SharePoint's Relationship with Teams

UConn faculty, staff and students have access to both SharePoint and Microsoft Teams. These two applications are tightly integrated.

You can create a team in Microsoft Teams in order to share files and create message boards with other users. Within these teams, you can add files and create folders to organize files. This is helpful when working on a project: you can store all the relevant project files in one place where coworkers can collaborate in real-time.

Every time a team is created in Teams, an accompanying SharePoint site is created. Any files/folders added to the Team are actually stored in SharePoint. Teams acts as a window into SharePoint. When you move, open, rename, etc. these files, you’re actually manipulating them inside of SharePoint.

What does this look like?

Below, you will see a new team created, the accompanying SharePoint site, and how it’s all connected. These steps are written out as instructions, but they are only to explain the link between the two services.

In Teams, click on Join or create a team found at the bottom of my Teams window. Choose Create a team and choose the Other type so all members have equal access. To learn more about the types of teams, visit the link at the bottom of this guide.

Now that the team has been created, it can be seen at the bottom of the list of teams that you are a member of.

Within the new team, there is a General channel. These sub-team groups are called “channels”. This “General” channel is created with every new team. Next, click on the Files tab. Click on New and then Folder to make a folder and keep files organized.

Now drag-and-drop some files into this window.

These files are now backed up. You see them and edit them by clicking on them here. Coworkers who were added, or will be added, to this team can see and edit these files as well.
Next, click on Open in SharePoint to demonstrate the connection to SharePoint. This is not required in daily use.

This button opens a web browser and leads to the exact folder you were looking at in Teams. Already, this interface is very similar to Teams. Click on Documents to back out to the top level of the SharePoint site.

Now the entire SharePoint site that was created in tandem with the team is visible.
However, there are two sections in the Document Library. One is labeled In channels and the other is labeled In site library.

To emphasize this distinction, head back to Teams and create a second channel. Call it “New Channel”. Just like the General channel, this new channel can hold folders and files. Files added to New Channel are separated from the files in General.

Now, look back at the SharePoint website and see the newly created channel in the In channels section along with “General”.

Go back to Teams and click on “New Channel”. Then click on the Files tab at the top. Drag-and-drop a PDF into the Teams window to add the PDF to the list of files in the channel.

Now go back to the web browser to look at the SharePoint site. Look at the section below the two channel folders. The In site library section is where you will find every file and folder in the SharePoint site. Here you can see the two channel folders included in the list. If you open the “New Channel” folder in the In site library section you will see the same PDF as you do in the “New Channel” folder shown in the In channels section. They are the same folder shown in two places. Think of them as two shortcuts leading to the same directory.

If you add a file to the “New Channel” folder using the SharePoint website, it will also appear in the Teams App as if you drag-and-dropped it into the Teams App itself.

Note: Because these folders are duplicate shortcuts, the In channels section will often be collapsed as shown below. Click on the caret to expand the section if needed.

In site library

Now that you know these are two shortcuts leading to the same folder, this guide will move on to the next feature. Click on New and create new folder called Purchase Orders. This time creating the folder from the SharePoint website and not from within Teams.

This Purchase Orders folder lives in the SharePoint site, but it is not visible from any Teams channel. If you open Teams, you cannot see Purchase Orders. This folder is relevant to the department, but you don’t want it associated with either of the channels. Just like you, coworkers can see and edit this folder if they open the SharePoint website, but they do not see it from within Teams.

Optional: In order to see the Purchase Orders folder on you computer without using the SharePoint website, you need to Sync the SharePoint site to your computer. Steps for syncing your computer can be found in the guide linked at the bottom of this page. Syncing your computer will allow you to view the In site library section from within your File Explorer (Windows) and Finder (macOS) windows.

In Summary

• The Files tab in Microsoft Teams acts as a window into the SharePoint site that is created for the team.

• All the files added to a team are actually stored in SharePoint and can be accessed at the SharePoint website. Teams itself does not store any files.

• When creating new channels in a team, new folders are created in the SharePoint site to keep files separate from other channels.

• Files added to the SharePoint website will appear in Teams as if added to Teams directly.

• Folders can be created on the SharePoint website that will not appear in Teams.

• Files added to Teams share the benefits of files added directly to SharePoint: recycle bin, version history, etc.

Related Guides

• Types of teams in Teams: Microsoft Support Guide.

• Accessing Files on your Computer: Access SharePoint files