Sync external OneDrive shared folders

Hi again,

I made some more tests. 

Let say I am an internal user with Office365 E3 licence at CONTOSO

I work with one customer CUST1 which is sharing a sharepoint site : PROJECT_A

I have a second customer CUST2 which is sharing a TEAMS : PROJECT_B

First I have been finally able to sync PROJECT_B : the customer as authorize in OneDrive Admin center any domain to sync. Previously he authorized only his and our tenantID's and I was not able to sync.

I received invitation for both customers and I am now a guest user on each environment and can access to them via SharePoint URL or TEAMS.

I sync them with OneDrive and here is how I see this documents on tree view in the left pane:

the folder "PROJECT_A" is under "CONTOSO" (the full path is %USERPROFILE%\CONTOSO\PROJECT_A) and the folder "PROJECT_B - Documents" is under a new created group "CUST2" (the full path is %USERPROFILE%\CUST2\PROJECT_B - Documents)

As I was explaining the way it is created and displayed for CUST2 is more relevant as it is under a separate company folder instead of CUST1 which is mixed with our internal OneDrives...

Why the SharePoint of CUST1 is not placed in a dedcated folder as CUST2 ?

Thanks,

Antoine Heskia 

Hi

Carter_MSFT Sorry for the late answer. I wanted to wait new updates to share more feedback.

Currently, my OneDrive client is in version 19.086.0502.0005 and here is the last 2 issues I got :

• I still have one customer I cannot sync with... I am a guest user on his tenant. I can access to the TEAMS he granted me access to. And I can open documents from this TEAMS (and from the corresponding SharePoint subsite). If I click on the "Sync" button, OneDrive starts and state that it cannot sync the folder. My customer told me he had disabled external sync except for my tenant ID (in OneDrive admin center). Is there something else to check ?
• When B2B Sync started, I noticed that for each folders I was syncing, it created a folder in %USERPROFILE% for each of my customer. This was quite convenient because in File Explorer, each folder I am syncing are under the customer name. This behavior has changed : now each folder I am syncing is created under my OneDrive company homedir... Why is this ?

Thanks for your information.

Hello all,

This feature in its current state requires some configurations on the sending and receiving end of the external sharing.  Let me once again put this into detail:

For senders, they need to make sure that External Sharing is enabled and ensure an AAD guest account is created for their intended recipients within the sender’s home tenant.  This can happen automatically for the recipients, but can likely fail and fall back to a one-time passcode which does not create a Guest account in the sender’s home tenant thus the section in the KB that refers to creating guest account for the senders tenant.  We are actively working on resolving this issue.

For recipients, they need to make sure you have an Insiders build of the Sync client as well as an O365 account.

The B2B feature is still only available for Insiders per our KB article:

This feature is currently enabled in the Insiders ring only (build 19.012.0121.0005 or later - see the release notes for rollout info). To try this feature, join the Windows Insider program or the Office Insider program. 

If you are in the Insiders ring you should be able to go to your About tab in the OneDrive Sync settings and see that you have early access to latest pre-release builds.  If you are not an Insider and would like to try this feature then please enroll in one of the many Insider programs that we respect.

We are also actively tracking an issue on the backend that is breaking cross tenant syncing for all affected tenants.  We are still investigating but I will reply back to this thread once more clarity is achieved.

Antoine HESKIA  I’m interested to hear more about the case where collaboration features are not working for you.  Can  you please give me more details about it.

Choking 

I'm not sure how definitive it is, but this page ( https://support.office.com/en-us/article/onedrive-release-notes-845dcf18-f921-435e-bf28-4e24b95e5fc0?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US ) has build numbers that might help determine what ring a client machine is in.  I was able to manually update from 19.033.0218.0011 to 19.043.0304.0006.

Still didn't work, even when I disabled ADAL ( https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/onedrive/b2b-sync ).  However, I'm not an O365 admin, so I can't verify the rest of the required settings are correct.  Hopefully I'll get a response from my vendor (and from the different vendor that manages our organization's SharePoint presence) soon, and can provide another update.

Everyone - 

You can't tell if you are an "Insider".

Even if you think you are, you can't tell if your OneDrive tenant has B2B sync enabled.

Support has no idea what this is - they cannot tell if it is enabled, how it works, how to fix - nothing.

There is no path to bring issues up to - maybe under the general Insider reporting path but support is keeping no records.  What kind of beta program has no issue tracking mechanism?

You can't possibly know if this will work with your customers/partners without knowing if it is enabled - this may be acceptable given the beta status.

Microsoft - we're trying to work with you, please pull it together so we have a chance.

We ended up creating IDs within our tenant to support our partner.  There were only a few so not a big deal this time but we've had to delay any further OneDrive deployment until this is resolved.  I'm not sure how long we can wait, it's been over a year since this was originally released.

Thanks everyone for adding your input.

Antoine HESKIA Interesting. Would be nice to get some more official information since the B2B Sync article still states Insiders is required. Comments StephenRice ?