Microsoft 365 Collaboration Modernization

Most collaboration problems are not software problems. They are architecture problems wearing a software costume. When a growing biotechnology company found its leadership and administrative teams fighting file duplication, sync conflicts, and documents that would not co-author, Prevvi was brought in to plan and implement a move onto Microsoft 365 done right.

The challenge

The client’s leadership and G&A teams worked across a patchwork of storage tools. Egnyte and Dropbox both synced folders to desktops, Office files lived in several places at once, and PowerPoint decks regularly hit co-authoring conflicts: two people editing what they thought was the same file, in two different systems.

The symptoms were familiar to anyone who has lived through tool sprawl:

• Duplicate copies of the same document with diverging edits
• Sync clients competing over the same folders
• “Which version is real?” conversations before every board meeting
• Executives losing time to file plumbing instead of decisions

What we delivered

Prevvi planned and implemented a collaboration strategy that moved Leadership and G&A onto Microsoft 365 with SharePoint and OneDrive as the system of record:

• SharePoint information architecture: sites and libraries designed around how the teams actually work, not around an org chart diagram
• OneDrive deployment and configuration for personal working files, with clear rules about what belongs where
• Migration planning for Leadership and G&A, sequenced so nobody lost access mid-move
• Egnyte and Dropbox synchronization cleanup, untangling competing sync clients from the same content
• Resolution of PowerPoint and Office co-authoring conflicts by consolidating files onto one platform built for simultaneous editing
• Executive workstation configuration and Office application remediation, so the tools worked cleanly on the machines leadership actually uses
• User adoption and training, because a migration only counts when people change where they save

How we approached it

Architecture before migration

We designed the SharePoint structure first: which sites exist, who owns them, and how permissions flow. Migrating files into a well-designed structure is straightforward. Migrating them into an undesigned one just moves the mess to a new address.

One system of record per file

The root cause of the client’s duplication was that no rule said where a document lived. The new model made it unambiguous: team documents live in SharePoint, personal drafts live in OneDrive, and the legacy sync tools were cleanly detached from that content. Co-authoring conflicts disappear when there is only one canonical copy to edit.

Treat executives as a first-class rollout group

Leadership adoption decides whether a collaboration platform sticks. We configured executive workstations by hand, fixed the Office application issues that had eroded trust, and trained the teams on the small set of habits that matter: share links instead of attachments, edit in place, let versioning do its job.

Why co-authoring breaks, and how to fix it for good

Modern Office co-authoring works when everyone edits one copy of a file stored in SharePoint or OneDrive. It breaks when a second sync system inserts itself:

• Two sync clients watching the same folder each upload their own “latest” version, creating conflicted copies.
• A file opened from a desktop sync folder may be a stale local copy rather than the live cloud document.
• Locking behavior differs across platforms, so one user’s editor holds the file hostage from another’s.

The durable fix is architectural: pick one platform as the system of record for a given set of content, remove competing sync clients from that content, and train people to open files from the canonical location.

The outcome

Leadership and G&A now collaborate on one platform with one copy of each document. Co-authoring works the way it is supposed to, duplication and sync conflicts stopped, and document accessibility improved for the people who need files fastest. The structure and rules are documented, so new hires inherit a system instead of a folklore. This kind of platform consolidation is a core part of our IT consulting and managed IT work.

Key takeaways

• Design the information architecture before migrating a single file.
• Every document needs exactly one system of record; two sync tools on one folder is a conflict factory.
• Fix the executive experience first: leadership adoption carries the rollout.
• Training on a few habits beats documentation nobody reads.