Atronova
Microsoft 365 gives you three obvious places to put a document — SharePoint, Teams and OneDrive — and almost no guidance on which to use when. So files scatter: the real contract in someone’s OneDrive, a copy in a Teams chat, an older version on a SharePoint site. Here’s where things should actually live, and where document management fits on top.
SharePoint is the system of record
For anything that matters — contracts, policies, project files, records — SharePoint is the home. It has versioning, metadata, permissions and retention built in, and it’s where Microsoft expects your organisation’s documents to live. Teams and OneDrive both store their files in SharePoint underneath anyway. Treat SharePoint document libraries as the source of truth and most of the sprawl disappears.
Teams is the front door, not the filing cabinet
People live in Microsoft Teams all day, so that’s where they should reach documents — but the Files tab in a Teams channel is just a SharePoint library wearing a different hat. Use Teams to collaborate on and surface documents, not as a separate store. The moment a file becomes something you need to keep and govern, it belongs in a managed library, not buried in a chat.
OneDrive is for drafts, not the record
OneDrive is personal — ideal for a draft you’re still shaping, risky for the final version. The classic failure is the authoritative copy sitting in one employee’s OneDrive when they leave. Rule of thumb: if more than one person needs it, or you’d be in trouble if you lost it, it shouldn’t live in OneDrive.
Where a DMS fits
Native Microsoft 365 gives you storage; it doesn’t give you control. That’s the gap a document management system fills — capture and OCR on the way in, one authoritative version, approval workflows, records and retention, and a tamper-evident audit trail — all on top of the SharePoint you already pay for. Atronova DMS is built exactly this way: Microsoft 365-native, with the document control and audit folders can’t give you. You don’t rip anything out — you put governance over what’s already there.