OneDrive Message Center Updates February 1st to February 28th
Published Feb 28 2019 03:02 PM 48.7K Views
Microsoft

Hi everyone,

 

Here are the latest updates to the OneDrive service that shipped in February 2019 or coming soon in March 2019!

 

We have some great improvements coming to the product in February 2019 and early March 2019 including:

  • OneDrive desktop client sync behavior
  • Updates to the Shared with me experience on OneDrive mobile
  • A new sharing settings page for the SharePoint admin center in Office 365 and
  • A new ability to customize the help message that users see when they are blocked from sharing externally by policy.

As always, feel free to share your feedback in the comments below.

 

New settings to control OneDrive desktop client’s auto-pause behavior

Available Now

 

You can now control the OneDrive sync client’s auto-pause behavior on your PC when your device is connected to a metered network or if your device is in battery saver mode. New controls are located in OneDrive sync client settings under the “Settings” tab.

OneDrive desktop client settingsOneDrive desktop client settings

By default, the OneDrive sync client will automatically pause whenever a device connects to a metered network or switches to a battery saver mode*. You can override this behavior by un-checking the corresponding checkboxes in the Settings tab. These settings are respected across your personal OneDrive and OneDrive for Business instances.

 

*Note that the option to enable/disable auto-pause when the device is in battery saver mode will not be visible if the device does not use a battery as a power source (plugged-in desktop PC, etc.)

Administrators can manage these settings globally through provided group policies. Read about them here.

 

Shared With Me on OneDrive Mobile Updates

Starting rollout in February 2019

 

We are rolling out updates to the Shared with Me experience in mobile to include new metadata including who shared the file with you and when. In addition, new sorting options around this additional metadata will be available. Finally, you’ll be able to group content in this view by who shared content with you and when so it is as easy as possible for you to find the content you are collaborating on.

Shared With Me on OneDrive mobileShared With Me on OneDrive mobile

Updated sharing page for the SharePoint admin center in Office 365

Rolling out in early March 2019

 

As part of our efforts to update the SharePoint admin center in Office 365, we are proud to announce that the sharing page is now available! This page has been re-designed from the ground up to be easier to use and understand and we’ve made some fantastic performance improvements as well. We’ll continue to improve this page (including introducing the last few settings that are still available only in classic).

New sharing admin pageNew sharing admin page

 

Custom Sharing Help Link

Now Available

 

We’re introducing a new IT administrator feature that allows you to provide a custom link to end users when they are blocked from sharing externally by policy. For example, this can be used if you want to direct users to explain why external sharing is disable or if you want to direct them to an internal portal where they can request a policy change. This feature is only available via the latest version of SharePoint Online Management Shell with the command Set-SPOTenant -CustomizedExternalSharingServiceUrl http://<your url>.com.

 

Example error message in the OneDrive sharing dialogExample error message in the OneDrive sharing dialog

Thanks again for your time and eyeballs to learn about what available and coming for OneDrive in Office 365.

 

Thanks,

Stephen Rice – Program Manager – OneDrive engineering

21 Comments
Brass Contributor

Hi Stephen

 

Thanks for the updates. However, do you have any tentative dates on Team Sites Automount GA? We are looking for this feature in order to implement one of the requirements of our customer

 

Thanks

Chandrasekaran C N

Silver Contributor

There is enough space to name it "Shared with me" instead of "Shared" on mobile and be consistent with web version. Unless that menu also shows shared by you. But then it would be harder to find what is shared with you.

Silver Contributor

Also, to provide a link to external sharing error explanation one has to create a page for that? I guess in future this should have a GUI in Azure with a text box or something.

re: Custom Sharing Help Link, the powershell command simply replaces the URL shown in the message - specifically the "here" link?

 

Note: it's poor UI to use "click here" hyperlinks.

Microsoft

@Chandrasekaran Nageswaran, let me double check on the latest here and get back to you.

 

@wroot , I'll pass your feedback on text along to the team. I know we've done lots of thinking here and have more changes planned. And yes, this is intended as a way to help connect company policy with end users (either informative or process related). You could always use a SharePoint site/page here too ;)

 

@Kevin Crossman, that's correct. When this value is not set, the "Click here to learn more" text is not shown. Once set, we add the text & set the link. I'll be sure to pass the text feedback along as well!

 

Thanks!

 

Stephen Rice

OneDrive Program Manager II

Microsoft

@Chandrasekaran Nageswaran, chatted with the feature owners. We don't have any date just yet but will have more to share soon. Thanks!

 

Stephen Rice

OneDrive Program Manager II

Brass Contributor

@Stephen Rice is there any plans to provide an admin setting that will enforce users set an expiration date of files shared, no matter if it’s anonomous link or shared with specific people.  This should be a tenant level setting as well as a site level setting similar to how you can currently allow only certain sites for external sharing. The reason this is needed is to insure data security.  If folders are shared indefinately, this creates thousands of doors into your corporate data because you cannot, and shouldn’t have to, rely on users to track and  stop sharing files and folders once the need is gone. 

 

Thanks!

Microsoft

Hi @ITPro44 ,

 

During the OneDrive & SharePoint "What's new in external sharing & collaboration" talk at Ignite 2018, we started talking about a new feature that will be coming a little later this year caled Expiring External Access. While we won't be expiring links themselves, you will be able to require all external access to expire on a site by site basis (i.e. if I have access to doc1 and doc2 on a given site, when I expire, I will lose access to both). We absolutely understand the need here and are excited to get this into your hands! Thanks!

 

Stephen Rice

OneDrive Program Manager II

Deleted
Not applicable

@Stephen Rice , 
Once the Custom Sharing Help Link is set with some URL, how we can rollback the change (to remove the additional text and URL)?
Thanks in advance!

Microsoft

Hi @Deleted ,

 

You can remove the additional text by setting the value to an empty string. Set-SPOTenant -CustomizedExternalSharingServiceUrl ""

 

Hope that helps!

 

Stephen Rice

OneDrive Program Manager II

Brass Contributor

Business are waiting for Team-site Automount! You are postponing release date since October! Feature announced in June! this is almost one year now!

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-OneDrive-Blog/New-Capabilities-for-OneDrive-Announc...

 

Without this functionality there is no way that majority of the business would move away from old file shares!

Microsoft

Hi @pgawronski ,

 

I don't have anything specific to share just yet but we are continuing to make progress on Team-site automount and hope to have more to share soon. Stay tuned!

 

Stephen Rice

OneDrive Program Manager II

Brass Contributor

We are tuned! One year now, hopefully you would push this further as it is bad that we are waiting so long on something like that.

 

anyway thank you for reply.

Brass Contributor

Thanks for the response @Stephen Rice , what you described sounds like a great control to put in place.  We are looking forward to it!  Will you be able to expire access individuals ODfB as well?  

 

We are also looking forward to AutoMount!  Thanks for seeing this one through. 

 

Lastly, we need a succinct term to use for the Company folder that is used to sync SharePoint document libraries via OneDrive.  Currently this folder name is tied to the tenant business name.  While you can change the business name, this is far from ideal and may even have negative consequences.  Even if you choose to rename it, it only takes effect for document libraries that you sync with after that point and leaves the old company name folder there.  Are there any plans by chance to enable the ability to rename the Company Folder and transition currently synced document libraries to this new name?  Even better, it would be great to have these document libraries appear exactly like a mapped drive.  This would allow you to say, go to your W-Drive along with providing a common directory path for all users.  I realize this may be a pipe dream though, it does seem to fit into the AutoMount scenario.  

 

Cheers!

 

 

 

 

Deleted
Not applicable

Hi @Stephen Rice ,

It works.

Thank you for the advice! 

Microsoft

@Deleted , glad it worked!

 

@ITPro44 , unfortunately I'm not familiar with any plans here but I'll pass this feedback along to the team! Thanks!

 

Stephen Rice

OneDrive Program Manager II

 

Copper Contributor

Stephen,

 

These blogs are very helpful in keeping up with OneDrive features.

 

We are a law firm that currently uses Accellion for file sharing.  We are evaluating OneDrive and as soon as it has the basic file sharing features we need the plan is to convert everyone from Accellion to Office 365 with OneDrive.

 

Basically, we need confirmation of access/downloads of shared items or a way to view who has accessed shared items and when.  Normally, these will be external users.  We have turned off anonymous links. 

 

I have been able to get an email confirmation when sending a share link to one external user at a time, but this doesn't appear to work when you send the link to more than one external user at a time.  Also, the confirmation email doesn't consistently show which user clicked the link.  It just says the link was clicked.  I really need to know which user clicked the link as that link and/or other links to that item may be used as well.  Any upcoming improvements to the email confirmations coming in the near future?

 

Minus a usable email confirmation, I thought maybe there would be a way to view who and when items were accessed and/or downloaded.  I have not been able to find a way to view this information.  Am I missing something or does that option just not exist currently?  If it just doesn't currently exist, are there any upcoming changes that might improve this ability and make it more usable for law firms?

 

Any information you can provide would be very much appreciated.

 

Thanks,

 

Rex P.   

Copper Contributor

Sorry, new to posting on this form.

 

@Stephen Rice 

 

These blogs are very helpful in keeping up with OneDrive features.

 

We are a law firm that currently uses Accellion for file sharing.  We are evaluating OneDrive and as soon as it has the basic file sharing features we need the plan is to convert everyone from Accellion to Office 365 with OneDrive.

 

Basically, we need email confirmation of access/downloads of shared items or a way to view who has accessed shared items and when.  Normally, these will be external users.  We have turned off anonymous links. 

 

I have been able to get an email confirmation when sending a share link to one external user at a time, but this doesn't appear to work when you send the link to more than one external user at a time.  Also, the confirmation email doesn't consistently show which user clicked the link.  It just says the link was clicked.  I really need to know which user clicked the link as that link and/or other links to that item may be used as well.  Any improvements to the email confirmations coming in the near future?

 

Minus a usable email confirmation, I thought maybe there would be a way to view who and when items were accessed and/or downloaded.  I have not been able to find a way to view this information.  Am I missing something or does that option just not exist currently?  If it just doesn't currently exist, are there any upcoming changes that might improve this ability and make it more usable for law firms?

 

Also, I would agree with @ITPro44 that being able to expire links will be an important feature as well.  Admin should be able to set a default expiration for all links for their users in OneDrive and the users should be able to set expiration on individual items to something less than the default if desired.  Maybe even an override for selected users to extend expiration on individual items past the default.  These features and everything else I mentioned above are already part of mainstream sharing services like the Accellion we currently use. 

 

Any information you can provide would be very much appreciated.

 

Thanks,

 

Rex P.

Brass Contributor

@Berkowitz_Admin 

 

You should check the Security & Compliance Center -> Audit Log Search, where it shows the details of audit logs, something as shown below.

 

 

auditlog.png

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hope this helps,

 

Thanks

Chandrasekaran C N

Copper Contributor

Thank you @Chandrasekaran Nageswaran !  That was very helpful!

 

Is there any way you are aware of to give each user the ability to view their own audit logs?

 

I also wonder if there's a way to show external users in the View Statistics pane?  It counts them but doesn't show them?  Again, just trying to give each user as much insight to what they've shared as possible.

 

OneDrive.JPG

 

Maybe @Stephen Rice has more insight on how this works currently and possible upcoming changes?  Improvements to email confirmations?

 

Thanks again @Chandrasekaran Nageswaran for your help.

 

Rex P.

Microsoft

Hi @Berkowitz_Admin,

 

Glad to hear you're looking at OneDrive here! Audit logs is the primary method for discovering this type of information and, unfortunately, there is no out of box method for making the logs available for end users. I know we are making some improvements to viewer statistics but I'm not sure if it will give you the full list of info that you want. 

 

Definitely suggest things like this over at onedrive.uservoice.com as that helps us prioritize what features to work on next! Thanks!

 

Stephen Rice

OneDrive Program Manager II

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‎Feb 28 2019 03:42 PM
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