Team for Shared Storage

[mitchell1981]

Hi All,

 

Has anyone moved to a Teams only model for Shared Storage? We've been investigating moving our two shared drives to Sharepoint, but the permissions management looks a bit horrible to me.

 

Having played around with Teams, it seems like each Team has it's own storage pool (I know this is Sharepoint behind the scenes), and this is obviously only accessible by the members of the Team so the permissions are basically built in.

 

I know that using third party tools can be risky, but Cloud Drive Mapper does a good job presenting the Teams storage inside a mapped drive, which makes it easy to access the files the old fashioned way if you want to.

 

Are there any reasons not to dump the old shared drive format, and move to storing all files within Teams? We have a 1Gbps connection. I can see backups being more difficult.

 

Thanks.

[TechMonkey]

We looked at it but Management thought it a step too far as we were making a lot of other changes at the same time.

 

Our plan was departmental Teams with the lead for that department as the owner. It was there then to do and organise as they please. IT could jump in if the departmental lead changed or left, but otherwise it should be self organising. SLT did want access to all Teams but I suggested that that would just add to their clutter and that they should either get documents they need to look at shared with them or just organise a central area to move things like minutes to for wider consumption. I felt this would also give greater ownership to the department as they could use it as a faculty room. This would leave Sharepoint to be a publishing area, so gatekeepers would publish documents others need access to, ie policies.

 

It would be a massive change in work flow but I think it would have worked brilliantly. Over lockdown we setup a Curriculum team for those not furloughed and it worked really well for questions, announcements and organising documents. We also use Teams for our IT department doings, files and chat.

 

As for backups, we currently rely on the built-in Recycle bin and versioning as we haven't had anything deleted more than 30 days ago need to be importantly restored. Currently investigating backup solutions, and looking between 2k and 4k pa depending on if we have local or offsite storage.

[supportman]

Yes we've done it, we have a general staff team with a linked SharePoint files section for all departments, admin and Co-Curricular in there.

 

Works quite well I must say and permissions is far easier than a local folder in my opinion.

 

Migration was "fun" and I definitly suggest cleaning your current local drive first of arching files over a certain year off using robocopy. But we got there in the end and made are going to make our local shared drive read only soon.

 

The only issue we've had is finding something that can backup our 400gb Sharepoint folder.

[jmak]

You #shouldn't# need 3rd party tools to create a "mapped drive view" any more; it's now possible using group policy:

 

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/onedrive/use-group-policy#configure-team-site-libraries-to-sync-automatically

 

When we did it a couple of years ago, there was some grumbling because people didn't understand what they were getting and it wasn't possible to configure through GPO, so people had to set up the sync themselves.

 

Once people realised how easy it was to set libraries to sync for themselves, most people were happy. When the word got it that all the files were available anywhere, people were generally happy with any downsides compared to the benefits.

 

Obviously downloading and uploading large files is slower than with a local file server - but that only impacts the first time you access the file: after that it's quicker because it's local so you're not even dependent on the LAN. You're also dependent on O365 working properly and your internet connection. The internet connection for individual users is easily overcome by using a hotspot from your phone (also means you're not dependent on any of your local infrastructure).

 

I would say that you should do it as a project with sponsors in SLT and it should be part of adopting O365. I also used Conditional Access so that the files are only accessible from domain joined machines - you need Azure AD P1 for that - but that's a risk decision for data security that your management would need to take.

 

On backups, I reckon the Microsoft are more capable of keeping data safe than I am, but there are various commercial products or you could sync all libraries locally and then back that up (not an official approach...)

[bald_pig]

This is one of the projects I currently have on the back burner, I'm looking at migrating the data to Teams, and using GPO to sync the teams via OneDrive. I'm currently waiting for input from my MS contact on whether to use Teams or go direct to Sharepoint.

[GreyWhirly]

This is one of the projects I currently have on the back burner, I'm looking at migrating the data to Teams, and using GPO to sync the teams via OneDrive. I'm currently waiting for input from my MS contact on whether to use Teams or go direct to Sharepoint.

 

We are also looking to do something similar for storage of staff documents (staff meeting agendas, minutes, etc and policy documents). I would be really interested to hear what your MS contact advises. Not all our staff have school laptops (TAs, site staff), so some people will be accessing it from personal devices (which as I write just makes me wince a little). However all staff do have a school email address (we did this at the start of lockdown as we used Teams to live stream staff meetings) - so using Teams/Sharepoint to store/share staff information documents makes sense .. unless there is a better way?

[TechMonkey]

unless there is a better way?

 

Not sure it is a case of a better way, it is what works for you and your school.

 

Using Teams is a very distributed and democratic(?) way of doing it, departments looking after themselves and acting like black boxes a little bit, providing information on schedule or as requested. It is very much the new way of IT and information. If your department heads and SLT are fine with that, it will work. Where it may fall over is if management want to keep tight control or oversight, if it isn't organised well or if there are aren't clear lines of who needs access to what. So a secondary school where there are clear departments works well, with the few stragglers who may change what they teach from year to year maybe causing a bit of an issue at the start of the academic years. It will also annoy those that are used to looking at everything, clear communication lines are needed, so SEN may have issues if they rely on diving into department folders to find minutes or read up on work. It may have to be some staff are added to everything. That isn't ideal as you end up with the classic case you get with distribution lists, of people being added to many just to be informed and then no one knows who is getting what information and some being overwhelmed with more information than they need.

 

Just using SharePoint is the more traditional method like mapped drives. IT sets up a library, documents go in and people dive in to get what they need. I know you can make SharePoint more distributed with groups and group sites, but I would say most don't use that.

 

Neither is wrong, it is what fits the management style and culture of the school.

[GreyWhirly]

Not sure it is a case of a better way, it is what works for you and your school.

Just using SharePoint is the more traditional method like mapped drives. IT sets up a library, documents go in and people dive in to get what they need. I know you can make SharePoint more distributed with groups and group sites, but I would say most don't use that.

Neither is wrong, it is what fits the management style and culture of the school.

 

Thanks @TechMonkey - I think your second description probably fits what I am looking for. We don't really need different departments - not big enough to warrant that! But just a good old fashioned library of docs. I have seen SharePoint in some of it's guises when I have created a Team or a Group in O365 .. but I guess there is a way to get to real Sharepoint and create sites that way?

I feel another session of Googling and YouTube watching to up my skills on this one!! ;-)

 

Thanks

[supportman]

Just remember that it is very difficult to backup large 100gb+ file libraries. I've tried with Veeam O365 backup and it just times out sadly.

[JScott]

I would be interested to know if anyone is starting to look at backing up O365?

[ozydave]

I would be interested to know if anyone is starting to look at backing up O365?

Yep, started using Barracuda cloud backup since we started the heavy use of Teams.

Licensed by number of staff. It then includes all students 3.4k a year

[techy32]

We have completely moved to Office 365 during the lockdown (Exchange online + SharePoint online).... Thank you DfE for the funding..

 

What a nightmare to come back after summer holidays with Office 365 but things are settling well now for us....

 

My understanding is that we have one month worth of backup from Microsoft for email and SharePoint... Can we extend the backup retention with Microsoft?

[psydii]

We have completely moved to Office 365 during the lockdown (Exchange online + SharePoint online).... Thank you DfE for the funding..

 

What a nightmare to come back after summer holidays with Office 365 but things are settling well now for us....

 

My understanding is that we have one month worth of backup from Microsoft for email and SharePoint... Can we extend the backup retention with Microsoft?

 

90 days is the max configurable without using retention policies.

 

You need A5 for retention policies I believe. There are many things that A5 can obviate. In some cases 3rd party backup is one of them. So while an expensive headline, when you consider it is a phone system, advanced anti malware product, a pretty decent forensic tool, web filter, records management system, with advanced e discovery, and not to mention the additional video/meeting recording features loved by teachers in these hybrid times it starts to look better value than first glance.