Mar 23 2017 06:44 PM
I migrate companies to SharePoint Online for a living. The biggest hangup my users have after their migration is adopting a new workflow for getting files INTO SharePoint. It's unnecisarily complex. Let me ilustrate my point: (Edit - reposting since my original post disappeared)
User A gets an email with multiple attachments in Outlook 2016. They want to place the attachments in their team's SharePoint library (https://contoso.sharepoint.com/teamdocs). Their options for this are as follows:
See how hard that is? Users coming from mapped drives through on-premises SharePoint and file servers hate that new level of complexity. Below is some basic functionality that would go miles toward improving user adoption:
This was a little general to include in User Voice, but if I can condense it all into a quick blurb I'll throw links down below. Thanks for listening, hopefully the right folks find this feedback helpful! @Sean Squires?
Feb 15 2019 07:52 AM
This functionality has been improved greatly if you've been using Office 365 Groups in SharePoint Online. You can select the down arrow on the attachment and select "upload", you'll see all of your OneDrives, but you'll also see all of your Office 365 groups you are a part of. You can upload directly from there.
Feb 15 2019 09:35 AM
Feb 15 2019 09:35 AM
Feb 15 2019 10:33 AM
I agree with this 100%.
I work in IT and I STILL bang my head up against the wall when I forget to "start" a document in the right place so that it is easy to move to 365. For full disclosure, yes, I have my SharePoint and Teams document libraries synced with OneDrive, but there are still situations where even with the files being "local" having a mapped drive would still be easier to deal with.
End user Ease of Use/Usability, I believe, should be Microsoft's focus for the next year or so. I love new features, really, I do. I see a new app and I'm like, "OMG! I WANT THAT!" but when once I start digging into it, I realize exactly how hard it would be for an end user to just pick up that new application and start working on it. I love new capablities also, but at the end of the day, what I care about the most is this: How much are my end users going to love this technology that we are rolling out? Are they going to use it? Is it going to make their lives better?
If an application makes life much more complicated, your adoption rates are going to be dismal. Yes, you can "force" them to use a technology, but people are going to hate you for it.
Why was the iPhone so popular? It was stupid easy to use. A baby could pick it up and play a video. I know that Enterprise class systems will always have some degree of complexity to them, but when it comes to end users, they have enough to deal with, give them the easiest way possible to get their job done, and we can go from being the meanies in the IT department to, "Hey, you are my bestest friend!"
I just posted a discussion on the 365 techcommunity regarding a similar situation with the integration of calendaring and tasks; nothing in 365 or Azure is seamlessly integrated, which if it was, would make end users very, very, very, happy, and my teams job that much easier.
Feb 15 2019 12:58 PM
Feb 18 2019 01:38 AM
@Beau Cameron wrote:You can select the down arrow on the attachment and select "upload", you'll see all of your OneDrives, but you'll also see all of your Office 365 groups you are a part of. You can upload directly from there.
Are you referring to Outlook? Using version 16.23 on Mac, I am only able to select local files when adding an attachment, not OneDrive or Office 365 groups (aka. SharePoint Online sites). For the other Office apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), I am able to select SharePoint online sites when opening or saving, but only a subset of the sites I have access to.
Aug 16 2019 12:32 PM
SolutionIt's been a while since I made this post and I'd only think it fair to follow up with it as Microsoft has delivered some real positive improvements in this space.
Files on Demand - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/onedrive/use-group-policy#FilesOnDemandEnabled
AutoMount Team Sites - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/onedrive/use-group-policy#AutoMountTeamSites
Save to SharePoint site - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2015/11/09/attachments-in-outlook-2016-ready-for-... and much easier when using the two features mentioned above.
Bonus points: Live document collaberation - https://support.office.com/en-us/article/document-collaboration-and-co-authoring-ee1509b4-1f6e-401e-...
Big thanks to @Sean Squires , @Lincoln DeMaris , @Christophe Fiessinger , and anybody else involved with these changes. They were a game changer when they launched and they've been much appreciated by consultants and end-users alike!!
Aug 16 2019 02:10 PM
Aug 19 2019 12:47 AM
For me personally, I can't see any improvements here.
- How do I save an Excel, Word or Powerpoint document to a SharePoint site that I have access to but am not following?
- How do I save to a SharePoint site from Outlook for Mac?
I don't want to map any sites to my local computer.
Nov 01 2021 08:47 AM - edited Nov 01 2021 09:02 AM
Could you use power automate/Microsoft Graph to force all to 'follow' a Sharepoint site as its created?
Nov 01 2021 09:09 AM