Just because Microsoft launches something, doesn’t mean you need to accept it without asking any questions.

You cannot build a company intranet using Microsoft Teams and/or OneDrive. That is not what they are designed to do. Each one merely creates endless silos of information by the thousand in companies. And yes yes, you can collaborate and chat and blah blah blah, fine, but those tools are NOT about the company, they are about the individual or a limited audience project teams! You simply cannot get an overview of your business only using those 2 tools. And don’t even get me started on the permissions on all of this, you know how I feel about that!

I don’t care what anyone says, as a business owner, I have a big problem with people just being able to create as many silos as they want. Have we not had this fundamental issue in business for decades? Is it getting any better, despite all the technology available to us? Every single company we have dealt with in 10 years has complained about silo’d information in their businesses and not being able to get an overview of what’s going on.

So what did the industry do? Enter SharePoint, a BRILLIANT platform that actually does resolve the silo issue if you do it right. But no, people just created subfolder hell by just recreating their fileshares on SharePoint, then blamed the technology! There is nothing wrong with SharePoint, you’re just doing it wrong. Then Microsoft rode in “to the rescue” and they whipped up OneDrive and Microsoft Teams – screwed up the permissions and governance model royally in the process – and sold it as the “answer” to all your problems. Except it’s not, is it? Because I can guarantee you, that if you are only using those 2 platforms and not SharePoint (properly), you are just compounding, and compounding, and compounding the issue of silo’d information.

Of course Teams and OneDrive have their place in your Information Management Strategy / Data Management / Knowledge Management / IT / Office 365 / SharePoint Strategy! … (You have at least one of those right?). They have their good uses too, but they are NOT intranets. There are legal, compliance, HR and governance considerations that everyone is magically forgetting just so they can chat online via Teams.

I cannot reiterate enough how important it is to have a proper strategy documented for your Microsoft / Office 365 platform. I will stake my career on it, that if you are building your entire intranet using only Microsoft Teams, you are going to end up rebuilding it in under 2 years. And then it’s going to cost you. Take the requisite time to plan properly and use the right tool for the right job. You cannot rush a platform like Microsoft / Office 365.