Forum Discussion
The most efficient way to share documents?
To put it (very) simply: OneDrive for Business is the cloud "equivalent" of a local "Documents" folder and so it is meant to store the personal work files and folders of a user.
Hence, yes, you made a big mistake... Most (perhaps all!) of your problems come from such mistake!
Instead, the cloud "equivalent" of a network share is a SharePoint document library which is meant to store the files and folders shared among the users in a team.
All this said, you should realize that SharePoint is a quite complex environment, designed to fulfill hugely different requirements in several different ways: therefore a perfect understanding of your requirements and a perfect understanding of alternatives in implementation is paramount.
A lot depends on your permissions requirements: do you want that everyone is able to access everything? Do you want to share with external users, i.e. not belonging to your organization?
Also, do you need only files and folders sharing or do you need some wider type of collaboration? In such case, Teams/Groups could be the correct answer.
All these subjects, and many more, have been repeatedly discussed in this community, so my advice is to search for relevant threads and read a lot. Or look for a SharePoint professional that can help you.
In any case, planning is the key.
Good luck!
Thank you for your answer! I realise now that yes, placing the files on OneDrive was a huge error.
I would really like to set up a SharePoint Document Library/multiple libraries for my team. However, with the access permissions required, I am not too sure what the best way of doing so is.
Essentially, all of the company files are organised into one main folder with many subfolders. For example, heading to 'Clients' would then need you to click on the specific client, then the year, then the project. Within that project folder, there are plenty of subfolders too. External users will rarely access files, and when doing so, will do so with a direct link.
The setup that we desire is quite specific. At any given time, one team member may have access to just two client project folders.
The issue I have found with placing the entire 'server' into a document library is that when sharing a specific subfolder with a team member, they are unable to view it unless using the direct URL. I have been told that this is how SharePoint works, and there is no way to allow them to navigate through parent folders to see what they have been given access to.
How would you recommend proceeding?
