Presented at Microsfot Cloud User Group (2017) Microsoft have provided some great tools to enable us to collaborate in Office 365. We can use calendars, files, distribution lists, Skype, files … the list keeps growing. With the release of Teams, we have a new way to work with these different tools. In this presentation I will compare and contrast the capabilities of Office 365 Groups and Teams, and even some of the capabilities found in more traditional SharePoint team sites. You will learn what the differences are, what the benefits are and even what some of the teething pains are, and be enabled to choose the most appropriate tool for your teams to use.

1. blog.eardley.org.uk
Office365 Group vs Teams
“What you should be aware of”
Alan Eardley - @al_eardley
MSCUG
9 February 2017

2. blog.eardley.org.uk
What are Office 365 Groups and Teams?
Me -
OneDrive
Us - Teams
Us - Groups
Everyone - SharePoint

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Features
Groups Teams
Distribution List Yes Yes
Files Yes Yes*
OneNote Yes Yes*
Calendar Yes Yes*
Landing Page Yes Not visible
News Yes Not visible
Planner Yes Yes*
Yammer Group Yes** No
Persisted Chat No Yes
Channels No Yes
Connectors Yes Yes***

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Visibility
Groups Teams
Private Yes Yes
Public Yes Yes
External Yes No

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Access to features
Groups Teams
Outlook Calendar, Files, Notebook Notebook
Office 365 – Mail Calendar, Files, Notebook,
Planner, Site
Notebook
Office 365 – SharePoint Site
Office 365 – Planner Calendar, Files, Notebook Files, Notebook
Office 365 – Group Site Files, Notebook, News Files, Notebook
Teams - Web Files, Notebook, Calendar,
Planner, Conversations
Teams – Desktop Files, Notebook, Calendar,
Planner, Conversations

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Demo

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Groups - Drawbacks
• Interface
– Disjointed navigation
experience
• Skype
– Very little integration
• Conversations
– Outlook conversations add
nothing new
• Yammer
– Restrictions on integration
• Landing Page
– Does not offer links to all
features of a team (Calendar,
Planner)
• News
– No clear

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Teams - Drawbacks
• Calendar
– Can’t book meeting rooms, or
Surface Hub
– Can’t invite anyone outside of
Team
• Skype for Business
– When S4B client is open,
multiple toasts pop-up
– Joining meetings from Outlook
does not use Teams
• Planner
– Tasks in Teams planners are
not visible in the Groups
– Team Planners are not visible
in the Web interface for Planner
• News
– This is not available at all
• Chat
– This is restricted to the Team

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Summary
• Groups provide lots of features that teams need
• Teams provides the consolidated interface to access the features

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Thank-you
Alan Eardley – Alan.Eardley@outlook.com
blog.eardley.org.uk
@al_eardley
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