Best way to share data using OneDrive for Business?

[thecomputerguy]

I have a client who does some pretty basic file sharing but in a previous post I had mentioned that they keep deleting stuff, mainly because of lack of attention.

I want to try and move their data to OneDrive and get them syncing on a cloud platform for easier recovery. Most all of their data is Word, Excel, or PDF's, they are a Law Firm.

I starting getting OneDrive setup on all of their accounts, most of which are Office 365 E1. I got them all logged in to their OneDrive accounts and then I attempted to familiarize myself with file sharing from within OneDrive.

Dropbox is nice because when you share something with someone they get a pop-up in their tray asking them if they want to accept the invite. Once they do then the folder is added to their own Dropbox folder.

Is there any way to make it as simple as this with OneDrive? I started sharing files, then I had to click a link and login to the O365 portal, then find the shared with me section, and then manually tell the file to sync to my account after which it didn't even put it in the OneDrive folder for some reason.

Id like to be able to make a "SHARED" folder. Share it with the 3 other people at the company, then have it drop all the data into their OneDrive folder. It sounds simple to me but it just started getting weird pretty quickly.

Any help?

 

[TAPtech]

Yup, best way to do it is to not use OneDrive. Use Sharepoint Document library. Sync it to each PC and it looks like any other OneDrive folder / mapped drive. Right click and create a shared link.

 

[thecomputerguy]

Yup, best way to do it is to not use OneDrive. Use Sharepoint Document library. Sync it to each PC and it looks like any other OneDrive folder / mapped drive. Right click and create a shared link.

That's what I was thinking ... maybe I should be using sharepoint instead ... I'll look further into that.

 

[TAPtech]

Absolutely. OneDrive is meant for user cloud storage. Their new "known folder move" is a great example of this. The user can utilize cloud storage to prevent data loss and make it easy to get to their files from their phone, laptop, and desktop.

Sharepoint Document libraries are more or less meant to replace a file server. Let's multiple users collaborate, you can assign permissions, etc. You can create shared links with edit permissions that expire after a set period of time... it works pretty well. Just need to know the difference. Regular old OneDrive and SharePoint doc libraries are two similar, but different things. I'm not calling it OneDrive for Biz anymore cuz wtf confusing names Microsoft get a job you knucklehead

 

[timeshifter]

/subscribe

 

[marley1]

Absolutely. OneDrive is meant for user cloud storage. Their new "known folder move" is a great example of this. The user can utilize cloud storage to prevent data loss and make it easy to get to their files from their phone, laptop, and desktop.

Sharepoint Document libraries are more or less meant to replace a file server. Let's multiple users collaborate, you can assign permissions, etc. You can create shared links with edit permissions that expire after a set period of time... it works pretty well. Just need to know the difference. Regular old OneDrive and SharePoint doc libraries are two similar, but different things. I'm not calling it OneDrive for Biz anymore cuz wtf confusing names Microsoft get a job you knucklehead

I like you.

 

[HCHTech]

I'm not calling it OneDrive for Biz anymore cuz wtf confusing names Microsoft get a job you knucklehead

Your ideas intrigue me and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

 

[thecomputerguy]

Absolutely. OneDrive is meant for user cloud storage. Their new "known folder move" is a great example of this. The user can utilize cloud storage to prevent data loss and make it easy to get to their files from their phone, laptop, and desktop.

Sharepoint Document libraries are more or less meant to replace a file server. Let's multiple users collaborate, you can assign permissions, etc. You can create shared links with edit permissions that expire after a set period of time... it works pretty well. Just need to know the difference. Regular old OneDrive and SharePoint doc libraries are two similar, but different things. I'm not calling it OneDrive for Biz anymore cuz wtf confusing names Microsoft get a job you knucklehead

You are far and above my knowledge and I appreciate your input. What does the user use to interface with sharepoint? Web based is not an option so can you have users interface with Sharepoint via Onedrive? I need it to be as simple as humanly possible.

 

[nerd2u]

Why not just set them up with Carbonite or backblaze?

Then when they delete a file it can be simply pulled down from the cloud no need to teach an old dog new tricks they don't have to change the way they do anything

Sent from my SM-G870W using Tapatalk

 

[JoelM]

Could someone point me to a simple resource to learn more about Sharepoint Document library etc. Most of my customers are using Google due to free for education & non-profit.
I would like to at least learn more about sharepoint etc but seem to struggle every time I try to start.

 

[GreyWolf]

Could theses help?

https://support.office.com/en-gb/ar...arepoint-909ec2f0-05c8-4e92-8ad3-3f8b0b6cf261

https://support.office.com/en-gb/sharepoint

 

[Slaters Kustum Machines]

You are far and above my knowledge and I appreciate your input. What does the user use to interface with sharepoint? Web based is not an option so can you have users interface with Sharepoint via Onedrive? I need it to be as simple as humanly possible.

You can sync the document libraries in File Explorer. As seen in the attached picture, on the left side of the screen there is IT Professionals of Iowa, LLC with a "building" icon. This is SharePoint in File Explorer. Below that you can see OneDrive, which is for my personal files. They both use the OneDrive sync client.

In the second screenshot you can see I drilled down into one of the directories and all of the Word docs are available. You'll notice the cloud icon listed under "Status" That means the files are "online only" so not taking up any space on my computer, but if I open one it downloads the file locally. You can also set files to always available or free up space if you don't need a large file locally anymore.

 

[TAPtech]

Here's how I do it:

• Log into portal.office.com using admin credential or your delegated admin creds.
• Click the App icon at the top left to open up the web apps, then click SharePoint
• MS rolls all of these up into a confusing dash for you because they think they know what you want, and don't. So click "Show All" on the left side
• Click the "+Create site" button at the top to make a new one, then click "Team site"
• For Site name enter "Donkey Share for Donkeys only"
  
• For Site description enter "See above"
• Add owners that can manage the site (admins) add members that can access the site
• Open up the site. If you already have a site, ignore all that Donkey talk above.
• Click documents on the left
• Click the "Sync" button on the topish horizontal menu bar

The Sync button opens up the OneDrive client and sets up a Sync, so it's a bit like a mapped drive. It pretty much looks like DropBox or whatever from there on out. In File Explorer, you'll see a little corporate building icon and the company name. Then the SharePoint sites below it. The Sync button puts the Documents folder there. You can add a bunch of them, or just one.

You can share folders within SP Document Libraries (not the root) with others by simply right clicking and going to "Share" with the blue cloud icon. By default SP will only allow sharing within the company, for external access you can lift that ban somewhere in the admin settings. I forget where.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

OneDrive...for One User. Think of it like partially backing up your computer (important folders) if you're a single computer user.
or if you use multiple computers, think of it like "roaming profiles" or "folder redirection"...all stuff is synced and the same across multiple computers. Not to mention you can get your stuff from any other computer by just logging into office.com.

You CAN send/share files/folders to external users...a neat way to send large files too large for email..to external people.

Now..for file sharing/collaboration across users WITHIN your business, you want to replicate a central file server, right? have that "shared drive". This is what Sharepoint is for! The central file repository...the central file server...everyone in the org has access to. And even external people if you wish.

Microsoft is focusing on "Teams"...and this is REALLY cool..builds on top of Sharepoint, merges in Skype, and..adds some other modern workspace features. Teams makes it EASY to create folders in Sharepoint...do it all through Teams..easy setup, easy permissions..all done right there.

 

[marley1]

Don't complicate this. Use MS Teams to create the shared folders with permissions. Sync to OneDrive.

This integrates better than traditional SharePoint libraries.

 

[TAPtech]

+1 to Teams. Does lots of other neat stuff too.

 

[marley1]

+1 to Teams. Does lots of other neat stuff too.

Want to be on my Team?

 

[TAPtech]

Want to be on my Team?

I mean I guess we could roll it back to just that. But we're already so much more.

 

[thecomputerguy]

Here's how I do it:

• Log into portal.office.com using admin credential or your delegated admin creds.
• Click the App icon at the top left to open up the web apps, then click SharePoint
• MS rolls all of these up into a confusing dash for you because they think they know what you want, and don't. So click "Show All" on the left side
• Click the "+Create site" button at the top to make a new one, then click "Team site"
• For Site name enter "Donkey Share for Donkeys only"
  
• For Site description enter "See above"
• Add owners that can manage the site (admins) add members that can access the site
• Open up the site. If you already have a site, ignore all that Donkey talk above.
• Click documents on the left
• Click the "Sync" button on the topish horizontal menu bar

The Sync button opens up the OneDrive client and sets up a Sync, so it's a bit like a mapped drive. It pretty much looks like DropBox or whatever from there on out. In File Explorer, you'll see a little corporate building icon and the company name. Then the SharePoint sites below it. The Sync button puts the Documents folder there. You can add a bunch of them, or just one.

You can share folders within SP Document Libraries (not the root) with others by simply right clicking and going to "Share" with the blue cloud icon. By default SP will only allow sharing within the company, for external access you can lift that ban somewhere in the admin settings. I forget where.

This is extremely helpful thank you very much. One question... how do I make it so that when a user clicks the sync button to add the sharepoint location to their local computer via Onedrive it doesn't download a full copy of all of the files but makes them cloud based until the user opens the file?

I don't want every user downloading 200GB of documents to each of their computers if possible.

Also ... what is the best way to get 200GB of data to the sharepoint folder? Just drop it in to the synced folder using my primary admin user who has all of the data locally and let it sync overnight?

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

This is extremely helpful thank you very much. One question... how do I make it so that when a user clicks the sync button to add the sharepoint location to their local computer via Onedrive it doesn't download a full copy of all of the files but makes them cloud based until the user opens the file?

I don't want every user downloading 200GB of documents to each of their computers if possible.

Also ... what is the best way to get 200GB of data to the sharepoint folder? Just drop it in to the synced folder using my primary admin user who has all of the data locally and let it sync overnight?

By default the new sync client leaves all in the cloud, it does not make all avail offline by default.

And...yup, for pushing up a lot of data.....drop the sync client on a box that has access to all, and add folders to push up.