“Should this go in Teams, SharePoint or OneDrive?” It’s one of the most common Microsoft 365 questions. The short answer: it depends who the file belongs to. And once files are in the right place, the next step is sharing them safely, inside and outside the company.
What goes where
- OneDrive: your own work files. Drafts and working documents only you need. You can share a file from here, but if a whole team depends on it, it’s in the wrong place.
- Teams: files for a team or project. Each channel has a Files tab, and behind the scenes those files live in SharePoint, so chat and files stay together.
- SharePoint: company-wide content. Policies, templates, HR forms and anything the whole organisation reads but only a few people edit.
Three habits that keep it tidy
- Share links, not attachments, so everyone works on one version.
- Move team files out of personal OneDrive before someone leaves.
- Give every Team and SharePoint site an owner who reviews access twice a year.
Working with people outside the company
Three Teams settings that are often confused:
- Guest access: someone outside your company joins one of your teams and can see its channels and files.
- External access: you can chat and call people in other organisations, without them joining your teams.
- “Anyone” links: links to files that work for whoever has them, with no sign-in needed.
Safe defaults for most small businesses
- Allow guests, but only into teams with an owner who reviews them.
- Set guest access to expire, so old suppliers drop off automatically.
- Allow external chat only with the domains you actually work with.
- Turn off “anyone” links, or make them expire.
Tidy sharing also matters for Microsoft 365 Copilot, which can surface anything a user already has access to.
How Pentacle IT Solutions can help
Pentacle IT Solutions, a Microsoft Solutions Partner for Modern Work, helps businesses in Lucknow and across Uttar Pradesh organise Microsoft 365 and set sharing up safely.
