author: Jonathan Stuckey
Common user frustrations when using Microsoft 365, Microsoft Teams and SharePoint Online revolve around the misconception that Microsoft Teams offers an integrated experience of all their content (whether in OneDrive, SharePoint or another of the Office 365 services) - and they don't understand why display, or application functions are not available when they go to edit or interact with content through the Microsoft Teams UI.
The reason for this is because it isn't an integrated UI.
Well for some bits it is, but for content editing and collaboration on documents Microsoft Teams offers a window onto your content. Accessing your content via that window is not the same as accessing content directly via a desktop app (like Word), or even the SharePoint library ui (read: Office web-app). Showing this to users helps them get to grips with the "Why cant I..." or the classic "But surely it must do...." refrains of frustration I hear.
Microsoft Teams: Integrated presentation of services
With massive drive (read: COVID-19) to pivot for home-working, Microsoft has unleashed the full scope of what Microsoft Teams offers on the unsuspecting business world - which is a rather awesome suite of services, apps and experiences
You only have to take a look at Video Conferencing, Meetings, Calling|Microsoft Teams to see shear breadth of capability is mind-boggling:
Image: Microsoft Teams site - list of products within Microsoft Teams service
So why my interest?
In my day-job I deal with a lot of organisations trying to get to grips with getting the most from Microsoft 365. Usually its led with Microsoft Teams, but invariably it comes back to how to work better with documents and content held ...you guessed it... in SharePoint.
Or OneDrive - which is really SharePoint anyway, but that's a discussion for another day.
Critical for user understanding is Microsoft Teams is a small, at best opaque, window into the vast array of capability that Microsoft and Office 365 has to offer. The are a numerous improvements across suite of Office 365 services every month, see: Microsoft 365 Roadmap | Microsoft 365 for summary, but only the smallest percentage of which are supported via the Microsoft Teams interface.
Default behavior when interacting with documents using Microsoft teams is:
drop document into chat or channel conversation.
document gets uploaded to the "Files" behind the scenes - so added to a SharePoint library.
invite users to comment or update the content
users access via auto-generated Microsoft Teams link - where the default user experience for the others is a reduced functional user-interface in Teams.
Compare
Editing the same document in SharePoint web vs. Microsoft Teams
The sliding scale isn't quite so obvious here - but it is noticeable:
The Word product development teams are leading the charge with attempting to gain parity between desktop | browser | Teams (browser-lite) experiences, but as soon as you step in to a spreadsheet, presentation or flow-diagram we see where the increasing distance between experiences are.
Switch to preferred editing experience
If your IT department have left you with the out-of-the-box experience with limited Microsoft Teams app experience, you can quickly switch to you preferred way of opening documents
The benefit of millions of users world-wide is that Microsoft occasionally takes the hint when everyone complains and provides nice little tweaks like "Change the default"
How to set your preferred way of working
Open Microsoft Teams
Select a document (but don't open yet)
Right click on the document with mouse (or click on ellipsis (...)
Hover-over 'Open in'
Select 'Change the default'
In the dialogue select your preference e.g. Desktop app
Click 'Save
When you open Word, Excel or PowerPoint docs in future, you will always have this option
About the author: Jonathan Stuckey
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