Collaboration Tools Comparison

Owned by Grosshandler, Mike
Last updated: Aug 15, 2024
2 min read

ITS provides collaboration tools to enable University faculty, staff, and students to work together and communicate efficiently with anyone, anywhere, anytime.

Microsoft Teams 

  • Use Microsoft Teams to share files, edit and collaborate on documents, take notes, host & join virtual meetings, chat with individuals or groups from any device, and create a SharePoint Team Site. 

  • UAlbany faculty, staff and students can create a Team in Microsoft Teams that provides 1TB of storage for files for your team.

Microsoft Teams is great for:

  • Collaborating with people/groups outside the University

  • Storing large files (up to 250GB)

  • Files your group or team need to work on together

  • Files you need to share with multiple people 

  • Files multiple people need to be able to access any time from anywhere

  • Files for clubs, interest groups, committees, project teams, departments

  • Being able to have access to your group's files directly on your device with syncing, even while offline

  • Group files that you need to access or edit from a mobile device

SharePoint Team Sites

SharePoint Sites are great for:

  • A private website and storage space to collaborate with your team to organize and co-author shared content

  • An intranet/internal website for an office or working group to document procedures, specifications, troubleshooting steps, and store important files

  • Internal websites for clubs, interest groups, committees, project teams, departments

  • Extranet site to collaborate with an external partner (including specific external users; not the general public)

  • Knowledgebase for policies, procedures, or troubleshooting information

SharePoint Communication Sites

Smartsheet

Other Collaboration Options

ITS recommends the collaboration tools listed above.  There are other options for specific uses available.