Celebrating top OneDrive moments at Ignite 2019
Published Nov 04 2019 06:00 AM 65.6K Views
Microsoft

The OneDrive team continues to work hard to empower people at every level of the organization to be able to view, access and find their files from anywhere, share and collaborate with confidence as well as keep their content backed up and protected engaging in a consistent and complaint productivity experience across Microsoft 365.

 

 

Today at Microsoft Ignite (Nov 4-Nov 8 ) we commemorate product innovations, customers as well as our team’s accomplishments as we unveil the latest and greatest for OneDrive- the intelligent files app for Microsoft 365. Besides being excited to announce new capabilities for OneDrive, we are also extremely grateful for all your support, feedback and partnership in the journey to digital transformation.

We, too, would like to take the opportunity to recognize one such customer partnership: Nestlé.

When Nestlé CIO Terence Stacey shared his vision of a cloud migration, a globally distributed team came together to first tackle migration. “We felt that Microsoft could better provide the secure infrastructure that we needed and probably at a lower cost,” says Paul Saunders, Program Manager based at Nestlé headquarters in Switzerland. “We wanted a single, easy-to-use file sharing solution that integrated with the everyday tools people have on their desktops. OneDrive was the answer.”

 

Check out the case study at https://aka.ms/OneDriveNestleCheck out the case study at https://aka.ms/OneDriveNestle

 

Read up the  case study to learn more about how Nestlé standardized OneDrive as their collaboration tool across 300000+ users, 2000 brands, 1500 locations, 500 factories and 190 countries, with minimal user disruption to save infrastructure related costs, drive agile productivity for users and IT along with improving compliance for the organization and simplifying IT overhead.

We take pride in sharing the business successes and IT accomplishments of our customers and hope these inspiring stories and best practices will help you in your endeavors as well.

 

Now, let us check out the OneDrive highlights from Ignite 2019. Here are our top 3 moments:

 

1. Experience easy file access

 

a. Upload and sync large files

 

We are pleased to announce Microsoft 365 supports uploads of file sizes up to 100 GB – which includes uploads of files into SharePoint, Teams and OneDrive. To complement these large uploads, we announced availability of differential sync for PC and Mac, bringing the ability to sync only the parts of large files that have changed, not the entire file. For example, in the below illustration, you can see that after a simple edit, only 2 MB of a 100 MB file is being synced instead of the complete file.

 

     When you add any changes to a file Differential sync syncs part of the file instead of the entire file. 

 

This makes the file synchronization process faster for these files. It also reduces the time taken to upload and download a file as well as consumed bandwidth.

Differential sync is already available for Office file types and is rolling out to most file types like JPEG, PDF, MOV, MP4 etc.

 

b. Recommended view

 

Finding content is one of the biggest inefficiencies we have daily and with OneDrive we want to help you quickly find the files that matter most. Leveraging the intelligence of the Microsoft Graph, OneDrive showcases relevant files based on how you work and collaborate with others.

Recommended view surfaces files trending around you bringing attention to important files you may not want to miss, based on actions like a recent edit from a fellow collaborator, comments and @mentions, highlighting a file you recently opened, and general file activity trends.

This view is consistent across OneDrive for web and Office.

 

    Consistent Recommended View across OneDrive and Office. 

 

c. Intelligent file card updates

 

Visibility of all file activities is key, and we are continuously working to make it as seamless as possible. Whenever you hover over a file in OneDrive and SharePoint you will be able to see a wealth of information about your files at a glance.  Earlier this year we announced updates to File card introducing features like “Inside look” that will surface deeper information on a file like key points and time to read the file as well as “Activity highlights” that will show relevant activities related to the files you’re working on, like edits, comments, or @mentions.

Today, we announced an additional update coming soon to the file card- “Conversations”. Now, when you hover over files that have been shared in email, meeting invitations, or private Teams chats, you will be able to see those conversations in the file card and allow users to jump back to them.  Users' collaborate in many places and the file card will help you remember where that work took place.

 

Learn about your files at a glace with Inside look, file views and conversations.Learn about your files at a glace with Inside look, file views and conversations.

 

d. Save for later

 

With this feature you will be able to bookmark files and folders across OneDrive and SharePoint for later access.  You will see an aggregate of everything you have saved in the “Saved for later “ section in your OneDrive making it easy for you to quickly get back to content from your OneDrive or a shared library.

 

     Save your important files and folders for later access.. 

 

2. Work and share with confidence


a. Coherent file sharing and collaboration across Office 365

 

Microsoft is bringing a consistent sharing experience wherever you share from. As much as we are rationalizing the files experience across Microsoft 365, we, too, are working to ensure the sharing experience and rich set of sharing options are consistent across devices and platforms. Today, this includes OneDrive, Office desktop and mobile apps, SharePoint document libraries, Windows Explorer and Mac Finder – and now, Teams.

Most recently we announced ubiquitous sharing experience across Microsoft Teams and Outlook. Soon, you will be able to share files by easily adjusting the sharing and access controls (view, edit, expire, block download, etc.) directly in Microsoft Teams and Outlook web app. Links shared will intelligently reconcile to the name of the file.

 

     Coherent file sharing experience in Outlook. 

 

    Coherent files sharing experience in Teams. You can copy address bar URLs and they to will reconcile into the file name. 

 

To learn more about the rich files experience across Microsoft 365 check out our latest blog.

 

We are also heavily invested in making the collaboration experience reliable, intuitive and secure. Office is more than just a canvas for document creation- it supports native collaboration with real time coauthoring as well as helps you in staying up to date with your file activities with effective features like @mentions, comments and most recently announced- tasks. Coming soon, across Word, Excel and PowerPoint, is Tasks, that will help you assign responsibilities to your peers, which can be resolved once the job is complete. In addition to assigning the task you can also reassign it and track any changes made to the task within the comment thread via the inline history.

 

    Stronger  native collaboration in Office with comments, @mentions and tasks.  

 

But that’s not all! Soon with Outlook, you will be able to save time and collaborate faster with comment and context previews in @mention and comment emails. This implies, when using Outlook, you'll be able to reply to the comments without even needing to leave Outlook.

 

Reply to the comments within Outlook.Reply to the comments within Outlook.

                            

b. Block download for more file types

 

Sharing sensitive data can be daunting, which is why we’ve made sure OneDrive is a great secure, private and compliant platform for sharing content, whether it’s with colleagues or external clients.

Earlier this year, across the various options of sharing links, we introduced the capability of “block download” enabling you to keep your content in the cloud by not allowing users to download Office files. This capability helps you avoid out of date copies and maintain access control. Today, we are glad to announce that  shortly, you will be able to apply the same functionality to images, 3D, PDF files and more.

 

Block download for more file types.Block download for more file types.

 

c. Expiring access for external users

 

We realize strong teamwork requires you to share and collaborate with peers not only within your organization but even with folks outside your organization- be it your partners, customers, 3rd party vendors etc.

 

In the near future, administrators will be able to set a mandatory expiration period to ensure that access doesn’t last forever and avoid leaking organization data by accident. This policy can be enabled in the SharePoint admin center (both modern and classic) and applies to both OneDrive and SharePoint.

 

Admins can set access expiration period on shared content.Admins can set access expiration period on shared content.

Once the policy is implemented, external users will automatically lose access to content on a site by site (or OneDrive by OneDrive) level. SharePoint site administrators and OneDrive owners will have the authority to extend or remove access for the selected users.

 

OneDrive owners will have the authority to extend or remove access for the selected users.OneDrive owners will have the authority to extend or remove access for the selected users.

 

d. Request files

 

With over 2,700 votes on UserVoice, this was our 3rd most voted for ask in “Sharing & Collaboration”. We realized that there was a strong need for people to collect files from others, often from collaborators outside of their organization, without letting them have the visibility to the content of the folder.

Aligning to this requirement we are glad to announce roll out of the “Request Files” functionality where you can create special links to request files from others. Anyone with the file request link will be able to upload files without having to sign in, no OneDrive account required. Best of all, uploaders will only be able to upload files. They can't view, edit, or even see who else may have uploaded to the request.

There are multiple use cases where this feature can be extremely valuable – consider "Request for Proposal" (RFP) scenario where you need to collect bids from others, or a marketing professional accumulating quotes from various vendors for a campaign, a teacher collecting assignments , a manager reaching out for feedback from his team members or a financial rep or recruiter gathering documents from their clients- just to name a few.

     Request files from peers within and outside the organization. 

 

3. Migrate efficiently

 

a. Leverage the power of M: Microsoft | Mover | Migration

 

Recently, Microsoft announced the acquisition of Mover, a leading provider of cloud file migration, including admin-led and self-service offerings. As customer demand to move content to the cloud continues to grow, Mover helps make it easier than ever for customers to migrate files to Microsoft 365.

Mover supports migration from over a dozen cloud service providers – including Box, Dropbox, Egnyte, and Google Drive – into OneDrive and SharePoint, enabling seamless file collaboration across Microsoft 365 apps and services, including the Office apps and Microsoft Teams. The Mover team also brings deep expertise and migration technology, which advances Microsoft’s commitment to providing organizations of all sizes with the right tools, people and partners to successfully migrate to the Microsoft Cloud.

Authorize the Mover Transfer Wizard as a co-administrator; above showing for a Box migration to OneDrive.Authorize the Mover Transfer Wizard as a co-administrator; above showing for a Box migration to OneDrive.

 

 

The Mover migration manager is the dashboard which gives you a summary of your overall migration; here showing an active migration of content from Google Drive into OneDrive.The Mover migration manager is the dashboard which gives you a summary of your overall migration; here showing an active migration of content from Google Drive into OneDrive.

Mover brings many new cloud migration scenarios alongside our existing SharePoint Migration Tool for on-premises moves, FastTrack planning and onboarding, and a strong migration partner ecosystem – collectively the broadest set of offerings to assist your migration into Microsoft 365. Mover will enhance these offerings with proven tools, plus more self-service options over time.

You can use this service for free. Note: Initially, the service is available to North American customers, and we plan to ramp up to all customers worldwide. We will share more soon.

Learn more about Mover and its processes (guides) today.

 

b. PC folder backup with OneNote and cross-volume support

 

With OneDrive your content is always backed up and protected enabling you to have access to all your files and folders from anywhere. PC folder backup (formerly referred to as Known Folder Move) allows you to implement all the goodness of OneDrive to your important Windows folders- Desktop, Documents, Pictures- enriching end user productivity.

Recently we announced support for cross-volume moves while backing up known Windows folders allowing people to back up their important folders even when they are on a different volume than the OneDrive folder. 

By the end of this year, users with local OneNote notebooks will now have their OneNote’s automatically backed up as a part of the PC Folder Backup move. You can continue saving files to the folders they are familiar with as well as have access to their files in these important Windows folders from anywhere.

 

Back up and protect your important Windows folders with OneDrive.Back up and protect your important Windows folders with OneDrive.

 

To learn more about the security, compliance, migration and admin announcements for SharePoint and OneDrive do check out this amazing blog

Learn more and stay engaged

As you can see, we continue to evolve OneDrive as a place to access, share, and collaborate on all your files in Office 365, keeping them protected and readily accessible on all your devices, anywhere.

Here are some quick resources for your benefit:

Thank you again for your support of OneDrive. We look forward to your continued feedback and hope to connect with you at another upcoming Microsoft or community-led event.

Thanks for your time reading all about OneDrive,

Ankita Kirti – Product Manager – OneDrive | Microsoft

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