I’ve read on the WWW that experts are declaring the death of SharePoint Team Sites to be replaced by O365 Groups.

I then decided to investigate this new “Groups” feature closer to better understand what’s happening here.

The answer I found was both YES and NO, depends on who you are and what your needs is.

If you’re a business user then YES, it’s dead, you don’t need to think or worry about the “SharePoint Teams Sites” anymore, the new “Groups” will serve all Your needs and make your day easier and more productive.

Why | because the new Groups does have the best features (conversation newsfeed, document share, calendar, notebook) of the “Team Sites” without the complicated things (navigation, adding/deleting apps, complicated permissions levels, site settings).

If you’re familiar with SharePoint, then the answer is NO, you will quickly notice a lot of things that are familiar to you

Site Mailbox | Email replies both internal and external goes straight to the group conversations

https://outlook.office365.com/owa/#path=/group/learning101@hangconsult.com/mail

 
 

Site Notebook |

https://jimmydev.sharepoint.com/sites/learning101/_layouts/15/WopiFrame.aspx?sourcedoc={2bbfd181-f8f4-4bcc-97f7-a0d5b5a8c0ef}&action=editnew

Document library | Group library

https://jimmydev.sharepoint.com/sites/learning101/_layouts/15/GroupsDocuments.aspx

 
 

To me the Groups and Team Sites is pretty much the same thing, as O365 admins I still need to:

• Train my users, but it’s a lot easier.
• Still need my governance | content is split between SharePoint Online and Exchange Online
• Think about backup and restore.

As a SharePoint consultant I LOVE the new things Microsoft is bringing to O365, and I’m looking forward to the rollout of the new notification features and Skype integrations.

http://blogs.office.com/2015/06/08/new-user-experiences-in-office-365-on-the-web/

But it’s a lot of things still can’t figure out yet:

• Yammer? | I hope it will merge with the new Groups
• Document Workflows? | the Groups doesn’t seem to support this, traditional Team Sites will do.
• Custom metadata | the Groups doesn’t seem to support this, traditional Team Sites will do.
• Last but not least I can’t find the “Group sites” in SharePoint Online admin view | where the groups document libraries seems to be created.
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