Planning integration with Office 365 workloads

While SharePoint Server has a very large feature set, you may need to connect an on-premises SharePoint environment to Office 365—whether that's extending your environment out to Office 365 or accessing on-premises content from Office 365. The following features can be integrated between SharePoint Server and Office 365 components:

• OneDrive for Business: Hybrid OneDrive for Business configures users to be redirected to OneDrive for Business in Office 365 when they access OneDrive in SharePoint Server.
• Sites: Hybrid sites allow you to integrate navigation between SharePoint Server and Office 365.
• Search: Hybrid search scenarios allow you to configure a search environment that allows users to locate content in Office 365 or local SharePoint farms from either search environment.
• Business Connectivity Services: Allows access to on-premises data using Business Connectivity Services.
• Power Apps, Power BI, and Power Automate (formerly Microsoft Flow): Using a data gateway, you can connect the newest Office 365 Power Platform applications (Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power BI) to on-premises environments.

All of these features require running the SharePoint Hybrid Picker application to configure hybrid features, with the exception of configuring the data gateway for Power Platform integrations.

Choosing which types of integrations you need to deploy will depend largely on the business and use cases for your farm. For example, you may need to deploy a solution that requires SharePoint Server features and the ability to synthesize datasets that are in other on-premises systems, but also want users to be able to take advantage of Office 365's OneDrive for Business. Alternatively, you may have data in legacy on-premises farms that you're not planning to migrate to Office 365, but you want users to be able to find and access it from a single search view in Office 365.

An understanding of the use cases and any limitations for existing infrastructure largely determines what Office 365 workload integrations you will need to use.