Back to some basics here. It’s too easy these days to get bogged down in the sheer number of tools available to you in the Office 365 App launcher. Rather than approach it from the angle of ‘which tool to use when’, let’s ignore all that and instead look at it from a document creation perspective.
Essentially the process described here follows a document through from creation directly in OneDrive to eventual publication on the Intranet. There are many different ways to achieve the same result, but the workflow documented here is one of the simplest and one I train my clients to follow.
The path the document travels is essentially this ..
OneDrive -> Teams -> SharePoint
The key here is we are Moving the document through a series of applications preserving version history and activity within the document. We also maintain ONE copy of the document at any given moment – one source of the truth.
There are many ways to automate this process using Power Automate for example – but it’s vital to understand the manual process before attempting any such automation.
1 – Create Document in OneDrive
- Open the Teams client and click on Files in the left hand rail
- Click on OneDrive
- Click on New and choose your document type
- Give the document a name and start editing. If preferred, click “Open in Desktop App” to open the document in the desktop version of the Office application
- Notice that AutoSave is now on (top left in the app) – no need to Save or Save As !
- Notice also that you can Share the document directly from within the desktop app (Share – top right)
- Close the app
Note that we have created a document directly in OneDrive without any intervening steps, no need to save to the desktop or a server location and subsequently upload to OneDrive. Since it’s in OneDrive we can access this document from any location using a variety of devices to continue the authoring process.
Right now the audience for the document is limited – it’s just you.
2 – Share Document for input
It’s highly likely that during the initial authoring process you might want to share the document with others for input. What we’re doing here is sharing a link to the document as it sits in OneDrive. Remember, until shared, you are the only person who has access to this document.
– Open the Teams client and click on Files in the left hand rail
– Click on OneDrive
– Click Open in OneDrive from the menu
– Locate your document and select it by clicking the circle to the left of the document title (don’t click on the file name or the document will open)
– Click on Share in the menu and complete the dialogue displayed
The audience for the document is now you and whomever you have shared the document with.
3 – Move Document into Teams
If the document at this stage should be accessible by your Team then it’s time to move that document from your OneDrive to your Team. Your Team already has the necessary permissions in place to allow all members to access documents located there so be aware that once moved to the Team, all members will have edit permissions.
• Open the Teams client and click on Files in the left hand rail
• Click on OneDrive
• Locate your document and select it by clicking the circle to the left of the document title (don’t click on the file name or the file will open)
• Choose Move To from the menu
• Click Browse Teams and Channels and choose the desired Team and channel
• Click Move
At this stage the audience for the document are your fellow Team members. Anyone in the Team can edit and collaborate on this document with you.
4 – Move Document from Teams to the Intranet
Finally, if the document should be available to all users in the Org then it’s highly likely some form of Intranet exists, possibly based on a SharePoint Communication site. The document is again moved to the appropriate site/library in the site, adhering to our remit of only having one copy of the document at any stage in the process.
• Open the Teams client
• Click on Teams in the left hand rail and choose your Team and channel
• Click on Files tab
• Locate and select your document
• Click on Move and choose destination site/library
From the initial authoring process in OneDrive to its final destination in a company facing Intranet, not only has the audience for the document grown but so too has the type of audience, from one where people can collaborate (Teams) to one where the majority of users have read only access to the document (Intranet)
By moving the document, we can guarantee that only one copy exists at any stage of the process.
Thanks for reading.