Announcement: New OneDrive Admin Center Preview

[Stephen Rose]

Over the past year, OneDrive has evolved at a rapid pace introducing new features for end users and IT, across sync, web, and mobile. As the number of users and usage continues to grow, our customers have asked for an easier way to administer their company OneDrive settings and policies. Today, we’re excited to announce the rollout of the OneDrive admin center preview to First Release customers and we want to hear your feedback.

Once deployed to your tenant, all tenant and SharePoint admins will have permissions to access the OneDrive admin center preview at https://admin.onedrive.com.

Key features by section include:

1. Home: This is the dashboard for the admin center and will soon show recent Office 365 Message Center posts and usage reporting related to OneDrive for Business.
2. Sharing: This section helps admins gain control over how and with whom your users are sharing information. This includes controlling the use of external sharing and anonymous links, as well as limiting which external domains users can share with.
3. Sync: Admins can block syncing of specific file types and deny syncing to non-domain joined PCs.
4. Storage: This section allows admins to easily set default storage limits and document retention durations.
5. Device Access: This gives admins control over how and from where a user can access their files. This includes allow/deny access from personal devices or specific networks as well as rich Mobile Application Management Intune policies for iOS and Android.
6. Compliance: Admins can find quick links to the Office 365 Security and Compliance Center for key scenarios like auditing, data loss prevention, retention, and eDiscovery.

Please have a look at the preview and provide us your feedback and comments below. Our plan is to begin the generally available rollout later next month and subsequently add a link from the Office 365 admin center.

Thank you!

Stephen Rose

Director, OneDrive Product Marketing

[#2]

Hi @Neil McCafferty,

It is going to be close We are performing our last round of validation right now and, if it passes, we can begin rolling the feature out to customers. I should know by the end of the week if we've passed.  Thanks!

Stephen Rice

OneDrive Program Manager II

[#3]

I am not facing any issue more.

Thanks for concern.

Ashish

[#4]

In the OneDrive Admin Center > Sharing, does the "Default sharing links" refer only to the "Share" button in a user's OneDrive page, or does it also mean the "Get a link" button?

It would be great to make this more obvious in the page as to which button this affects.

The reason I ask is because I'm sending test links from a test user account to myself (on the same organization), and when I open the link to the document it shows me as "Guest Contributor" instead of my name.

The option that is currently selected for my organization in this section is "Anonymous access - anyone with this link"

If I switch it to "Internal," will my users still have the option of external links via the "Get a link" button?

[#5]

Hi @Mario Cajina,

The default sharing link will apply to both the "Share" command as well as "Get a link". All this setting does is set the type of link that appears when the dialogue opens, users are still free to select different types of links as needed. Thanks!

Stephen Rice

OneDrive Program Manager II

[#6]

Hi @Stephen Rice,

OK, I just tried it by changing the option, and I understand what you mean.

It'll require an extra little step for my users to select "anyone with this link" for external sharing. However, it now shows my name as the contributor for a shared file.

This is preferred since most of the collaboration will be done between people in the organization, so it won't show just a generic "Guest Contributor" in the document's activity history.

Will this change affect any links that were already sent before I changed the behavior? For example, will it break any links already sent outside the organization? Will my users have to re-send a link and make sure they select the "anyone with this link" option in the "Get a link" window?

[#7]

Hi @Mario Cajina,

Glad it worked for you! So you know, we have some improvements coming down the line to ensure that when an internal user is shared with via an anonymous link, their face will show up on the document (if they are signed in) so you should see some improvement soon.

Changing this will not affect any links that have been sent in the past so everything should continue working well! If you have any more questions, please let me know! Thanks!

[#8]

How does the option to "allow users install the sync client" work? What does that actually do?

[#9]

Hi @Stephen Rice,

Thanks for the clarification on this function.

[#10]

@Mario Cajina, happy to help!

[#11]

@Stephen Rice - I'm not seeing the feature. Can you give me a clear understanding of when to expect? We have postponed a project on the back of this but it can't be left in limbo indefinitely.

[#12]

Hi @Neil McCafferty,

We discovered a bug during validation and so we are circling back to iron that out before we release. I don't have a specific timeframe unfortunately but my goal is to get this out as fast as possible. Sorry for the delay!

Stephen Rice

OneDrive Program Manager II

[#13]

Hi Stephen - I'm back pressing for any update. Very keen to see this feature.

[#14]

Hi Neil,

We're still working out the bug we discovered. We're keen to have it out as well but I can't commit to a timeframe until the current issue is solved. Thanks!

Stephen Rice
OneDrive Program Manager II

[#15]

Hello - I would like to know if there is going to be also new user role in Office 365 for ODB Admins. It would help a lot to separate O365 platform admin groups from those who manage ODB only.

thanks for help

JK 

[#16]

Hi @Jaroslav Karlik,

We don't have anything specific to announce at this time around delegated OneDrive for Business administrators but it is something we are looking at. Definitely add the request on the OneDrive UserVoice though as that will help us prioritize. Thanks!

Stephen Rice

OneDrive Program Manager II

[#17]

So I guess this should be rolled out to everyone by now. Unless I'm jsut not enderstanding the feature, it sounds like you should be able to add which external domains a user is able to share files with, but I don't see that. Just share with external users or not. Am I missing some other setting. For example I don't want to allow external sharing except for domain xyz.com and abc.com, but I don't see how to do that.

[#18]

Hi @Bruce Hopkins,

If you go to the OneDrive admin console and go to the sharing tab, you should see a section called "limit external sharing by domain". If you check that box, you can click "add domains" and then choose domains to add to an allow list or a deny list. Hope that helps!

Stephen Rice

OneDrive Program Manager II

[#19]

Thanks Stephen, I guess I need to put my glasses on. So for clarity. I select allow sharing from new and existing external users in the slider for OneDrive and SharePoint and only the external user with a domain matching what is in the all domains will be able to access, correct?

[#20]

That's correct!

[#21]

Hi Stephen. I'm back again. ;) Can you give me any update?

I'd settle for one of March, April-June, Jul-Dec or dropped.

We've been in the process of activating external sharing for the last several months and part of our approach has to be to enable selectively for some groups of users. We would achieve this using the feature showcased in the OD4B Blog back in Sep16 to enable OD4B external sharing by AAD group.