Forum Discussion
Folder synchronisation for on-premises SharePoint document libraries
One of my customers uses SharePoint 2013 they have many document libraries (with some folders). They would like to be able to synchronise the libraries locally and select which folders are synchronised.
I've looked at OneDrive for Business. In the on premises version you can (de)select libraries but not folders. On the Office 365 version it is posssible to (de)select at the folder level.
I'm happy to go for 3rd party solutions. Any recommendations? I have found http://spsync.net/ which seems to get close to this requirement however thewre haven't ebeen anuy updates on this for over a year. So that doesn't give me much confidence.
My customer would also like to have an option to remotely wipe the synchronised files. I'm not sure if this is even possible, but in short they would like to be able to disable the usage of files. So I'm guessing that either files would have to expire or when a system is online the local copy should be removed on the system administartors demand.
I've looked at a number of library synchronisation solutions out there but they seems to synchronise at the library level only.
3 Replies
Hi Pieter Veenstra,
Are you looking for an OOTB 3rd party solution or dirtying hands in some customization is an option for you?
For client side SharePoint customizations we use Node.js and Gulp tasks infrastructure wich deals with a similar task, but from dev-side prospective. Yet, it's not a big deal to tweak the toolchain and make it work for you.
Sorry guys, for the advertisement of myself here, but below described tools seem to be perfect for such a task.
I'm talking about:
- sppull - Node.js library for downloading documents from SharePoint (can use root-folder based, caml-based rules for detecting the documents to download, can extract metadata)
- spsave - library, which delivers documents to SharePoint
All of these are highly customizable for different business needs, can be used not just as a part of development workflow.
E.g. SPPull was used for extracting updated/new documents from SPO's record center and delivering the updates to 3rd party ERP system on schedule basis (Azure Web Job) on one of the recent projects (large enterprise located in London).
SPSave, by the way, is a part of toolchain used in PnP-JS-Core.
Tools work with SPO and On-Prem, supports all possible auth mechanisms.
Will be glad to answer questions about the architecture of the possible solution.
Hi Pieter Veenstra,
Not a pretty situation to be in. Even with any third party tools this solution will have its own set of sync issues. I would insist on either using OneDrive for Sync or web interface to access the files. Maybe you can create automatic doucment routing to move files to libraries that sync via OneDrive leaving a hyperlink in original libarary and or use this in combination with item level security to selectively sync documents.
For remote wipe or file expiration for documents synced via SP you can look into Azure Rights Management if your client does not have IRM deployed within their on prem AD. This way they can configure settings to require authentication before opening those files etc....
I did find one more client - through generic search on the internet and have no idea about its validity. It is open source so you can work with your Devs to improve on it etc...
http://cmissync.com/sharepoint/
Let me know if this helps.
Regards,
Jasjit
Hi JasjitChopra,
I already tried that one too, but it only goes down to the level of libraries not fodlers in libraries.
I also had a clook at Harmon.ie but they also don't do folder level.
Then I also tried Colligo, but only their iOS versions do folder level synchronisation.
