePoint, Roadmap, Project for the web, Yammer, Teams, Stream, Exchange inbox and calendar, etc.

Within Microsoft 365 Groups, you can set and manage individual user roles, assign permissions, and grant access. It allows you to decide how individual users are able to interact and collaborate with all of the Microsoft 365 apps in your ecosystem.

One of the more powerful features of Microsoft 365 Groups is that it lets you grant a group of people access to shared and collaborative resources, including Outlook inbox, shared calendars, SharePoint document libraries, Planners, OneNote notebooks—all of the apps highlighted above.

Another great feature of Groups is that you can toggle self-service features on, which gives your users the ability to create their own groups and share resources internally.

At the end of the day, Groups is designed to save management and IT departments time by preventing the need for manually assigning permissions for every single resource your organization uses. It also simplifies overall collaboration by giving selected groups of users real-time access to shared resources.

What is Microsoft Teams?

Microsoft Teams is a powerful communication and collaboration platform that combines chat capabilities, file storage, video conferencing, and other powerful features that integrate with a variety of Microsoft 365 apps. In other words, it helps combine the most compelling and useful parts of Microsoft 365 within a single tool.

When optimized, Microsoft Teams allows users to share ideas in private, chat-based conversations that can be held remotely between one or more employees. Users can also create online documents within a browser and store them on the cloud. Internal and external content and tools can be fully-integrated with different tabs. Plus, Teams comes packed with powerful bots that provide support for standard tasks and daily activities.

Teams is built on top of the Microsoft 365 Groups platform. Whenever you create a team within Microsoft Teams, you’re also creating a group on the back-end that’s associated with the team; making Microsoft Teams Optimization crucial.

If Groups is what runs in the background, Teams is what the actual users work out of on a daily basis. Its functionality is bred out of a variety of services that are connected under the Teams umbrella.

What is SharePoint?

If you want to get the most out of Microsoft Teams and maximize its potential, you must understand its relationship with SharePoint. Each time you create a new team, a SharePoint site is created on the back end within the Microsoft 365 Group. This is where all of the files and documents that the team shares and accesses are actually stored. It’s the invisible force in the background keeping everything centralized, organized, and accessible.

SharePoint optimization doesn’t get much of the attention or glory, but it’s absolutely integral to making Microsoft 365 Groups and Teams work. Without it, there would be no shareability.

While it can be challenging to wrap your brain around, hopefully you’re starting to understand the relationship between Microsoft 365 Groups, Teams, and SharePoint. Each plays an important role.

Optimizing Your Microsoft Service Stack

Want to optimize your Microsoft service stack? Here are several helpful tips:

Invest in Training and Education

You can have the most advanced tech stack in the industry, but if your employees and staff don’t know how to use it, it’s pointless. Make sure you’re investing as much time and energy into training and educating your staff as you are in selecting various tools and software.

Know Your Licenses

There are three main types of Microsoft licenses for enterprises. You have the E1 license, which gives access to basic services like email, file storage, sharing, meetings, Office on the web, etc. Then there’s E3, which offers everything E1 has in addition to Microsoft 365 apps (like PowerPoint, Word, OneNote, Excel, etc.) Finally, there’s the E5 license, which gives you all of the aforementioned functions plus advanced analytics security, and voice capabilities. Make sure you know what you’re getting!

Choose the Right Managed Service Provider

Finally, it’s important that you select the right managed services provider to help you oversee your entire technology stack and make smart decisions as it relates to IT and security. Without the right provider, everything else is at risk.

If you follow these tips, you’ll optimize your workplace and get more out of your Microsoft stack than almost all of your competitors. It’s about getting the small details right!

CCT Telecomm: Your One-Stop Workplace Optimization Partner

At CCT Telecomm, we’re committed to helping you optimize outlook 365, Sharepoint, and Teams for your infrastructure so that you can enhance productivity, efficiency, and security in the pursuit of greater profitability. We’re a one-stop shop for telecommunication, internet, and managed services.

Whether you need data and fiber cabling, business phone systems, business surveillance systems, SIP trunk services, high-speed internet, managed IT services, broadband internet service, or anything in between—we’re the partner for you. We’re a local company with nationwide reach. Call for a quote today!