Forum Discussion
Teams Files Offline
All,
As a leader in an Emergency Incident Management Team we are looking to utilize Teams as our communication platform. We are currently utilizing the free version (access to full in the works) as our Beta with great success ! Even still there is some resistance. Some of it is justified.
Although we operate in an connected environment 95 percent of the time we as a team need to plan for the worst. As a Team we can, and will be deployed to areas of the country during times of devastation. Which translates into no internet access. How can we as a team prepare for this? It's a little difficult to follow the matrix of Teams vs OneDrive vs Sharepoint. We as a team maintain a NAS drive also. How do we integrate? We are only looking to access the files stored within Teams during periods of no connectivity. We understand the Teams platform is not accessible offline. So here are my questions.
- Is there a way to access our Teams Sharepoint off line?
- Is there a way to backup our Teams Sharepoint to a NAS drive that we will then take on deployment with us?
- Files in your OneDrive - uploaded to Teams- and then edited within Teams no does not mirror the original file in your OneDrive. Correct ?
Thanks in advance !!!
- Is there a way to access our Teams Sharepoint off line?
You can sync your files offline to a computer. The issue is, if you are offline extended periods, everyone has their own copy and trying to upload those changes later will be a conflict nightmare.
Is there a way to backup our Teams Sharepoint to a NAS drive that we will then take on deployment with us?
Same as above, you can sync, then copy over to the NAS, but again as long as no one is syncing or editing in the cloud during this "Event", then you could have those files sync back up, but if people are still doing online, while a subset of users go with the NAS, this will be like point one, with conflict nightmares.
Files in your OneDrive - uploaded to Teams- and then edited within Teams no does not mirror the original file in your OneDrive. Correct ?
If you upload to Teams correct, they are seperate. If you get a sharing link and paste into a Team chat or create a link to it, then it would update both locations, but upload does create a 'copy' per say.
Your scenario doesn't really seem too feasible with Teams or honestly not many products will that I'm aware of without having connectivity. That disconnect over time will cause havoc on conflicting saves etc.
Now if your whole group moves as a whole, you might be able to just setup a sync using the NAS as a sync location and when you hook it back up online it can sync between the two, but again, depends on who's accessing the files / editing them while you guys are using the NAS.Thanks for the quick response !!!
We operate as a Team at home in NYC.
The Incident Commander has a concern as it relates to data back up. Although we are usually only with out connectivity for a day or two it could be critical if we don't have access to our files.
Here is another question.
A hurricane hits and internet is knocked out for a week. Any company that uses Teams does not have access to their files in Teams? Unless they store them locally on their laptop?
What would be your workflow to ensure your Teams files are available to you even when there is no internet?
- That's something you just have to consider when going cloud. Most people don't' house servers in their own officers etc. anymore so internet / point to point outage would be the same issue. Or same thing could be said with knocking out your power unless you had generators. If uptime is that critical it's some thing you have to consider, but technically Office 365 itself is pretty resilient across geo locaitons, it would be your local internet that would be the issue,
So that said, def something to consider, but yes, you would lose access to files unless you sync'ed but again, if everyone was synced even, and all worked local for a week, when everyone gets back online your going to have a sync conflict nightmare if you have many files that are collaborated on. it just depends on how workflow usually happens across your org with those files. If everyone is in their own file creation and people just read from those files it really won't be effected much, but if you have high collaboration on the same files, then you'll have a bunch of issues in that scenario.
That said, there is still SharePoint 2019 and on-prem OneDrive that can be utilized if you have generators and your own data-center to prevent internet pipe from taking you down as an option. You get the same sync etc. But everyone local would have access to the content.
