How to add an existing SharePoint folder to a MS teams Team / Channel?

At the time of writing this post, MS Teams is gaining popularity as a communication and collaboration tool at different companies with more and more employees working from home.

There could be companies that have been using SharePoint extensively before moving to MS Teams. With the advent of MS Teams, employees would have another tool with option to store documents and files that needs to be shared across the organizations.

MS teams has its own file system that is managed on SharePoint. Whenever you create a new Team/Channel, MS teams provide you a Files Tab where you can share and maintain files and documents.

In the background, MS teams is creating a SharePoint site where all these files will be maintained.

How does this affect the user behavior ?

So in a typical workflow before teams, We had SharePoint folders where we used to upload and share the documents.

• Now we have a situation where the team is uploading documents to Teams storage and indirectly forgetting to update relevant SharePoint folders.
• Also there are folders in SharePoint that have a number of relevant documents that you might want the team to have access to. if you copy them to teams, the changes made in Teams storage won’t be reflected in the original documents if any
• This results in multiple copies of the same file and no single source where all files are available.

This situation can be avoided by adding the SharePoint folder where the files are supposed to be added to your MS Teams Team / Channel as a Tab, where users can navigate to and store the files. The users who originally had access to the SharePoint folder will be the only ones who have access thereby ensuring security compliance as per company settings.

Limitations of the inbuilt option to add sharepoint folder

Microsoft has an inbuilt feature to add a sharepoint folder to teams. The limitations of this is that it lets you add the folder as seen at the base location in the SharePoint Site.

The issue with this is, for a particular project team, you wouldn’t want to have to navigate through 3 levels of hierarchies to get to the project folder relevant to them.

Relevant Use Cases

• Files are to be updated in the relevant folder in different Sharepoint groups as was done originally before teams rollout.
• A set of files are to be maintained in the “Master Project Repository” folder in the Files section of “Company” Team channel while users primarily work in “Project A/B/C” folder

Project Members would find doing these easier if this location is available for them in the respective Team / Channel of the Project.

So how can we add a Sharepoint folder to a Team/ Channel?

These are the steps to be followed.

1. Navigate to the SharePoint folder you want to add
2. Copy the link to the Folder
3. Navigate to the Team/Channel where you want to add this location as a Tab
4. Click on Add a Website option
5. Paste the Share Point link, Give an appropriate name for the Tab and Click on Add
6. You have successfully added the sharepoint folder to Teams.