Adding Cloud Storage to Teams

Quick reference

• 00:04 When you're working with files, you have to store them somewhere and
• 00:07 nothing is more convenient than storing them on your local computer.
• 00:11 However, if you do, you miss out on the benefits of storing files in the Cloud.
• 00:16 Those include accessing your files from any device or
• 00:19 when you're traveling or you're on your phone.
• 00:21 You won't have access to the files if they're only on your PC, and
• 00:24 what have you lose your PC or if you get an upgrade?
• 00:28 You'll have to restore all those files from a backup.
• 00:31 The most common way of sharing local files is to send them as attachments.
• 00:34 And this can lead to versioning issues, a problem you really want to avoid.
• 00:39 And if you're working with large files, those can be hard to share.
• 00:44 Microsoft 365 and
• 00:46 Office 365 come with a personal Cloud storage service called OneDrive.
• 00:52 When you put files on OneDrive, they are private by default.
• 00:54 Now, it's easy to share them with others, but
• 00:57 you have to go through an extra step to that.
• 01:00 And there's a synchronization service that makes it easy for
• 01:03 you to work on your personal files locally.
• 01:05 And they are automatically synchronized into OneDrive, and
• 01:08 that way you get the best of both words.
• 01:10 Teams which is also built into Microsoft and
• 01:14 Office 365, you can think of as shared Cloud Storage.
• 01:18 Everything you put on Teams is shared with your team by default.
• 01:21 You don't have to go through any extra steps to share files.
• 01:25 Teams has the same synchronization capabilities as OneDrive so
• 01:29 you can work locally and share to your team.
• 01:32 It's built on SharePoint Online, which is a service we haven't talked about much in
• 01:36 this class, because it's behind the scenes.
• 01:39 Even so, when you share a file on Teams, it's actually stored on SharePoint Online.
• 01:44 You don't generally need to be concerned about that.
• 01:46 But it does come up when we're talking about files.
• 01:49 One of the best things about teams is the extensibility.
• 01:52 It's easy to add cloud-based file storage to Teams.
• 01:56 This lets you add other services that are familiar to you.
• 01:59 So you have learning curve and provides flexibility,
• 02:02 lets you adapt to the way that you already work.
• 02:06 Services like Dropbox, Box, Citrix, and
• 02:09 Google Drive can easily be added directly into Teams.
• 02:12 Let me show you how that works.
• 02:14 In other lessons, we talked about opening and uploading files, but
• 02:18 let's go a little deeper.
• 02:19 Here you can see you can also open in SharePoint.
• 02:23 Now, normally you wouldn't need to do this but
• 02:25 let's just take a look at what happens.
• 02:27 When you do, this opens up the underlying file storage system for Teams,
• 02:32 which is SharePoint Online.
• 02:34 You can see these are the exact same files.
• 02:37 And it is definitely possible to use this URL to put your files into and
• 02:43 those files will then show up in Teams.
• 02:45 However, why bother when you can just post them directly into Teams?
• 02:50 Also, notice on the left there is a Files tab.
• 02:53 And if you click on this tab,
• 02:55 you'll see that your personal file storage is also listed here under OneDrive.
• 03:00 So Megan can click on OneDrive and access all the files that she has stored there.
• 03:06 And here she can copy or download or open it in the OneDrive interface,
• 03:12 as we're looking at the files that are stored in OneDrive.
• 03:15 But we're using it in the Teams' interface.
• 03:17 So this is basically just a front-in.
• 03:20 You can think of it like that.
• 03:21 These files are actually stored on OneDrive.
• 03:24 Let's click on Open in OneDrive and view them in the OneDrive interface.
• 03:30 When we click on Open in OneDrive, we'll see the files as they exist in OneDrive.
• 03:35 This is where the files actually live.
• 03:38 And as a result, you'll see that the files behave a little differently depending on
• 03:41 where you use them.
• 03:43 The Teams' listing is just pointing to
• 03:46 where the files actually reside in OneDrive.
• 03:49 So there is a difference in the way they behave.
• 03:52 In the OneDrive interface, if I click on Employee Travel, for example.
• 03:57 And then I select all the things I can do, I have a lot of choices including share,
• 04:02 for example.
• 04:03 However, if I try to do the same action from Teams'
• 04:08 interface of the OneDrive files, I'll find I have fewer choices.
• 04:12 And share is not an option.
• 04:14 And that's because the sharing permissions have to be enabled
• 04:19 where the file resides, which is in OneDrive.
• 04:22 This is provided as a convenience.
• 04:24 So in this case Megan only needs to go to one place to access all of her files.
• 04:29 Her personal files are here, her team's files are here, and then also
• 04:34 she can find the files for individual channels and their listings as well.
• 04:39 Any files here are shared with the entire team's.
• 04:43 Whereas files that are listed here are just shared with her by default,
• 04:48 as you can see, although some of these have been already shared out.
• 04:52 And they'll be listed as shared in the Sharing column.
• 04:55 In many cases, people have file storage services that they'd like to use
• 04:59 similar to the way you can access OneDrive in Teams.
• 05:02 You can add those pretty easily by simply clicking Add Cloud Storage
• 05:07 in the Files tabs on Teams.
• 05:09 So we'll click Add File Storage and we'll add a Box account.
• 05:13 An important note here is that if you're trying to add a business Box account,
• 05:17 one that's for your entire company, you may want to use single sign on.
• 05:21 You'll be looking for instructions from your IT department if that's the case.
• 05:26 Otherwise, if it's a personal account, just use your personal login.
• 05:32 And now the files that are in the Box account are visible in Teams similar to
• 05:36 the way the files are in OneDrive are visible in team.
• 05:40 Again, these are not shared with the team by default.
• 05:42 It's necessary to go into Box to share those from here.
• 05:47 That's the difference from the Teams' files which are shared automatically with
• 05:50 the teams whenever you place them in the storage.
• 05:52 Finally, it is possible to add cloud storage in the channel as well.
• 05:57 In this case, you want to be sure that what you're adding is available to
• 06:01 everyone in the channel so that they'll have access to it.
• 06:04 The most common use case for
• 06:05 this is a SharePoint document library that you'd like to add to a team.
• 06:09 Because it's SharePoint Online, which is part of Office 365,
• 06:12 Your company will have access to it already, which is a great convenience.
• 06:16 So let's review using File Stores and Teams.
• 06:21 You can access files from personal cloud storage services in Teams.
• 06:25 By default, OneDrive is already accessible under the Files tab.
• 06:30 Now remember, OneDrive files are not shared by default.
• 06:34 And to share them you open the files in OneDrive which you can do directly in
• 06:37 the Teams interface.
• 06:40 On the other hand, files added to Teams are shared by default, and
• 06:44 Teams uses SharePoint Online behind the scenes.
• 06:48 You can add other file store services to Teams.
• 06:51 If it's a personal account, it works just like OneDrive.
• 06:54 If you have a corporate account for a file service, you can add those
• 06:58 to the Files tab of a channel where the files will then be accessible by all.
• 07:03 In our next lesson,
• 07:04 we'll talk about the fun topic of extending Teams by adding applications.

Lesson notes are only available for subscribers.