Announcement: Major OneDrive updates at Ignite 2016 include SharePoint Online sync preview

[Lana O'Brien]

OneDrive and SharePoint work together to make storing and accessing all your files simple and powerful. We recently outlined a vision for file management in Office 365 that included a set of new features, such as simplified file sharing (both inside and outside your organization), the ability to copy files directly from OneDrive to SharePoint, mobile access to all your Office 365 files on iOS and the innovative Discover view that uses Microsoft Graph to suggest relevant and trending files.

Today at Ignite, Microsoft is proud to announce new sync, browser, mobile and IT capabilities for you!

Read more on Office Blogs. 

[#2]

Yay, finally!.Just to add the SharePoint part as well, great presentation by Jeff Teper: https://blogs.office.com/2016/09/26/outlook-for-ios-and-android-is-now-fully-powered-by-the-microsof...

[#3]

At last!!

[#4]

Finally!

[#5]

Absolutely awesome, yesterday announcements were what we were waiting about OneDrive for Business. I cannot wait to start using and testing these new features

[#6]

Hey Lana,

This really is great news, however, I have a few questions around the concept.

1. Has the Merging of updates to Documents got any better e.g if 4 people had it opened offline then uploaded is it now smart enough to merge the changes?
2. If you have sync'd the contents of a Library and the permissions on the site change will it remove the content once an internet connection has been restored?
3. How does search work with this? The video mentions you can search for content within OneDrive but that's not an Enterprise search such as SharePoint so would only see content within your OneDrive, so my question is how does metadata work when it's applied to the Team site against searching across OneDrive, are we limited to Title and Author for example?
4. When can we expect the push notifications to Android?
5. With the dedicated ONeDrive admin console (Which look awesome by the way), is this limited to your content only or anything you have sync'd has the policy applied? e.g if I sync'd several team sites would the policy to stop Copying, printing etc apply?

I have more questions around the future of OneDrive but for now I think this gives me what I need :).

P.S keep up the good work, this really is a step in the right direction!!!

[#7]

Great news!

OneDrive context menu seems to be missing though. I can no longer right-click a file in Windows Explorer, choose OneDrive > Copy link to get the SPO url for the file/folder. That's something our users use all the time in ODFB/groove.exe.

Anybody else having same issue - or not?

[#8]

Syncing sharepoint library working great, even app crashes frequently. App dies, but it relaunches right away and continues to sync. Pretty good for a first preview. Thanks MS!

[#9]

How are people enabling the team site sync within the next gen sync tool? It seems people have been able to test this out already?

[#10]

Don't look for the 'next gen sync tool preview' or you'll end up with last years announcement.  This is the 'sharepoint sync preview' and the link to how to install the software is at:

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Get-started-syncing-SharePoint-sites-with-the-new-OneDrive-...

They call it the OneDrive for Business Next Generation Sync Client, which is confusing (to me at least), since that was released last year.

[#11]

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@Bill Hixon wrote:

They call it the OneDrive for Business Next Generation Sync Client, which is confusing (to me at least), since that was released last year.

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Pfff, after the renaming orgy of SkyDrive, OneDrive, Lync, Skype for Business, Groove, OneDrive for Business, you still get confused by a little more renaming?

[#12]

So am I right in saying this simply alters the registry for the current NGSC client and allows the syncing of the SharePoint sites through a single client now?

Another question I have, how do you remove the Groove client when I can't directly see a Install for it in appwiz.cpl?

Many thanks.

[#13]

With sync being ever more effective in actually sharing and working on content together, why are features like alert me or check out not available? I can see these suggestions in uservoice, but wondering if someone might have some insights.

[#14]

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@Philine von Guretzky wrote:

With sync being ever more effective in actually sharing and working on content together, why are features like alert me or check out not available? I can see these suggestions in uservoice, but wondering if someone might have some insights.

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Not an actual insight but only my opinion and experience as a software consultant:

• Microsoft and other companies are using agile software development, like SCRUM
• agile software devolopment focuses on working applications that are enhanced incrementally
• thus, not all features that were available in the previous version of Groove/OneDrive for Business/SharePoint are available right now in the new client
• most (if not all) features will be implemented in future iterations

[#15]

Yeah, what was I thinking. My bad.

[#16]

Sure. It is just like putting someone in a car at 100 miles an hour and telling him the brakes will be added next week. Users are asking for it and don't understand why these basic features are missing. It hinders them from actually using OneDrive effectively. Hopefully these features will come soon.

[#17]

How will we know if the preview app has been updated.

Will it update in the usual way?

Will we get a notification?

Do we just have to work it out ourselves?

[#18]

Two main points to know you have the preview:
(1) The installation implies some manual work from your side
(2) You will see all the new stuff that is in the preview: selective sync, no limitiations in the number of items to be synchronized, etc.

[#19]

Version number of the new Sync Client? Surely this would change??

[#20]

By the way, new build 17.3.6673.1011 appeared. Any ideas how to receive notifications new preview appears? I see this info from time to time only in different blogs.