Microsoft 365 & SharePoint FAQ

SharePoint Online is Microsoft's cloud-based collaboration and document management platform, included in all Microsoft 365 business and enterprise subscriptions. It lets teams store, organise, and share documents, build intranet sites, publish news and announcements, and automate business processes — all without managing on-premises servers.

Unlike the older SharePoint Server (installed on your own hardware), SharePoint Online is maintained entirely by Microsoft, which means automatic updates, 99.9% uptime SLA, and built-in security features included in the subscription cost.

OneDrive is personal cloud storage — think of it as your private drive in the cloud. Files saved here are yours by default and not visible to colleagues unless you explicitly share them.

SharePoint is a team collaboration platform for shared documents, team sites, intranet content, and structured data. Files shared in Microsoft Teams are actually stored in a SharePoint document library behind the scenes.

The simple rule: use OneDrive for personal work-in-progress files; use SharePoint for anything that belongs to a team or the organisation.

Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) is a subscription suite that bundles productivity apps, cloud services, and security features. Depending on the plan, it includes:

Apps: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Access, Publisher
Cloud services: SharePoint, OneDrive, Microsoft Teams, Exchange Online
Intelligent tools: Microsoft Copilot, Power Platform, Viva suite
Security & compliance: Microsoft Defender, Purview, Entra ID

Plans range from Microsoft 365 Business Basic ($6/user/month) to Enterprise E5 ($57/user/month). The right plan depends on your organisation's size, security requirements, and which features you need.

Teams and SharePoint are deeply integrated — every Microsoft Teams team automatically creates a SharePoint site behind the scenes. Each Teams channel gets its own SharePoint document library folder. When your colleagues share files in a Teams channel, those files live in SharePoint.

This means Teams is the collaboration and communication interface, while SharePoint is the underlying content storage and governance layer. Files uploaded in Teams benefit from SharePoint's version history, metadata, permissions, and retention policies automatically.

Yes — SharePoint Online is cloud-based, so it's accessible from any device with an internet connection through a browser, the SharePoint mobile app, or the OneDrive sync client. Multi-factor authentication (MFA) and Conditional Access policies in Microsoft Entra ID ensure that access is secure even when employees are working remotely.

If your organisation requires VPN-free remote access with stricter controls, Microsoft's Zero Trust framework with Entra ID Conditional Access can enforce device compliance, location restrictions, and session controls without requiring a VPN.

SharePoint uses a layered permission model. Permission levels (Full Control, Edit, Contribute, Read, etc.) are bundles of individual rights assigned to users or groups. SharePoint groups (Owners, Members, Visitors) hold those permission levels and are assigned to sites, libraries, folders, or items.

By default, permissions inherit downward: a site's settings apply to its libraries, which apply to folders and files. You can "break inheritance" on any item to set unique permissions, but this creates governance complexity and should be used sparingly.

For a full breakdown, see our SharePoint Permissions Guide.

Microsoft 365 is built on Azure, one of the most security-certified cloud platforms in the world. Microsoft holds over 90 compliance certifications including ISO 27001, SOC 2, HIPAA, FedRAMP, and GDPR. Data is encrypted at rest (AES-256) and in transit (TLS 1.2+).

That said, cloud security is a shared responsibility. Microsoft secures the infrastructure; you are responsible for configuring user access, MFA, data classification, and retention policies correctly. Most M365 security incidents we see are caused by misconfigured permissions or disabled MFA — not vulnerabilities in Microsoft's platform.

SharePoint governance is the set of policies, processes, and ownership structures that ensure your SharePoint environment stays organised, secure, and useful over time. Without governance, environments quickly develop "sprawl" — hundreds of abandoned sites, inconsistent permissions, and stale content that users can't navigate.

Good governance covers: who can create sites and teams, what naming conventions to use, who owns each site, how long content is kept before archival, how guests are managed, and how access is reviewed periodically. It's not a one-time project — it's an ongoing practice.

Timeline depends heavily on the size and complexity of your environment:

Small organisations (<100 users): 4–8 weeks, assuming clean source data
Mid-size (100–500 users): 8–16 weeks with phased migration
Enterprise (500+ users): 3–12 months, often in waves by department

The single biggest variable is the state of your existing data. Organisations with years of unstructured file shares or complex on-premises SharePoint customisations often need a clean-up phase before migration begins. See our M365 Migration Checklist for a full breakdown.

A Google Workspace to M365 migration involves moving email (Gmail → Exchange Online), files (Google Drive → SharePoint/OneDrive), calendars, and contacts. The Microsoft 365 admin centre includes a built-in migration tool for Gmail, and the SharePoint Migration Tool handles file migration.

Key challenges include file format conversion (Google Docs become Word files), Google Sites content that doesn't have a direct SharePoint equivalent, and retraining users on the new interface. A phased approach — email first, then files, then any custom app migrations — typically works best.

The SharePoint Migration Tool (SPMT) is a free, Microsoft-provided desktop application that migrates files from local file servers, network drives, and on-premises SharePoint (2010, 2013, 2016, 2019) to SharePoint Online and OneDrive. It preserves folder structure, file metadata, and basic permissions during migration.

For more complex scenarios — migrating from other platforms, preserving complex permissions, or migrating at large scale — third-party tools like Sharegate, AvePoint, or Metalogix (now part of Quest) provide more control and reporting. Microsoft FastTrack also provides free migration assistance to eligible M365 customers.

Microsoft 365 Copilot is an AI assistant powered by large language models (GPT-4 class) integrated directly into M365 apps. It can summarise long email threads, draft documents and presentations, generate meeting recaps from Teams recordings, analyse data in Excel, and answer questions about your organisation's SharePoint content.

Copilot is available as an add-on licence ($30/user/month on top of qualifying M365 plans). Importantly, Copilot only surfaces content the user already has permission to see — it doesn't bypass SharePoint permissions. This makes getting your permissions and data governance right before deploying Copilot especially important.

Power Platform is Microsoft's suite of low-code tools: Power Automate (workflow automation), Power Apps (custom app builder), Power BI (business intelligence and dashboards), and Power Pages (external-facing websites).

SharePoint is one of Power Platform's most common data sources. Power Automate can trigger workflows when files are added or modified in SharePoint, Power Apps can build custom forms and interfaces on top of SharePoint lists, and Power BI can visualise data stored in SharePoint lists. Together they turn SharePoint from a document store into a full business process platform. See our Power Automate guide for practical examples.

Microsoft Viva is an employee experience platform built on top of Microsoft 365 and Teams. Its key modules include:

Viva Connections: A personalised intranet home in Teams, surfacing SharePoint news and resources
Viva Engage: Communities and social networking (evolved from Yammer)
Viva Learning: Learning content aggregated from LinkedIn Learning, external LMS systems, and SharePoint
Viva Insights: Work pattern analytics and wellbeing recommendations
Viva Goals: OKR tracking tied to Teams and M365 data

Viva Connections is the module most closely tied to SharePoint — it's the recommended front-door for a modern SharePoint intranet accessed from within Teams.

SharePoint Online uses a search index that crawls content across sites you have access to. Search results are always security-trimmed — users only see content they have permission to view. The search engine indexes file names, content (including PDFs and Office documents), metadata columns, and page text.

Administrators can improve search with managed properties (making metadata searchable), synonyms (so "CV" finds results for "resume"), promoted results (pinning important content to the top for specific queries), and result sources (scoping search to specific sites or content types). Modern SharePoint uses Microsoft Search, which also searches across Teams, Exchange, and other M365 services from a single search box.

Business plans (Basic, Standard, Premium) are designed for organisations with up to 300 users. They include core M365 apps and services at accessible price points ($6–$22/user/month).

Enterprise plans (F1, E1, E3, E5) have no user cap and add advanced features including eDiscovery and legal hold, advanced compliance tools, sophisticated identity management, and — at E5 — the full Microsoft security and analytics stack. Enterprise plans are also required for Microsoft 365 Copilot.

Most growing businesses start on Business Premium (the best value all-in-one plan) and evaluate Enterprise plans when they exceed 300 users or need specific compliance features. We can help you right-size your licensing to avoid paying for features you don't need.

An intranet is an internal website that serves as your organisation's digital headquarters — a central place where employees find company news, policies, tools, and information about the people they work with. A SharePoint intranet replaces the old "shared drive" model with a navigable, searchable, and visually engaging experience.

Whether you need one depends on your size and pain points. If employees routinely can't find documents, don't know who to contact, or miss important announcements, an intranet solves those problems. Organisations with 50+ employees typically see clear ROI. Smaller teams often get sufficient value from a well-organised Teams and SharePoint document structure without a dedicated intranet homepage.

Yes. Modern SharePoint sites support custom themes (brand colours, fonts), custom logos, and full header and footer design through the SharePoint look book and brand centre. Beyond visual styling, developers can build custom web parts using the SharePoint Framework (SPFx), which integrates seamlessly with modern SharePoint pages and respects the platform's permission model.

We typically recommend balancing customisation with upgrade safety — heavy customisation can create maintenance overhead with each Microsoft update. For most organisations, a well-configured standard SharePoint with a branded theme, professional page layout, and strategic use of out-of-the-box web parts achieves the desired result at a fraction of the cost of full custom development.

For basic document storage with a small team, no. But if you're planning an intranet, migrating from another platform, configuring governance and permissions at scale, building Power Automate workflows, or rolling out Copilot, a consultant will save you significant time and prevent expensive mistakes that are difficult to unwind later.

The most common outcomes we see from unguided SharePoint rollouts: uncontrolled site sprawl, permissions that are too broad, no governance plan, and low adoption because users weren't trained. Each of these can cost far more to remediate than a structured engagement would have cost upfront.

Every engagement starts with a free 60-minute discovery call where we listen to what you're trying to achieve and assess your current environment. We then propose a scoped statement of work with a fixed or time-and-materials fee, depending on the project type.

We work as an extension of your team — providing architecture design, hands-on configuration, user training, and ongoing support as needed. Most clients retain us for ongoing optimisation after the initial project. There are no long-term contracts required; you're never locked in.

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