SharePoint is Microsoft’s collaboration platform, similar to Google Drive but much more. It’s a place for team members to communicate, share data and collaborate; a shared file repository, blog, web content management system and intranet.

A few years ago, advanced Microsoft collaboration consisted of two components: Exchange, which powered email and shared calendars, and network file drives. These drives, which you may remember with drive letters like “S” and “X,” contained files that your entire team could access, but only one person could edit at a time. As a workaround, you could copy them to your local machine and edit them there. This sometimes led to confusion, lots of rewriting, and cryptic file names.

Microsoft created SharePoint, which provided a number of benefits:

In a smart move, Microsoft also kept the old file drive concept, which meant you could open an Excel file from your “X” drive, modify it, and then save it just like before. But in the background, SharePoint would check out the file for you, then check it back in and version it for you. Those features still exist and work well, but SharePoint is more than just a fancy file drive these days.