Is SharePoint the best solution for shared file management of a small company?
Posted by EVILSANTA777@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 25 comments
I'll preface with I'm not an IT professional, so please redirect me if necessary.
I run a CPA firm that was previously just myself, so files management was easy. Client files (originally uploaded to a secure third party portal) are pulled to my business OneDrive and everything is kept in well organized folders.
I am now looking to hire, and need a way to share these files among employees, or at least pick and choose which clients (i.e. folders) to show employees.
Is setting up a SharePoint and migrating all my OneDrive files and structure there the best way to achieve this? With 2-3 employees max it may limit my options, but just trying to figure out what makes the most sense. I'm not opposed to somehow setting up a shared network drive, but I thought this wasn't best practice anymore. Employees will be fully remote too.
Temporary-Library597@reddit
Yes. A small business of any kind should implement tools that are as ubiquitous as possible. It cuts onboarding costs and it's a heck of a lot easier to hire people who are familiar with the tools.
sin-eater82@reddit
SharePoint would be fine on paper, but managing SharePoint sites and permissions is something that has a lot of gotchas. You kinda know or you don't. And with 3 people, you may never run into an issue. But it can get messy.
ebsf@reddit
For a small company with a LAN, a simple shared directory / folder is all that is necessary. It can be done on existing hardware at no cost and simply requires configuration.
The next step beyond that is dedicating a computer other than someone's workstation to the purpose. Both are examples of file servers but regular Windows workstation is all that is necessary. If you want, the machine can run Linux, run Samba, and do the same thing. Either way, you can beef up this machine's hardware to handle more storage, and configure it for backups and to run network authentication, via Active Directory on Windows Server or Samba and LDAP (for free) on Linux.
Putting storage in the cloud may have a purpose but in most SMB situations is simply silly, given the cost and complexity.
walkalongtheriver@reddit
For real. Why overcomplicate it?
s3ntin3l99@reddit
Let’s not forget all the important backups. Make sure you have a solution in place to backup your sharepoint too. I am always restoring something that got deleted on weekly basis…
EduRJBR@reddit
In my opinion, the real issue with SharePoint is that, unless you enforce it to be used strictly online in a web browser, if you let it be used from OneDrive, you need to presume that there will come a day when someone will be offline for whatever reason and will edit a file (a file that is regularly used by them, with an existing offline copy in their computer) while someone else is editing the same file (this "real" one in the cloud), and the final result will be two versions of the same file (with something added to the name). And if it happens, you also need to presume that the issue won't be spotted right away, and in the future it will be a nightmare to integrate those two sets of information.
But then I guess regular SMB shares can also let the issue happen (if someone opens a file and then loses connection, I guess the file lock will be released eventually after some time, won't it?), and maybe it can be even worse because the first person to open the file will save it after they connect again, and the alterations made by the other person will be lost with no clues of it happening...
But I still believe that it should be possible to make it impossible to have offline versions of MS Office files (to have only references to them with a cloud icon), in a way that Word, Excel etc... would always open that cloud version directly, or not open at all if one is offline. I tried that "dehydration" thing once, but that's not what it's supposed to do.
And about collaboration, multiple users working on the same file at the same time: it's an awesome feature, when people want to use that feature and when they know that that feature exists in the first place (when people are aware that other people may be using that file at that time). Users must not only be taught about a great feature, but also warned about it.
And if you need more than that 1 TB of storage (for the files, their versions and the trash bins), the cost of additional storage is obscenely bizarre.
SufficientFrame@reddit
For a 2-3 person remote firm already living in Microsoft 365, SharePoint is a pretty reasonable default, mainly because it gives you shared ownership of the files instead of tying everything to one person's OneDrive. The part I'd think through carefully is permissions: if you need employee access by client, it usually works better to create a small number of document libraries or top-level client groupings with clear security boundaries rather than breaking inheritance on lots of individual folders, which gets messy fast. A VPN/shared drive can work, but for fully remote staff it tends to add more support overhead and weaker audit/versioning compared with SharePoint. I'd also check whether any CPA compliance requirements affect where files live, guest sharing, retention, and who can sync locally.
ihaxr@reddit
Yes but do not do it this way in SharePoint.
Start off by just creating a new list for each client you have to share to someone else. Grant permissions to the entire list to whoever needs it. Then create another one for the next client.
Eventually you'll be able to create a list template that will have more customized columns, indicate statuses on files, etc...
Then maybe switch to a new site per client, they'll be created from a template and include a couple of things common around clients like a calendar for reminders and meetings, a list that contains all the contacts of the client, a list that contains contracts, one that contains working documents, one that contains completed documents, etc...
beren0073@reddit
Whatever you pick, consider security and accountability. Access control, audit logs, least privilege.
Resident_Role_2815@reddit
Lots of good and responsible IT advice here... but if you're maxing out at 3 users... just share the folders from your OneDrive with them. You don't need scalability, and you don't have any of the IT skills to leverage it anyway. Keep it simple. If your staffing needs change and you outgrow it, your migration to SharePoint will be basically the same amount of effort.
Working46168@reddit
One thing I can say is that training your users with Caniphish is a lot easier than migrating sharepoint. Check it out today! ;)
Stabbycrabs83@reddit
Yes is the short answer but make it more user friendly and use teams as the front end.
Spend some time doing a bit of data architecture upfront and you'll save hundreds of hours on the back end
McDeth@reddit
You’re literally the first person I’ve ever seen describing Teams as user-friendly lol
Stabbycrabs83@reddit
Lol
I know what you mean. We use it at our small msp and it was a disaster first time round. I built it for me then we grew.
I ended up making an archive team, firing everything in there then building what i wanted and moving things into the new structure.
We have stuff like
CAT-Xxx for services catalogue offerings Management - private stuff Proj-xxx for big projects Marketing
And everything is filed neatly now.
It can work but thats more about data structure than tech
brazzala@reddit
Bro, go Google route with Premium for 40$ (10TB) - you can make it even easier. No MS buls...t
Samatic@reddit
Google workspace is way easier to manage shared files for a small business. With MS you get an ever changing tenant and mounds of over thought stuff to deal with.
Assumeweknow@reddit
The most scalable setup is building it around group access rights so you can assign groups to the folders and users to the groups.
cpz_77@reddit
Yes, it should work well for what you described. Especially with employees being remote, and espcially if you will be utilizing other MS services as well and are already familiar with their toolset.
What sort of plan do you have right now? I think there’s a minimum count to be able to get a M365 “business level” subscription that includes a SharePoint environment and such - it might be like 5 or 10 users , not sure. But even if it’s a little more than you need for your employee count right now I’d probably suggest getting it so you can utilize the business-oriented features that come with it. Of course, the most basic M365 business subscriptions won’t have the more advanced security and compliance features but for basic file sharing and collaboration amongst a small group, something like that should be perfect.
Also it opens the door for you to easily share files with external clients if needed, work with files in Teams, etc. I’d suggest keeping your Sharepoint sites internal and using OneDrive and/or Teams (which uses OD and SP under the hood anyway) for external sharing but thats just my preference, there are many ways to do it. In any case, be cautious about what external sharing you allow - make sure to review the related settings before opening this up to your employees to use. It might be worth bringing an IT consultant onboard to help you get setup.
EVILSANTA777@reddit (OP)
Appreciate yours and everyone's responses so far. I have 2 Business Premium licenses right now that I just upgraded to, and am in the process of doing security set up (Intune, Entra ID, Email Encryption, etc.). The last piece of the set up puzzle is file management.
I actually have an all-encompassing client portal that takes care of all of my external needs, so does that make Teams/SharePoint even more compelling since it's internal only?
jameseatsworld@reddit
Business premium license will give each user 1TB of OneDrive storage and will allow for 1TB base storage shared in SharePoint.
You will need to optimise version in SharePoint as auto-versioning will chew through that 1TB really fast.
Your users need to make sure they use OneDrive for smaller projects, personal files, and limit SharePoint data to truely shared information or data that needs to be stored for a long time.
Additional storage charges for SharePoint very quickly become uneconomical. If you have more than a few TB of data you are better off looking at Dropbox or something. Our markeing Dept uses Dropbox for storing their media assets - 100TB for less than we pay for 5TB of SharePoint storage.
In terms of permissions, create a new M365 team or SharePoint site for each unique library. Setting folder level permissions within a single SharePoint site is a very painful experience to manage.
TechMonkey605@reddit
Like every one says yes, do a data dive first. Make sure to do A BAA with Microsoft if sharing with external(to you) customers. I have a demo tenant if you’re interested in seeing our CPA setup (transparency, we’re an MSP)
jkdjeff@reddit
Permissions in Sharepoint can be tricky.
Even if you don’t want to engage with one long term, an MSP to do the setup and migration might be a good idea.
pleachchapel@reddit
At this scale, I would absolutely use sharepoint. You can add it so it shows up natively in employee OneDrive, meaning they can use file explorer to access shared resources.
Anything else seems like overkill imo.
sceez@reddit
I still prefer a regular old file server with things you need to share externally living on Onedrive or SharePoint
Tr1pline@reddit
It's easy to manage, has versioning, and free if you have m365. yes.