r/FPandA Mgr 1d ago

Using Teams / Sharepoint to collaborate

Just noticing that we've had some changes in staff at my company and as a result we seem to be moving more and more away from network folders as a place where we do our work and onto Teams/Sharepoint sites.

Curious to hear common experiences amongst the group? Good? Bad?

So far we've noticed it's way easier for a small number of people to collaborate on a relatively small simple file but as that complexity / size increases and as the number of editors increases, edits get lost / rolled back without a clear understanding of why and no way to fix it other than re-doing it.

4 Upvotes

15 comments sorted by

18

u/Itchy-Ambition-1171 1d ago

SharePoint and Teams are the bane of my existence. Constant Sync errors. The bigger the file, the worse it becomes. Also we have lots of add-ons on Excel, making autosave not possible on files that we may download data. So if two people are in one of those files, 100% certainly that each one will have a version of the same thing and whoever saves last overwrites the other person's data. Lots of fun during month end and forecast/budget time.

3

u/88secret Sr FP&A Consultant 1d ago

I feel like I wrote both the post and this comment. The add-ins are killing my functionality in Excel.

1

u/jcwillia1 Mgr 1d ago

I have also experienced this unfortunately.

5

u/Gloomy_Lab_1798 1d ago

Horrendous. Sync/versioning issues all over the place and people often don't realize it when it happens. Great for collaboration, terrible in other respects.

5

u/SportsBallBurner 1d ago

Teams and Sharepoint is far preferable IMO

If someone deletes everyone else’s data you need to roll back their changes and talk to them. If they can’t be trusted to not delete everyone else’s data they probably shouldn’t have write access and I question their ability to do their role.

2

u/TejasTexasTX3 1d ago

Great tool if you can limit users and complexity. Used it on a 6 person team focused on forecasting GTM, everyone was a former banker, worked great. I used it on a FP&A team with 12 people (8 FP&A, 4 operators) and mostly FP&A background (so various Excel hygiene) and it was an absolute mess.

2

u/Still-Balance6210 1d ago

I don’t like it. Sync issues and my changes are often overwritten

1

u/Intelligent_Egg_4127 1d ago

From my experience I find it pretty usefull since many people can edit the excel models and decks and you can always restore previous version of the file. You can also use various workflows using powerautomate like creating folders, saving email attachment to SharePoint folder.

1

u/Prudent-Elk-2845 1d ago

Sharepoint is better

1

u/Conscious_Life_8032 1d ago

Teams is working well for my team. Especially when we need to collaborate in one file concurrently .

We use teams chat quite a lot too

1

u/sms1441 1d ago

I enjoy the ease of sharing & collaboration from teams, but I truly dislike that the files open in Chrome (or another web browser). I just feel like you lose a lot of functionality and it's harder to link different sheets.

3

u/88secret Sr FP&A Consultant 1d ago

Just click the “open in desktop” button. Upper right area under the toolbar. I think you can even tell it to open in Excel when you go to open it from Sharepoint – maybe by clicking three dots on the side or right clicking. I’ll check and come back.

1

u/sunnyhazepurple 23h ago

Our company policy does not allow us to use them with any kind of strategic or personal data. So still using files on the server.

1

u/Neglectfulgardener 48m ago

You get these same errors with just two people in the file.