Practical Teams and OneDrive "Mapped Drives" | Real-world Guide, Demo and Recommendations

[@RobFahndrich1]

12 minutes in and my mind is blown 🤯 No more sync. Thanks Wayne. I love your videos!

[@mightydrew1970]

We switched from Sync to Add Shortcut at the beginning of the year. To help users transition make a _Company folder in their onedrive and move any folders made by Add Shortcut into there. Then pin _CompanyName to Quick Access and users barely notice a difference. But now their onedrive structure follows them from computer to computer, just like Outlook profile

[@johnwalshaw]

Thank you for this. I've been using Add Shortcut To OneDrive for a couple years now and love it. Often showing others how to use it. Wish the Sync shortcut (nightmare feature) in Teams could be disabled. Sync looks good but in practice is so problematic. One thing that's missing in Teams is ability to Add Shortcut to OneDrive for entire Document library and still need to do this from SharePoint. So one shortcut covers all channels. Another annoyance is on SharePoint and File Explorer users creating a non Teams channel folder at the root of the document library which is then not accessible from Teams. A quick tip, I don't use private channels but instead use Shared channels. The advantage is ability to schedule meetings and flexibility to add them on another Teams site if needed later.

[@Xerillion]

Great comment and input John. 👍

[@JFrailey]

This was an amazing holistic preview of M365's modern file-sharing functions. The trend I foresee for SMBs especially, will be human resource development bolstered by CoPilot, SharePoint, and OneDrive. You're doing awesome work for the M365 community!

[@stevenism]

Thank you for sharing this. Its very informative and resolves a potential problem with the OneDrive Sync to SharePoint Online. We are in the process of migrating our file servers to SharePoint Online. Does this shift to M365 Group / Teams & linking to OneDrive change the direction of the migration? The option to add shortcut to OneDrive is also available in SharePoint sites, maybe we can continue this path? Another question is about M365 group creation - Should we / Can we restrict users from creating new M365 groups? What is the best practice? Thank You! Love your Videos!

[@JonathanSwiftUK]

Also, you can use Shadow Copies on your existing file servers, and then users can click on a folder, choose the Previous Versions tab, and they have options to restore a file from the last checkpoint, in our case every 6 hours, OneDrive is based on versions. Our users can typically go back a month themselves.

[@mightydrew1970]

100% this. I did this for the orgs I support (sync method about 6 or 7 years ago) and updated to the Shortcut method in January of this year. We also make an _CompanyName folder in each user root of onedrive, and then move any shortcuts into that. You can even make a real Sales folder in onedrive, and move General and Proposals into there. This might just be a case of confirmation bias, but I'm glad to see someone using the same pattern I use

[@Xerillion]

Thanks Drew! The absolute best part of making these videos is connecting with IT managers like yourself that share the same cloud services vision of Microsoft 365.

[@johnwalshaw]

I added a comment further up just now with my own similar experience, albeit purely as an end user. In addition to those comments I made, would be ideal if Teams Site owner had option to create shortcut to on OneDrive for the document library by default. Then ad-hoc add shortcut would potentially be obsolete.

[@LarsMuis]

Nice demo, however you reach the soft 300.000 file limit in OneDrive quite quickly with a team of 10 people. Anything above might become problematic as we experienced. Any solutions for that?

[@UlrichGertingBojko]

Yes. :) Use SharePoint / teams in a way that does not force the users to sync/link 300.000 files at once. Because your right. The limitations comes quickly. Consider using a better migrationtool than a simple sync. The sync forces you to be pretty good at counting and as such does not validate the contents of the migrated files are correct. Consider breaking your data up into multiple libraries/sites based on the content and not just how old they are. Also beware that permissions inside Teams are anarchistic. Meaning that there are no centralized control or management of permissions.

[@MichaelAntesUNIQUESEQUENCE]

Can you lock down folders so users can add\edit\delete files but cannot delete or accidentally move a folder? TIA !!

[@netizen7661]

I wish you could elaborate a little more on the Private Folder Sharing... Most companies are particularly careful on permissions. Where the HOD can access everything but the juniors under them can only access their constituent folders only and not their colleagues

[@Xerillion]

Thanks for the feedback Netizen7661. 👍

[@netizen7661]

I wish i could Double LIKE this Video... But i Liked and immediately Subscribed.

[@Xerillion]

Thanks @netizen!

[@DevOpsHasan]

How to increase OneDrive space by use all unused space of all users?

[@kooldad1]

Awesome video, thanks!

[@Xerillion]

Thanks Kooldad!

[@keithstevenson5743]

Please, put your files in Microsoft 365. You are a man of great faith. I would not put an ounce of salt in any file storage offered by Microsoft. - too many CVEs that’s a bucket with lots of holes.

[@kristopherleslie8343]

Use synology full backup sleep with no worries

[@kuntalpatel9731]

Nope. Only safe data is the one stored under your mattress…

[@keithstevenson5743]

@@kuntalpatel9731 Hmmm I almost gave you an 💡 idea

[@aaronk9910]

You already gave them your mailbox.

[@keithstevenson5743]

@@aaronk9910 okay

[@eointhomas2914]

Thanks for the vid, so you’re opting for the add shortcut to OneDrive method instead of syncing the site? Thanks

[@Xerillion]

Yes.

[@raffaelescotti3563]

Great Video!!! Is there any workaround for long directory lengths?

[@Xerillion]

Thanks! I don't know of an easy workaround. For us that gets sorted out in the design phase and sometimes means moving folders.

[@UlrichGertingBojko]

Yes. Use a professional migration tool that can manage and divert those before you migrate.

[@ai5904]

Did you modify some configuration to achieve the naming convention for the shortcuts as shown in the demo, or do you have to rename them all? By default they seem to come out inverted from what you show. IE "General - Sales" Channel - Team seems to be how Microsoft likes to create the links, but your demo shows it the other way around as "Sales - General" for Team - Channel which seems more organized and logical.

[@Xerillion]

Hi @ai5904, those were the default when I added them.

[@btigenie]

@@Xerillion Mine does the same (backwards) naming. Adding the shortcut adds as "channel - team". I want "team - channel" like in the video without having to rename every one manually. Any ideas?

[@jrmbtr]

Is the core difference between doing the OneDrive Sync vs add shortcut to OneDrive, is that the OneDrive shortcut will follow devices whereas the Sync does not?

[@Xerillion]

Yes.

[@jrmbtr]

@@Xerillion Other than that, they function the same?

[@rangiz99]

@@jrmbtr Yes functionality is the same. The issue is that as of now onedrive sync is limited to 250k files per document library. Hence the large directory image.

[@mightydrew1970]

​@@jrmbtrnearly the same. You can rename shortcuts. So no more "My Team - Documents" forced onto the user. If they prefer "_MTD" so it sorts to the top, go for it

[@waynesheldon827]

Didn't see anything about permissions - eg Read Only for all users, Modify for Managers. OneDrive and Teams seems to think any members should have full permission which is rarely the case in business

[@nishantkumar9570]

Can Guests add shortcut to their OneDrive? By Guests I mean outside of tenant.

[@Xerillion]

That one I don't know.

[@CamCrazyDukeFan]

@nishantkumar9570 I would have to double check but I believe Guests outside of the tenant are not able to add the shortcut. They would have to be a user in that Microsoft tenant.

[@nick.simmer]

Not CMMC compliant.

[@Daniel-k4t3n]

Storage costs are insane. Indexing is hard limited at a very low number, one drive consistently breaks and needs resyncs, can't edit in the cloud csv, txt, etc. Like usual everything is almost great, charge too much, and then leave it for the next thing they want to break

[@UlrichGertingBojko]

100% agree. Thats why I'm using an "Offload" tool to save up to 80% in storage costs for my clients. PM me if you want to know more.

[@Daniel-k4t3n]

Strapped for resources and you want to put them to onedrive and sharepoint? Cost per year is almost a brand new bareetal file server 😅

[@beonyou]

Get rid of OUR files servers, to give you our data management (and access, and analysis, and ...). What a clever idea ! M'ouah ah ah ah !! Are you f$#'in serious !!! ???

[@siunamchuang9286]

Why would I pay for a service that add 1 minute+ to open file explorer ?

[@siunamchuang9286]

people are using SSD for 10 years already while using onedirve feel like 4200rpm HDD 20 yrs ago...

[@tumojitekatotumojitekato423]

As the trust on microsoft went under absolute zero i will move away from everything microsoft offers.

[@LarsMuis]

Nice demo, however you reach the soft 300.000 file limit in OneDrive quite quickly with a team of 10 people. Anything above might become problematic as we experienced. Any solutions for that?