OneDrive for Business - How it Really Works!

This time I take a look at OneDrive for Business from both the user and admin perspective. I’ll not only discuss what it does, but also how it works. In addition to end user features I’ll also demonstrate some admin tips and tricks that you’ll definitely appreciate. So whether you’re looking to learn how to use OneDrive for Business for work or how to administer it for your users. This will be an invaluable session that I hope you’ll enjoy.
More details on me at Andymalone.org

[@Peter-df2ip]

Andy, your videos are great in order to keep up with Microsoft 365 tech in our small business. They are great time savers and very informative. Thanks for all your work.

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

You’re very welcome Peter, and thanks for your kind comment 👍 😊

[@mhseny]

Thank you. This content was what exactly what I was looking for

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

That’s awesome. Thanks so much 😊

[@harrylumsdon6773]

Amazing content. Thanks for adding license info. Great stuff

[@cpuuk]

Quite possibly the most difficult part of Microsoft to understand- how the licensing works in the Cloud.

[@SP800.69]

One little thing to add @19:45 There's a link that says "More external sharing settings." Setting a default expiration time for shared links is nice too because even if someone shares a link with an "anyone", it will expire after n number of days. 🙂 Thanks for all your work Andy!

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

Great point, thanks 👍😊

[@michael-lh5vb]

Great video Andy, thanks

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

Glad you enjoyed it

[@juliaevans9521]

I think its helpful your emphasising the importance of letting other people know where you are, because if i was involved in a situation with a person in authority i would be seen as obstructive when i am just scared.

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

Strange comment but thanks anyway 🥺

[@basharbader1590]

What an excellent presentation. Any suggestion on how to manage sync OneDrive content to local disk in case of users having 1 TB of data in OneDrive but the local disk in their devices is much less ?

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

Good question. In OneDrive, you can have an option called selective sync. So in the scenario where a user has a 1 TB physical drive, but the 5 TB OneDrive, I would create a folder which I could then specifically sync to the laptop any content within that folder will then get synced. The user can choose which files and documents they wish to sync from within OneDrive. For more details or support, I would reach out to the Microsoft Tech community or visit, learn.microsoft.com for more details.

[@neilgoodman2885]

Dear MVP Malone, You're very impressive, even a little scary, sometimes. KEEP IT UP!! I am an auto didact, and just love learning stuff for future use. Respectfully, NHG

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

Scary! Oh my 🤪

[@driver288]

Tip is to turn anyone links OFF and use people you choose instead forcing MFA on guests and set a link expiry date at the tenant level so all external sharing is up for periodic review.

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

Great tip thanks 😊

[@ferdievanschalkwyk1669]

We do this too. excellent tip

[@patrick__007]

Can you please provide the steps to perform this?

[@driver288]

@@patrick__007 Sure. First off look at the place in this video where Andy is demonstrating the sharing sliders. If they are set at the most permissive level, all the way up, anyone links are allowed. If you adjust it down one notch the permission level is instead new and existing guests. The default link type when sharing is to specific people with this settting. In the same place in the sharing settings there is an advanced section where you enable the global share link expiration time in days. With expiration ON the person sharing or the SharePoint site owner is notified on upcoming expirations and have the option to extend the time, or revoke access immediately, Basically guests are forced to use MFA with the settings you have set for your users when they access your environment if there are conditional access policy’s in place. But in Azure AD, B2B settings you can on a per domain basis trust external tenants MFA. That means that guest users already using MFA in their tenant does not have to set it up again for their guest account in your tenant. If this trust isn’t enabled, and the user belongs to another tenant, they need to set up MFA for your tenant, or if the guest isn’t a M365 user they instead get email one time codes.

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

@@patrick__007 i’ve covered this in several of my SharePoint videos in the past. Check out my SharePoint playlist and you’ll see If you don’t want users to be able to share, simple disable external file sharing, this will do the job

[@kalaval340]

the best effort has done!!!

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

Sorry I’m not sure what you mean here

[@derranstokes8760]

A great video once again Andy. Thank You

[@ctmsl]

Great content. Thank you

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

You’re welcome thank you👍

[@warrenk9587]

Thank you for another great video, Andy. I know I started my Microsoft 365 journey a little late, which has made it challenging. Having said that, why are there so many ways to share data? What I mean is, why is there OneDrive for Business, SharePoint and Teams when they seem to do the same thing? I know there are some differences, however, I'm not sure the differences are big enough to have that many options. I understand that OneDrive for business is geared towards personal business users, although data can be shared to businesses and individuals on the outside. It may be that I'm missing something. I think it's great that we have the option to store and share data online. The flipside to that is we end up with data in multiple places when it comes to OneDrive for Business, SharePoint and Teams that we have to manage and remember to manage. I'm sure versatility is at the top of the list and that's why there are so many options. Simplicity isn't a bad thing.

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

Hi Warren, it’s amazing how many people don’t understand. The true nature of SharePoint SharePoint is OneDrive for business. OneDrive for business is SharePoint. It’s the same platform. The only difference is OneDrive for business think of it like users home directories in a company. Whereas SharePoint document libraries which are linked to groups and teams are essentially shared storage containers that can be used for collaboration and projects. It’s interesting to note that Microsoft are beginning to merge a number of interfaces together for example, SharePoint properties are pretty much identical to Microsoft 365 group properties now. Remember Microsoft teams is essentially a wrapper service that encompasses the other core Microsoft services such as Microsoft exchange and SharePoint. Once you understand how these products think, they can rebrand them, change them in anyway, but essentially they remain the same. That’s how to learn the product. Thanks again and all the best, Andy PS I dictated this message, so forgive any spelling errors. 😊

[@warrenk9587]

@@AndyMaloneMVP Thank you for taking the time to reply. Your explanation helped clear this up.

[@mzambo666]

I m probably going to get a job thanks to you. Thank you so much. Great videos.

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

Hey that’s awesome. I wish you the very best of luck 👍😊

[@mzambo666]

@@AndyMaloneMVP Have you talked about SharePoint record management yet?

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

@@mzambo666 sharePoint record management is pretty old. However, the topic is covered in records management in Microsoft purview. This extends the capabilities of records management to cover all Microsoft products. You can view this in my compliance playlist. Thanks very much.

[@mzambo666]

@@AndyMaloneMVP thank you

[@THEFLYESTDJGCUE]

Hello Andy, thanks for the new OneDrive knowledge...Towards the end of this video you mentioned syncing issues with OD. A few months back I've come across an issue with the OneDrive desktop app installed on Macs not syncing, and the work around was using the OD web version...After going on forums and multiple sites I haven't found a resolution. To your knowledege is there a resolution with Macs using the OD application to sync, instead of manually doing this through the web browser? Please share any information you've come across that's helpful. Grace x Peace!

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

Absolutely! Thanks for your great input👍👏

[@THEFLYESTDJGCUE]

You’re welcome. Did you read my question about the syncing issue with OneDrive app on Macs?

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

@@THEFLYESTDJGCUE it’s a known bug that’s currently being addressed👏

[@yeoldestonecats5025]

Not to go for a "Windows vs Mac" war, but...so many advantages of OneDrive are not available for Macs (since OD integrates into Windows so much more) "Folder Redirection" for example. For many of us MSPs that focus only on business clients, OneDrive can take over the old fashioned "on prem server" GPO of folder direction. Captures the Desktop, Documents, and Pictures folders. So that employees who use multiple computers...have those folders "synced" across those computers. I have my desktop at the office, my desktop at home, and my laptop that goes with me everywhere. Any files saved on one computer..show up on all the others. Or..sit down at a new computer...sign in...BOOM...all my files are there. Also it's an informal backup, I can light my laptop on fire and watch it burn into a pile of ash. Go get another Thinkpad, unbuckle it, sign in, BOOM..all my documents, pictures, etc..all there.

[@driver288]

Actually OneDrive backup for documents and desktop for Mac is available since a while ago. Pictures is another story due to ties to iCloud Photos so far. But Mac are getting closer and closer now. We are integrating macs in intune now too. Not at feature parity but pretty good anyway. Also Microsoft is working on syncing local password to azureAD to get almost feature parity out of the box for Mac accounts and login. Already now we can force M365 login and enrollment before creating the local account. Password integration is the missing piece

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

You answered the question so thanks for that 👍

[@yeoldestonecats5025]

@@driver288 Do Endpoint Management profiles enforce the OneDrive config and maintain login?

[@jasoncummings7052]

Thank you Andy for your great presentation. Could you comment on the following scenario. (OD=OneDrive) OneDrive for business. Computer [A] user account OD setup. Profile folders location configured to move to OD and files/folders copied. After a while, they all have green tick icon. Computer [B] user account OD setup. Profile folders location configured to move to OD and files/folders copied. However the file/folders shows the blue cloud icon. Any thoughts?

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

Are the machines correctly joined to AAD? Or are they use is correctly licensed. Do you have the latest updates and patches as well as the latest version of OneDrive for business installed on the machine check permissions. Beyond that you could always submit questions on the Microsoft tech community or alternatively, visit, learn.microsoft.com for more details 😊

[@letstroubleshoot8824]

Hi Andy, I got problem with my Auth. IOS can't receive notification for number matching when I'm signing Teams app but in teams web it works fine and can receive notif.

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

I think this is a known issue. Check out the Microsoft Tech community or the Apple Support pages for this issue. The best of luck.

[@MrFrissie]

Question : How will onedrive preform if a user has a laptop with one drive with documents. Suddenly the laptop crashed, and the laptop must be replaced. On the new fresh laptop the one drive is empty (same domain user + login). Will the empty one drive (new laptop) be synced to one drive (so old files deleted) or will sync it the old files back to the new laptop ?

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

Yes, OneDrive, for business uses date timestamps along with something called a sequence number. So you may lose for example your latest changes, or if you’ve recently created a new document which is not synced to OneDrive. However, when you reconnect a new laptop I would go into OneDrive for business and download all the content onto your new machine. From then on syncing will be simple.

[@MrFrissie]

@@AndyMaloneMVP thanks Andy. I will get a test setup this week to test this. Better safe, then sorry 😉

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

@@MrFrissie Always🥹👍👏

[@ferdievanschalkwyk1669]

Any thoughts on how to address the extremely slow Onedrive client sync performance compared to say Google Drive, Dropbox or any other cloud storage product. Its not the transfer that are slow, its just takes ages on the "looking for changes" or "processing" steps.

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

Interesting I'll ask around for you :-) Obvious questions are you using the latest build, updates etc?

[@ferdievanschalkwyk1669]

@@AndyMaloneMVP yes, we are seeing it against all our clients. Hundreds of users. OneDrive is just always 10 to 20 times slower than the same number of files than Google Drive. Microsoft just always blames internet connectivity.

[@driver288]

I’d say it’s quite the opposite when you have lots of files. Even syncing 1tb of metadata in Dropbox takes weeks as opposed to days in SharePoint / OneDrive.

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

@@driver288 an interesting debate I think. I’m actually planning a session on cloud back up and if it’s necessary to have third-party solutions in place. I’ll let you know what I discover.

[@ferdievanschalkwyk1669]

@@driver288 I think it might also be a regional thing. We and our clients are based in South Africa. Our internet landscape is nice and healthy due to lots of competition in the fiber space. most businesses are running on 100Mbit or Gigabit fiber connections for about $40-100 per month. Our telecoms monopoly got split up 15 years ago. When we use tools like Rclone to migrate client files to Onedrive/Sharepoint, we are able to do about 1mil files or 2TB per day, so I dont think its a datacentre limit issue. Personally, I think that Onedrive files on demand is very very poorly optimized once you hit around 20k files. We are advising our clients to work directly online, but old habits die hard.

[@goruby2]

Thanks

[@felixlin2477]

Hi, Andy Is there an OneDrive Admin Center?

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

Not anymore, it’s embedded into the SharePoint admin Centre in settings

[@mhseny]

Hi, Why I dont have the Admin center option in my Microsoft 365

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

Licence and you're probably not an admin.

[@kennewby01]

Hi, how do I add another folder to back up to Onedrive? I've bought and installed a new extra hard drive for storage, and I want a folder from that new hard drive to back up to onedrive? how do I do that - I cannot seem to do this - its seems like a simple thing?

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

Synchronise the folder to your hard drive. For more details visit, learn.microsoft.com and do a search for OneDrive support.

[@kennewby01]

@@AndyMaloneMVP Hi, I've looked and searched on Microsoft support but can't seem to find an answer. It shows me the folders it automatically backs up... My documents, pictures etc. But I simply want to add a folder to that list?

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

@@kennewby01 if it was me I’d create a power automate flow to copy the files across at a pre determined schedule 😊

[@kennewby01]

@@AndyMaloneMVP So simply adding a folder from another hard disc to be synced to onedrive is not possible? This seems like one of those questions that Microsoft don’t want to give an answer too, I’ve researched and asked the question but I cannot get a straight answer from them.

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

@@kennewby01 to fully understand, OneDrive, I strongly recommend you look over the documentation which can be found on learn.microsoft.com. This will give you a full understanding of OneDrive capabilities and functionality. Good luck and thanks for reaching out.

[@hashmihamed8669]

Thank you Sir. ❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤

[@jeanninemcwhorter919]

Why do you advertise to get certified yet when I asked about it you said you don’t hand out certificates out of back of truck? Lol So again, my question is do you teach or do classes to get certified?

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

Yes I teach official Microsoft classes for various companies in the Nordics. In terms of one to one training, the answer is no I'm afraid. But I can offer you a corporate training option if you have a number of folks to be trained. More details on Microsoft training can be found at learn.microsoft.com :-)

[@mhseny]

I am a trader and I have my own YT channel, I have a course and I want to sell it, I was looking for a platform so I can upload my videos and sell them and I want to only people who I choose can watch the videos so people can not share them with other people and get the videos leaked, so do you think one drive is a good option for selling a trading course without getting them leaked somehow? Or u have some better options for me? Thank u for amazing content

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

No I would not recommend OneDrive. Have you looked at Patreon?

[@mhseny]

@@AndyMaloneMVP No I haven’t check the Patreon Is it better than one drive for selling courses?

[@burgermeiste]

Aren’t these private business files scanned by Microsoft bots? Isn’t there a privacy concern? If MS has access to these files on their servers does this mean they can edit or even remove the files all together?

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

All done strictly within the tenant. You have the choice to bring in external data or not

[@parthibane3780]

How to restrict delete a file/folder on onedrive and sharepoint

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

I’ll answer this in a future video

[@reflectionrecon]

Why does OneDrive business just not work great with MAC, Always get the Rename error?

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

Make sure you’re using the latest client

[@MoonWalkCTO]

You are using an Apple Mac and the majority of users in Business are using a PC with Microsoft Windows and would want to use OneDrive folders - way more intuitive than a web-based experience. Most traditional users will not adopt, nor easily adapt, to working inside a browser.

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

OMG I’m using a Mac! What a surprise 🤣😂

[@AlBergstein]

another thing that I don't believe was mentioned in the video, and I have experience with a client recently, is that the naming convention on windows can be a real problem for Mac users coming to SharePoint and OneDrive. Mac users have the freedom to use virtually any characters in their character naming, and I have a client that has thousands of photographs and folders that were created with dates for names i.e.2022/01/01:foo project. The only solution appears to be running a renaming package to capture the bulk of them and then to hand rename the rest it's really lead to a very dissatisfied. Client, an issue I didn't catch in the planning I knew they had Mac folders with photos in them but I didn't realize they had improperly named them for Cross platform sharing...sigh.. he would hope Microsoft would eventually fix this limitation of windows in some future OS file structure.

[@ericxls93]

Nothing on the actual Desktop App (then your are using a Mac which is hopeless for business!)

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

Nonsense, there are thousands of organisations using Macs. As I’ve said it’s not about the device, it’s about an hew to secure your data in the cloud.

[@Manicsar1]

I'm like number 666

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

🤪

[@GameOnRammy]

One Drive for Business - How it Really Works: IT DOESN'T

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

Don’t be silly, of course it works. Millions of customers can’t be wrong 👍

[@GameOnRammy]

@@AndyMaloneMVP Have you tried to share and have the other users succesfully sync without them having a business account?

[@splitloopgaming3523]

did you just share a bunch of SSN's?

[@AndyMaloneMVP]

No