“Add to OneDrive” 🎙 – The Intrazone podcast

I think this can be used as a really useful replacement to syncing seperate document libraries.

One issue I have noticed whilst testing is that the "Add Shortcut to OneDrive" feature doesn't fully respect app enforced conditional access policies when the SharePoint site has been set to allow browser only access. Blocking access appears to work but when configured to browser only access initally it won't open the file but after clicking Skip the file then be opens locally and a copy can also be saved locally. Hopefully this gets resolved soon as it will be a big problem for those storing highly sensitive data.

I support Joy´s statement. It takes always time that our users are picking up certain functionality and we have to drive them through Change Management to show what are the different use cases.

The functionality behind it is good but it should have been validated better where it would be most beneficial for the user community. The visual difference is key for our users to identify where it comes from. 

Please review your decision.

Katy Erlandson - You have mentioned that Sync also syncs metadata.

How can I view them? Windows Explorer does not provide such option, right?

There are some excellent suggestions above regarding how this feature is confusing.

I hope Mark-Kashman can reach out to Gaia and Katy with this feedback and maybe they can comment?

I am really disappointed that Microsoft's chosen direction is in favor of "add shortcut to OneDrive" with plans to ultimately remove the more traditional sync button. We disabled "add shortcut to OneDrive" because it was creating chaos in out tenant due to unintentional file deletions and the little understood concept that you can either sync OR add the "shortcut" but not both. My disappointment stems from three main points.

First, the paradigm in use with "add shortcut to OneDrive"  is unnecessarily confusing by calling it a "shortcut." People know what a shortcut is and it's NOT a sync.  A shortcut is simply a pointer. People believe they are dealing with a pointer and they have no reason to believe that deleting said pointer will DELETE all files for everyone...until it happens.  If you insist on going this direction, at least rename it "sync to OneDrive."

Second, we have made significant investment in guiding users to SharePoint for collaborative purposes and to reserve OneDrive for personal items, work in progress, or simple, one-off or ad hoc sharing. "Add shortcut to OneDrive" violates this second paradigm by moving collaborative artifacts into personal storage. Why?! Especially, when we have a more sensical option available through traditional sync where the content is logically separated in File Explorer?

Finally, the argument is made that "add shortcut to OneDrive" offers some features that are not available through sync. I'm a bit baffled by this logic. Why not apply those same features to sync? And then get rid of this confusing "add shortcut to OneDrive" instead of the other way around?

It sounds like the ship has already sailed but I do still sincerely hope you reconsider.

Mark-Kashman Great info, thanks for sharing! PDF scan & sign is big for me too. Just some feedback from a mixed environment to pass along - A significant design improvement opportunity. When our folks use Add to OneDrive on a folder they're already Syncing (common scenario due to folder nesting), the product prompts to "Unsync conflicting folders" without any other viable option. Then, the real trouble begins. Sync folders are disconnected but not cleaned up, so people unknowingly keep using them, because they don't understand what happened and old familiar folders are still there. The prompt window only offers an Unsync button - can we please have a more prominent way to Cancel and gracefully exit? Early Christmas present?

Mark-Kashman gacarini (Can't find Katy to @ her here. )

This episode was super helpful and brought clarity to the direction sync is headed. I'm disappointed to learn that the 'Sync' button is on its way out, in deference to 'Add to OneDrive,' though your explanation as to why makes a lot of sense. Allow me to present why I'm disappointed and hopefully this can help inform your continued development of 'Add to OneDrive.'

The reason so many of our users tend to prefer using the Sync button is the built-in separation in File Explorer, denoted by the office building icon, for files they've synced from Teams (see first image, below). This is a useful separation as we think about which files are exclusively our own and which are shared files to which we have access. Instead of this separation into a different folder strucure, 'Add to OneDrive' surfaces these synced folders in OneDrive web by mixing shared (Teams) files under "My files" (though with a slightly altered folder icon), and this doesn't provide the full separation that helps users stay organized. In fact, every time one clicks 'Add to OneDrive,' they've just created yet another folder in the root "My files," likely just named "General," which they now have to move to a subfolder, or rename, or both.

Perhaps there could be an option for users to choose whether or not to they wish to lump all of these together or not, both in File Explorer and OneDrive web. This would make it an easier change to swallow. Maybe a change in terminology to something like "My OneDrive Files" and an additional option for "Files I've Synced." Or, even better, perhaps an easier design change would be a new blue-colored folder at the top of "My files" in OneDrive web and File Explorer called "Added to OneDrive," where these synced folders would be created, by default. (See my mock-ups, below). Similar to how all teams meetings recordings automatically go to an auto-created new folder called 'Recordings.'

Thanks for listening.

Thx, but I don't want to disable the "Add to OneDrive"-Button. I want to disable the Sync-Button so that the user can only use "Add to OneDrive". In 00:13:48 she says that "There is a script in our documentation to turn off the Sync-Button for the whole site" - so I am looking for this script 🙂

Hopefully, this script does something different than offline availability (see https://sharepointmaven.com/how-to-disable-sync-in-sharepoint-and-onedrive ) because switching this off also disables the possibility to get the library to Windows Explorer over "Add to OneDrive".

So long story short: What we need is to just disable the classic Sync-Button without disabling anything related to the "Add to OneDrive" functionality.

MSchmittnaegel In the dokument, at the bottom there are an "How to disable "Add shortcut to OneDrive"

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/add-shortcuts-to-shared-folders-in-onedrive-for-work-or-school-d66b1347-99b7-4470-9360-ffc048d35a33 

You mentioned a PowerShell script linked in the docs to disable/hide the Sync button while not disabling the sync over "Add to OneDrive". Can you please share a link to the script / docs page?