Smackdown: Office 365 vs. G Suite collaboration

Ever since I can remember, Silicon Valley has been enamored with the idea of group editing of documents. Very little good writing gets done that way, of course. It’s like the joke that a camel is a horse designed by committee. 

But collaboration around documents is immensely useful, so people can share ideas, suggest revisions, and provide other feedback to the document writer or editor to incorporate into the final result. Even simultaneous multiuser access has its place, such as for documents that track progress or schedules and documents that contain boilerplate information for group use.

Google made document collaboration a hallmark many years ago in its G Suite, then called Google Apps, letting people share documents via the web with other users for both collaborative editing and read-only distribution. That eliminated the problem inherent in both paper and email copies of each person needing to track which version is the most recent—and ensuring that they have it.

Microsoft has espoused online document collaboration for a long time, too, but its execution has been unsatisfying until recently. Tools like SharePoint were too complicated for most to set up, maintain, and use; SharePoint took the bureaucratic, overly rigid approaches of enterprise content management systems and inflicted them on everyday users. That’s why SharePoint in most organizations is as unused as the corporate intranet.

Companies, or at least their employees, have long faced a dilemma: Collaborate via G Suite and forgo rich productivity capabilities, or sacrifice easy collaboration for the productivity power of Microsoft Office. Many people ended up having it both ways: relying on Office to create documents and using G Suite informally to collaborate. However, this involved moving documents into private Google accounts and dealing with the headaches of document conversion—paying a high price in terms of both employee productivity and information security.

Over the last 18 months, Microsoft has been reworking its document collaboration tools in Office 365, both within the Office 2016 applications and within the OneDrive storage platform that functions like G Suite’s Google Drive. And both Google and Microsoft have been improving their corporate conferencing tools (Hangouts for Business and Skype for Business, respectively.)

Can you finally have your productivity and collaboration too? Let’s find out.

Note: There’s one aspect of collaboration you won’t find in this review: messaging. That’s because Google doesn’t offer the functionality at a professional level, and Microsoft offers only poor tools: Yammer and (currently in beta) Teams. Like Google’s Hangouts, Microsoft’s Skype for Business allows basic chat, but with none of the core business needs like channels, document uploads, and notification controls. Maybe one day! Until then, there’s really only one messaging tool we can recommend, and that is Slack. It is superior to all other options. If you’re an Active Directory shop, you can integrate Slack into Active Directory.

Office 365 vs. G Suite: Document collaboration

Now that Microsoft has improved OneDrive, made collaboration native to its Office 2016 apps, and begun to integrate SharePoint with OneDrive, it’s time for a fresh look at how to best work together on documents.

Peer-to-peer sharing. With Microsoft’s Office 365, it’s now pretty easy for individuals to share documents with other individuals for collaboration; you’ll see the option for that in every Office 2016 app. You can also see with whom you’ve shared your documents and manage that sharing.

But you can’t do simultaneous editing in Office documents unless all users are working with the web client; native app users can’t work on the same document at the same time as anyone else. That’s a major drawback to document collaboration in Office 365.

The OneDrive app for Windows, iOS, and Android also provides sharing management controls. However, while the OneDrive client for Windows lets you share documents from the Windows File Explorer, the MacOS version lacks similar functionality, apparently due to recent changes in MacOS that disable OneDrive’s Finder integration option.

Google’s G Suite web and mobile apps are likewise sharing-savvy, though the mobile versions require more user effort than their Office counterparts to check and manage sharing status. However, multiple users can edit a file at the same time, whether they are using web or native clients—a big plus when you want simultaneous editing.

In Windows, Google Drive can integrate with the contextual menu in the File Explorer to let you share documents directly. Google Drive for MacOS has a similar Finder integration option, but it does not work—again, apparently due to recent changes in MacOS. Advantage: G Suite.

Sharing management. Although Microsoft is making progress, the underlying OneDrive for Business service used for Office 365 sharing is still inconsistently delivered across the supported platforms. On all platforms it requires the use of a browser to set up and manage groups, shared folders, and other team features. In fact, it’s so complex that InfoWorld felt obligated to publish an in-depth how-to guide to OneDrive sharing.

OneDrive’s team sharing is also marred by a poor user interface on the web. Furthermore, in order to share with groups you need IT to set up security groups, not email (aka Office 365) groups, in Active Directory. Otherwise, users have to invite each member individually and thus know their name or email address. That means IT has two parallel sets of groups to manage. As a result, ad hoc sharing is easy; structured sharing is not.

You’ll also need SharePoint enabled and configured for OneDrive integration if you want to have shared repositories that are independent of specific users. (The SharePoint integration is a work in progress for Microsoft, so the functionality and UI are both unstable.) Also, although OneDrive users can share documents and folders with others, those documents and folders become unavailable if that person leaves the company and his or her account is retired. 

Microsoft gives admins a good amount of control over sharing rules. You can separately set whether users can open their calendars, Skype for Business conversations, SharePoint sites, Office 365 Groups spaces, and OneDrive content to outside parties, and in some cases (Calendar, SharePoint, OneDrive, Skype for Business) provide partial access to outsiders. You can also designate sub-admins for services like Skype for Business, SharePoint, Exchange, and Power BI.

Naturally, this level of control comes with some complexity. You’re going to need some expert users with admin privileges to make it work well if you want to go beyond one-to-one sharing in Office 365.

G Suite’s underlying document engine doesn’t have the same complexity in group setup that OneDrive does (with or without SharePoint), nor the same level of management controls. Although it’s a much simpler service than Microsoft’s, G Suite’s admin tools cover the core data-management needs for many businesses.

For example, G Suite admins can restrict access to users whose accounts are tied to the corporate domain, as well as to external users whose accounts are tied to an authorized domain. Admins can also control whether users can share files with others, including whether a Google account is needed to view a shared document.

Plus, G Suite admins can set up email groups that make it easy to set document sharing to those groups. Unlike with Office 365, admins can also transfer documents from one user account to another, a very handy feature when someone leaves the company or changes jobs.

However, G Suite’s admin simplicity may not scale well in large organizations. For example, if you want to make documents available to all members of a team, rather than be tied to a specific team member, you have to create a separate email account for that team. Admins will thus need to know the various teams’ email accounts and credentials to modify them, rather than rely on a central console as they can in a Microsoft Office 365 environment.

Office 365 is much more capable but devilishly complex. G Suite is simpler but harder to manage at scale. Advantage: None.

Office 365 vs. G Suite: Meeting collaboration

Skype for Business didn’t use to work reliably outside of Windows, but earlier this year Microsoft fixed that. Google Hangouts for Business used to work poorly and confusingly, but it too has improved, if not to the same degree as Skype for Business has. 

If you want to manage communications and accounts centrally, as most larger organizations do, you’ll prefer the Skype for Business approach. If you prefer more ad hoc communications, as many smaller businesses do, you’ll prefer Hangouts for Business. But beware the pro-Windows bias in Skype for Business—it will trip up multiplatform organizations and give users a reason to use third-party tools, sanctioned or not, like Join.me, GoToMeeting, or WebEx,

Initiating communications. Skype for Business works decently for direct communications across users’ choice of text, voice, and video. What holds it back is the user interface. To contact anyone, you need to search by name. Once you find a person, you can add him or her to your favorites by right-clicking on his or her icon—but not if you’re using a mobile device.

Initiating a conversation is easy: Click the appropriate button (Chat, Voice, or Video) in the app. You can add more people by clicking the People icon on a computer or pressing and holding the person’s name on a mobile device.

Hangouts for Business also relies on searching for people’s names to initiate communications. However, there is no favorites capability, only a list of frequent contacts and—the method Google expects you to use—the ability to create groups of people whose chats you drop in and out of. It’s clearly a college-student mentality and shows why the app is called Hangouts. Advantage: Skype for Business.

Screen sharing. Skype for Business lets only Windows and MacOS users share their screens, though any Skype for Business client app can see the shared screens. Keep that desktop-biased limitation in mind if your iPad-carrying salespeople want to show their screens. Users also need to be presenters to share their screens, a role that the meeting organizer can delegate to users as needed.

In Skype for Business, only Windows users can share PowerPoint and other app screens (Macs can share only their whole screen).

Hangouts for Business also allows screen sharing if you’re conducting a video chat (which is how Hangout conducts meetings as well). But you may not realize that at first because the screen-sharing controls are buried in the More (…) menu during a video session. Hangouts also limits screen sharing to desktop browsers and Chromebooks. As with Skype for Business, Hangout users on iOS and Android can see shared screens, but not share their own screen. Advantage: None.

Video and audio chats. The video sessions in both Skype for Business and Hangouts for Business work well, depending on the quality of your internet connection. Skype for Business lets Windows users—but no one else—save recordings of video sessions. Audio chats also work nicely in both systems. Advantage: None.

Text chats. Skype for Business lets you direct-message users in a primitive chat system. But the chat sessions don’t replicate across all your devices, so you can’t follow a thread over time as you can in a real chat system. However, if Conversation History is enabled for your account, you will see a Conversation History folder in your Exchange email that contains all of your chats.

Hangouts also allows text chats among participants, but unlike Skype for Business its chat history is available on all devices you’re logged into. Advantage: Hangouts for Business.

Meetings. Despite some cross-platform deficits, Skype for Business works well for scheduled meetings. But those meetings must be set up via a Microsoft Outlook client with its Skype Meeting feature enabled for each meeting. Well, unless you use Windows: PC users can initiate meetings directly from the Skype for Business app. 

Depending on your Office 365 admin’s settings, meeting participants may need to be set as presenters (which authorizes them to share their screens) in the meeting invitation before it is sent. You can do that from the Windows or Mac versions of Outlook when setting up the meeting.

If you forget, a Windows-based host can grant an attendee presenter rights during the meeting by right-clicking his or her name and choosing Promote to Presenter from the contextual menu that appears. On the Mac, click the People icon, then right-click the desired presenter from the attendee list to choose Promote to presenter.

Presenters can do the same to enable others to be presenters, such as to “go around the room” in showing their screens. But remember that the host must be using a Windows PC or Mac to do this; the iOS and Android versions of Skype for Business don’t support screen sharing and thus don’t have the control to enable someone else to present. 

Hangouts for Business doesn’t really have meetings in the traditional sense. Instead, it sets up all meetings as video conversations—which most employees would prefer not to be the case, in my experience. (At InfoWorld, we continue to maintain the distinction between meetings and video chats in the same way that tools like Skype for Business, GoToMeeting, WebEx, and Join.me have long done.)

You schedule Hangouts for Business “meetings” via Google Calendar, but note that active participants are limited to 25 people, which is a tenth of what Skype for Business allows. If you don’t actually schedule a meeting in advance, you can initiate a video call and invite people individually to it.

Hangouts lets external users join video calls from their browser, if they have a meeting invite. (They don’t need a Google account.) They can also use the Hangouts app.

Hangouts works better than Skype for Business for meetings and video chats when you’re working with contractors and other outsiders; Skype for Business requires that they too have Skype for Business set up or otherwise limits them to phone dial-in. You can see Google’s open college mentality versus Microsoft’s closed IT mentality in action here.

Both Skype for Business and Hangouts for Business are unfinished in their meeting support, but at least Skype for Business is trying to support traditional business online meetings. Advantage: Skype for Business.

Phone support. Skype for Business assumes everyone is using the Skype for Business client, and all communications happen in it by default. You can pay a monthly fee to assign PSTN capabilities (from Microsoft or other supported voice provider) to specific individuals, so they can invite phone users to the meetings they host. There’s also a higher-cost plan for Skype for Business that acts like a digital phone system, so users can both place and receive calls in the Skype for Business app via the standard phone network.

On the Mac, beware a bug in Outlook (where you must set up your Skype for Business meetings) that can derail phone meetings. A Skype meeting invite sent from Outlook on the Mac won’t include the dial-in information, so be sure to use an iPad, Windows PC, or Android device to schedule your meetings. Or you might try Microsoft’s recommended one-time workaround: Exit Outlook, open the Terminal, and enter defaults delete com.microsoft.Outlook OnlineMeeting into the command line and press Enter. 

In contrast to Skype for Business, Hangouts for Business doesn’t assume that everyone is using the native client. For example, Hangouts users can dial other people’s regular phones if they have a Google Voice account or let people dial into Hangouts on their device. But users pay by the minute for such calls, and each person needs his or her own Google Voice account (and billing). iOS users get this capability if they have a Google Voice account set up and the Google Voice app installed. On Android and in Windows browsers, you also need to install the Hangouts Dialer app to get this Google Voice integration. MacOS users need to install a browser plugin when prompted.

Voice calling in Hangouts can be done without IT contracting a voice provider, but the user-by-user approach of Google Voice also means you can’t count on people being able to use phones. People can’t join meetings in Hangouts via a phone either. Advantage: Skype for Business.

Office 365 vs. G Suite: The verdict

For collaboration needs, Office 365 wins the competition—but not nearly as decisively as it wins in our productivity smackdown.

For document sharing, Office 365 and G Suite are closely matched, but Office 365 suffers from an inability to support simultaneous editing from its native apps. Office 365 provides more controls, but at the price of greater complexity for both users and admins. G Suite is easier to use when it comes to document sharing, and if G Suite’s productivity features meet your needs, that ease will give it the edge.

On the communications front, Office 365’s Skype for Business outmaneuvers G Suite’s Hangouts for Business in several key areas: better support for both app and phone voice communications, a more sensible approach to meetings, and a lack of bias toward video communications.

Office 365 is a better tool for communications than G Suite, a reality that when coupled with its productivity strengths swings the decision to Office 365 for most companies. Microsoft is finally getting the whole picture, whereas Google’s bias to college-style collaboration gets in the way of work use.

But let’s be clear: Office 365 is OK—not great—at collaboration, with more holes than it should have. It beats G Suite mainly because G Suite’s focus is more small business than corporate.

G Suite costs less than Office 365. You pay a mere $5 per user per month for the basic G Suite business package, which has a lot in it: the G Suite productivity apps, Gmail, Google Drive, Hangouts, and device management. The price is $10 per month for the most feature-rich G Suite package, which adds e-discovery, logging, and other enterprise-class management features.

But Office 365 doesn’t cost much more, especially when you consider the greater capabilities available in the Office productivity apps. The basic Office business plan costs $10 per user per month for the Office apps alone—no bargain—but the $15 full package includes the Office productivity apps, Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams, and Skype for Business. If you pay annually rather than monthly, the cost drops to $8.25 and $12.50 per user per month, respectively.

Office 365’s enterprise licensing costs depend on which other cloud services you get from Microsoft. The E3 plan costs $20 per user per month, billed annually, and provides e-discovery, data loss prevention, and other security features, as well as unlimited email storage for archives and hosted voicemail; the ability to host meetings with dial-in access is available on a per-user basis but costs extra. The E5 plan is $35 per use per month, also billed annually, and adds phone dial-in for all users’ meetings, cloud-based call management, analytics tools, and extra security capabilities.

Google also has enterprise plans whose prices vary based on more services such as digital loss prevention and third-party integrations. The company does not provide list prices for its enterprise plans.