5.1 SharePoint, OneDrive, and Stream

5.1 SharePoint, OneDrive, and Stream

Quick Answer: SharePoint Online is where the organization and its teams keep shared content. OneDrive in Microsoft 365 (OneDrive for work or school) is where a person keeps personal working files. Stream (on SharePoint) plays video that is stored as ordinary files in those libraries. Files you see on a Microsoft Teams channel Files tab live in a SharePoint document library.

The official MS-900 bullet is short: describe the collaboration and content sharing capabilities of Microsoft SharePoint, OneDrive, and Stream. The exam is not asking you to design a site information architecture or click through the SharePoint admin center. It is asking you to put the right file in the right place and share it with the right kind of link.

Treat the three names as one file platform with three doors. SharePoint is the team and intranet door. OneDrive is the personal-work door. Stream is the video player and management experience on top of the same files. If you remember only one sentence from this section, remember this: OneDrive is user-owned working files; SharePoint is team and organization content; Teams channel files are SharePoint.

SharePoint Online: sites, libraries, lists, and the intranet

SharePoint Online is the Microsoft 365 service for creating websites, publishing content, and storing files. A SharePoint site is a website where people create pages and collaborate on files. Sites can stand alone, and they can also be used by Teams for file storage. Those Teams-backed sites are called Teams-connected sites.

The two site types you must be able to recommend are:

• Team sites give a group a place to work together. By default a modern team site is connected to a Microsoft 365 group, which also brings a group mailbox, a shared calendar, and other collaboration tools. A team site may be connected to a team in Microsoft Teams. Permissions are best managed through that group or that team: group owners become site owners, and group members become site members.
• Communication sites broadcast news and status to a broad audience. They are the usual building blocks of an intranet. They are not connected to a Microsoft 365 group by default. Permissions use the classic SharePoint groups: Owners, Members, and Visitors. Typical design is a few owners, a small set of members who publish, and a large visitor audience.

Two related site ideas show up in fundamentals scenarios even though they are not their own exam product:

• Channel sites are SharePoint sites created for a private or shared Teams channel. Each of those channels gets its own site so that only channel members see the files.
• Hub sites are team or communication sites an administrator designates as the center of a hub. They connect related sites with shared navigation and a common look. Hub association is an admin decision, not something every site owner can flip.

Inside a site you will meet two containers over and over:

• A document library stores files — Word documents, workbooks, PDFs, images, videos. A team site includes a default library you can use immediately. Libraries support folders, metadata, sharing links, and version history.
• A list stores structured rows, not primarily files: issues, inventory, event sign-ups, a contacts register. A list is a table the team shares in the browser. Microsoft Lists (covered with the work-management apps) is the friendly front door to the same idea; the rows still live in SharePoint.

That combination — sites, pages, libraries, and lists — is how SharePoint becomes an intranet. A communications team publishes leadership news on a communication site. Departments keep working files on team sites. A hub stitches those sites into one navigation experience. You do not need a third product named “Intranet”; you use SharePoint well.

Version history and Microsoft Search

Version history is built-in data protection for files and items in SharePoint and OneDrive. A user can view an earlier version without overwriting the current one, restore a previous version when a change is wrong or a file is corrupted, and see who changed what and when. In Word or Excel, versions can be compared. That is the fundamentals answer to “someone overwrote the proposal” and to accidental or malicious change. Do not invent a published default version cap for the exam; know that versioning exists and that restore is a library capability, not a ticket to restore from tape.

Microsoft Search is the search box in the header of Microsoft 365 apps. It is contextual and permission-trimmed. Search in Outlook surfaces mail, not SharePoint sites. Search in SharePoint surfaces sites, pages, and files. Two people can type the same words and see different results because Microsoft Search uses Microsoft Graph signals (recent files, collaborators, trending content) and never shows an item the user cannot already open. Search does not grant access. If the file is only in your OneDrive and you have not shared it, a colleague will not find it.

Microsoft Search can also return answers an administrator publishes — a password-reset policy, a benefits link — so the intranet is not only a tree of sites. For MS-900, the scoring idea is simpler: search finds content the user is already allowed to see, across SharePoint, OneDrive, and Exchange, from the box in the app they are already using.

Sharing links, not a mystery permission model

Giving someone membership in a site, a Microsoft 365 group, or a team gives them access to the site’s content. When you only need to share one file or folder, you use a shareable link. Official SharePoint documentation names three primary link types:

Administrators set whether Anyone links exist at all, and they can change the default link type users see. Do not memorize a single “Microsoft default for every tenant.” External sharing can be allowed at the organization level and then restricted per site. The more restrictive setting wins. If confidential content must never leave, official guidance is to put it on a site that has external sharing turned off, and use other sites for partner work.

When guest sharing is allowed, Microsoft Entra B2B can authenticate guests (including with a one-time passcode when they have no work, school, or Microsoft account). Shared Teams channels are a different path (Entra B2B direct connect) and are taught with Teams. For this section, know that SharePoint and OneDrive sharing is tenant-governed, site-governed, and then link-type-governed — in that order.

OneDrive: personal work files, not the team attic

OneDrive in Microsoft 365, also called OneDrive for work or school, is each licensed user’s cloud library. Official setup guidance is blunt: storing content in OneDrive is like storing files on your computer — no one else can easily access them until you share. Use it for business files that other team members do not need to collaborate on or access regularly. A team site is for files with shared ownership.

That is the exam trap in one line. OneDrive = user-owned working files. SharePoint = team or organization content. Drafts, a personal tracker, a slide deck you have not shown anyone yet, and the files on your Desktop after Known Folder Move belong in OneDrive. The department budget workbook, the project folder everyone edits, and the HR policy PDF on the intranet belong in SharePoint.

Known Folder Move (also described as Windows known-folder backup) redirects familiar Windows folders — Desktop, Documents, Pictures, and related folders such as Screenshots and Camera Roll — into the user’s OneDrive. People keep saving to Desktop the way they always have; the files are now in the cloud, available on other devices, and protected if the laptop dies. Admins can prompt users or move the folders silently. Known Folder Move is a personal-library feature. It does not turn a file share into a SharePoint team site, and it does not work for users who are only syncing OneDrive files against SharePoint Server.

The OneDrive sync app can also sync SharePoint and Teams libraries onto the PC so File Explorer shows both “my files” and “the team’s files.” Syncing a library does not change ownership. A synced Teams folder is still SharePoint. Files On-Demand lets those files appear in File Explorer as cloud placeholders until the user opens them.

Sharing from OneDrive uses the same three link types. The difference is intent. A OneDrive share is “I am lending you my file.” A SharePoint team-library share is “this already belongs to the team; I am giving you a path into it.” When a person leaves the company, their OneDrive is a user library that follows account-deletion retention (administrators configure how long that data is kept; do not invent a single number as “the exam default”). A team site outlives any one member. That is why “put the only copy of the customer contract in my OneDrive” is a bad design even though sharing would work this afternoon.

Teams files are SharePoint files

Microsoft Teams is the chat and meeting hub. It is not a third file system. Official Teams–SharePoint integration is:

• Creating a team creates a parent SharePoint site. Membership lives in the connected Microsoft 365 group.
• Every standard channel Files tab is a folder in that parent site’s default document library. The General channel and every other standard channel share that one site.
• Each private or shared channel gets its own SharePoint site. Only channel members can open that site.

So when a question says “the marketing team dropped the brief in the Teams Files tab,” the correct storage answer is SharePoint, not OneDrive, not a mailbox, and not Stream Classic. Users can still open the same file from the SharePoint site, from the sync app, or from Microsoft Search. Co-authoring in Word or PowerPoint is the same because it is the same file.

Stream (on SharePoint), not the retired portal

Microsoft Stream is the enterprise video service for creating, storing, sharing, and watching video securely. Official service description language now distinguishes two generations:

• Stream (Classic) was a standalone video portal. Microsoft treats it as legacy / deprecated. Do not describe Classic as the current architecture.
• Stream (on SharePoint) — also written Stream (built on SharePoint) — is the current model. Videos are regular files in SharePoint and OneDrive. Playback, transcripts, and embedding are video experiences on top of those files. Because the file lives in SharePoint or OneDrive, the same sharing links, version history, permissions, search, eDiscovery, and retention that apply to a Word document can apply to an MP4.

People use Stream at work to record and watch Teams meetings (with generated transcripts), record camera or screen video, publish leadership or training videos, search or read transcripts, comment, and embed video on SharePoint pages. A training video for all staff belongs on a communication site library (or a team library if only that team should see it). A personal walkthrough you have not published yet can start in OneDrive. There is no separate “Stream disk” you must pick on the exam.

Microsoft has also folded more of the record / edit / watch surface into Clipchamp, still storing those files in SharePoint and OneDrive. For MS-900, keep the blueprint name: Stream. The scoring fact is the storage model — video as a file in SharePoint or OneDrive — not the Classic portal.

Scenario mapping

• Department working files many people own → SharePoint team site document library (or the Teams Files tab for that team, which is the same library).
• Company news, HR policies, a leadership video for everyone → SharePoint communication site (intranet). Put the video file in that site’s library and embed it with Stream.
• A draft only you should see, plus one reviewer tomorrow → OneDrive, then a Specific people link.
• Need Desktop and Documents to survive a laptop loss without changing user habits → Known Folder Move to OneDrive.
• Find a file you already have access to, from the Microsoft 365 header → Microsoft Search.
• Undo yesterday’s bad edit → Version history in the library, not a new product.

Exam traps

• OneDrive is not the company file share. User-owned working files go there. Shared ownership goes to SharePoint.
• Teams is not a separate file platform. Channel files live in SharePoint. Private and shared channels each get their own site.
• Stream (Classic) is not the current design. Stream (on SharePoint) stores video as files in SharePoint and OneDrive.
• Microsoft Search does not bypass permissions. If it is not shared, it will not appear for someone else.
• Anyone links are not the same as People in your organization. Anyone can be used by people with no account, is not audited the same way, and may support expiration or a password. Do not claim a tenant-wide default you were not given.
• A communication site is not a team workspace. It is for broadcasting. A team site (often group-connected) is for collaborating.

Official sources

• Sharing and permissions in the SharePoint modern experience — team, communication, and channel sites; Anyone / organization / specific-people links
• Overview of Teams and SharePoint integration — Teams-connected sites and where channel files live
• Set up OneDrive file storage and sharing — OneDrive for individual files; team sites for shared ownership
• Overview of OneDrive in Microsoft 365 — Files On-Demand, Known Folder Move, sync
• Redirect and move Windows known folders to OneDrive — Known Folder Move
• Version history overview — view and restore previous versions
• Microsoft Search overview — contextual, permission-trimmed search
• Microsoft Stream service description — Stream (on SharePoint) versus Stream (Classic)