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?
Mar 27 2017 07:35 AM
I agree 100%.
It would also be useful if you can browse all your team sites (linked to an O365 group) from within Office. I have a similar scenario for Word:
I often end up with a document in Word which I have to save to my desktop, open up a browser, navigate to the correct team site, drag the document onto the library in the browser.
After which I remember I have to add or change something, so I have to close the current document (because it links to one on the dekstop), and reopen the document from the browser.
This would not be necessary if I could browse all my groups from within Word.
Mar 27 2017 07:41 AM
Mar 27 2017 07:56 AM
Hi Bart, try the following:
Mar 27 2017 08:01 AM
This is exactly why we ended up purchasing a third party tool for our users. (Harmon.ie)
Since we had lots of problems with mapped network drives and trusted site GPO's not always applying correctly. Which stopped them accessing the drives. Also sign on was a problem as users would go to there drives before signing on which doesn't work either.
Mar 27 2017 09:19 AM
@Salvatore Biscari I know this process, but you can't expect from end-users to know the url of their libraries by heart. Opening a browser, navigating to the site, copying the url is not user-friendly. The list of your groups should be accessible from within the client applications.
Mar 27 2017 10:21 AM
Hi Philip. Problems with mapped drives can be resolved using a free script like the one from Jos https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/OneDriveMapper-automaticall-d7d498b0
Zee Drive, a commercial drive mapping tool my company develops, also provides reliable network drive mappings to OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online with additional features including mapping to shared with me files, sharing directly from Windows File Explorer and viewing version history.
Myles
Mar 27 2017 10:55 AM
Mar 27 2017 11:05 AM
Hi Philip, thank you appreciate the feedback, and glad to hear you evaluated Zee Drive in the process!
Myles
Mar 27 2017 06:09 PM
Hi @Paul Youngberg - thank you for sharing! There's actually some great investments happening across client, ODB, Outlook, and SharePoint products to make these saving/sharing scenarios more seamless and user-friendly. Adding a few colleagues - @Lincoln DeMaris and @Christophe Fiessinger for notice and comment.
Mar 27 2017 11:33 PM
The other way that is open is using the OneDrive for business sync client.
Still requires config to sync libraries people use frequently, but for bulk upload you just save to the local location. It at least cuts out the go find and navigate to the Sharepoint library part.
Mar 28 2017 12:23 AM
I might be irrelevant, but in that case why not use a Flow ? Your user could set up a folder where emails attachments will be saved to a SP docs lib, and Flow will do the job.
Mar 28 2017 06:06 AM
One of the things with flow is that it is a giant security hole.
If a user has the skills to use it they can easily send data off to other consumer services and no way of monitoring it other than DLP.
The other thing is to set up flows for users but then you are left to maintain those. Which would include
having some access to their email id's.
Nov 06 2017 05:51 AM - edited Nov 06 2017 06:15 AM
Totally agree, this process is completely unfriendly to common users. It's not reasonable to think they would remember sites URL, or go to check and copy-paste them every time.
They should also copy the right path, another possible issue to process (see there).
The new sync client works really good, and it could be a solution; bu there are a lot of use cases in which syncing a library is not the best option.
A GPO solution would be amazing, but even just the possibility to see all the sites in the tenant (or the sites you are following, or those you see at the SharePoint online home page - tenantname.sharepoint.com/_layouts/15/sharepoint.aspx) would be great.
Still no news from Microsoft?
EDIT: I've found similar questions on the same topic:
Jan 23 2018 11:09 AM
Hi Bart,
This would be ok if Microsoft understood their own generated URLs. For instance, if a user is in a particular folder, and they copy the browser url, the office app does not understand the url and complains to the user.
How does MS expect all users to understand that they need to get the URL of the library and not the folder url. How difficult would it be for the Office Team to parse a url their own product generates?
Jan 23 2018 02:13 PM
That's a good use case where the "old way" wins.
I've had some success "selling" those folks on the enhanced collaboration features of Office 365, including document coauthoring, version history, doc check out/check in.
Mar 05 2018 03:04 PM
@bart vermeersch wrote:
@Salvatore Biscari I know this process, but you can't expect from end-users to know the url of their libraries by heart. Opening a browser, navigating to the site, copying the url is not user-friendly. The list of your groups should be accessible from within the client applications.
THIS 1000%!
I cannot believe in this time of SPO and Office 2016/ProPlus that it's still such a pain to save a file from one of the core Office applications. Yes, I know one answer is to get people to go to the library first and start a new document from there, but we're talking about decades of habits/patterns. We're already asking the users to change so much. We get them to buy into the benefits of a document management system, but then we make the experience of saving a file painful. Our credibility often goes down the toilet at this point.
Mar 16 2018 01:59 AM
I totally agree. We started using O365 in January and are still using our onsite fileshare as we are unable to find an easy way to explain to people how they can easily save their documents in a SharePoint library. We also struggle with non-microsoft documents (autocad, vectorworks, ...) used by our designers.
Mar 19 2018 09:42 PM
Mar 19 2018 09:54 PM
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!!