Names aside, Board Papers and Team Papers work equally well for your board and more general purposes. The difference is where meeting organizers assemble agendas and documents. With Board Papers, meetings are set up in your browser using a custom SharePoint interface. Using Team Papers, meetings are set up in a custom tab in Microsoft Teams. Both solutions provide the same simple book-like app and features for meeting participants.
You use SharePoint more than Teams or already have a SharePoint hub for your board.
You want attendees to access meetings and documents only from the Board Papers app.
You frequently need to manage individual user access to documents or meetings.
You require an on-premises solution and cannot store sensitive documents in the cloud.
You are standardizing on Teams as your organization’s primary workspace.
You want users to have access to meeting documents in Teams as well as the Team Papers app.
Your users typically have access to all their board or committee's meetings and documents.
You have already set up teams and channels in Teams for your boards and committees.
Organizations that use SharePoint to manage documents or need discrete control of their meeting materials may prefer to use Board Papers.
Board Papers can leverage all the permissions functionality in SharePoint, including custom permission groups and roles. In contrast, Microsoft Teams is designed to let all team members access all meetings and documents for that team.
While you can restrict access to a meeting or exclude a meeting participant from receiving a document in Teams Papers, if you need to regularly manage individual meeting and document permissions, Board Papers is likely the better choice.
Also, if you plan to use your board portal for many boards and committees or across subsidiary organizations, Board Papers lets you manage all your meetings and documents (and user access to these items) from a single web page.
If your organization already uses or plans to use Teams to collaborate and share documents, Team Papers may be the best choice. A dedicated team with a Team Papers tab can be set up in Teams for each board and committee, and channels can be added for specific projects or meeting types.
Alternatively, you can have a single team for a board with private channels for each sub-committee. Private channels let you restrict access to meetings and documents to a select subset of team members.
Team Papers also offers Teams-specific features. When you create a meeting in Team Papers, you can create a Teams calendar event at the same time and invite meeting participants. In addition, during the Teams meeting, presenters can display the agenda from Team Papers and open documents in the meeting window.
In general, organizations that are used to working in SharePoint or want tight control of their meeting documents may prefer to use Board Papers.
In Teams, meetings and documents can be accessed by all team members. To restrict access to individual meetings or exclude certain meeting participants from receiving a document, you have to change permissions in SharePoint (Teams stores documents in SharePoint). If you need to regularly manage meeting and document permissions, Board Papers is a good choice.
If your organization is making a strong commitment to Teams, Team Papers may be the best choice, especially if team members use Teams to edit and collaborate on documents. Each board and committee can have a dedicated team with a Team Papers tab. Channels can be set up for specific projects or meeting types.
Alternatively, you might have a single team for a board with private channels for each sub-committee. Private channels let you restrict access to meetings and documents for select members of the team. Otherwise, Teams is designed to let all members access any meetings or documents for that team.