Announcement: OneDrive Sync Updates

Microsoft

All of us here on the OneDrive Team have been hard at work delivering many of the OneDrive sync client updates we communicated at Ignite to further improve the user experience and administration of syncing files from Office 365. With the holidays rapidly approaching we wanted to give you an update on those enhancements.

The best part is the latest OneDrive sync client will automatically update with these new capabilities. If you aren’t running the latest OneDrive sync client, or aren’t sure, you can learn more here.

 

Activity center

The activity center is now available in the latest OneDrive sync client on Mac and PC giving you visibility to the most recent sync activity and status. Simply click on the OneDrive icon in your system tray (PC) or Finder (Mac) to see your file sync

 

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Conditional access

You can now restrict OneDrive sync to only domain joined or workplace joined devices. You can even make access contingent on PC health if you like. All of this can be managed through the new OneDrive admin center preview and by configuring Azure Active Directory policies. Learn more here.

 

Syncing SharePoint sites

Making sure you have the information that is critical to you on every device no matter where you are is key to our customers. The ability to sync SharePoint sites directly to OneDrive is one of these features that makes doing this easier and simpler for end users. We’ve had great feedback on the public preview of syncing SharePoint Online document libraries in the latest OneDrive sync client. We remain committed to providing a reliable and performant sync experience for all your Office 365 files and continue to refine the public preview to meet our quality expectations. We’re on target to make this capability generally available in January.

 

Standalone Mac client

Ever since we added OneDrive for Business support to the latest sync client, we’ve seen an increase of adoption and interest from the Mac community. However, one of the largest blockers for enterprise deployments is that most admins do not want to utilize the Mac App Store to deploy and distribute software due to its limitations.

Today we’re releasing a standalone OneDrive sync client for Mac that you can deploy and manage outside of the Mac App Store. This standalone client also provides sync status visual overlays in Finder, a Finder shortcut for OneDrive, and the ability to set-up OneDrive sync to run at log in. This latest client also has built-in multi-language support. You can get the standalone client for Mac here.

 

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As we get ready for 2017, I want to take a moment to wish all of you a healthy and happy new year from the OneDrive/SharePoint teams here in Redmond. We look forward to continuing to bring all of you more great innovation while finding new ways to make you more productive no matter where and how you choose to work.

 

Thank you and happy holidays!

 

Stephen L Rose

Director, OneDrive Product Marketing

51 Replies

Great! Are there any plans to allow syncing libraries from other companies? E.g. a library from another tenant is shared with me and I want to sync it with NGSC... Thanks Christian

If I'd move to Linux I'd be prepared to write some utilities for myself. In OneDrive you can use https://dev.onedrive.com.
Now, on a realistic note - the number of users on that platform is quite low and the focus is rather on the other ones.
Until something like this will appear in OneDrive Admin Center, maybe something like this can be used: https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/How-to-enabledisable-sync-8ad53996
I banged my head into the wall with this one for a while. In the end switching browsers fixed it for me. For some PCs switching from Chrome to IE was the fix, for others it was switching from IE to Chrome!

@Paul Youngberg wrote:
I banged my head into the wall with this one for a while. In the end switching browsers fixed it for me. For some PCs switching from Chrome to IE was the fix, for others it was switching from IE to Chrome!

What do you mean "switch." I am unclear how the browser fits in to this scenario. Temporarily change the default browser? Simply open up the other browser?

I'm also interested in the future of the Mac desktop sync client updates... any clue as to when the ability to sync shared folders will be rolled out?

Yes this. @Stephen Rose the context menu "Get a Link" is absolutely must and is sorely missed. In absence of this, users have to go online and go through a convoluted process of getting a link via web interface!


@Peter Liang wrote:

I'm also interested in the future of the Mac desktop sync client updates... any clue as to when the ability to sync shared folders will be rolled out?


+1 Peter

Missing this feature as well. Our org has started to open up for Outlook Groups, for projects and smaller teams but unfortunately thouse on Mac's (several 1000'sn) cant use the sharepoint sync feature.

ODfB work great with in the st.alone client (thanks of that btw) and there is a "hack" (not so great) but it does not work in my case.

In Safari, When you hit the sync button -> sync now, in SP Documents folder it asks you for permison to open ODfB client, but you dont get the option to select the folder and sync it to you Mac.

in Chrome it does not open the ODfB client.

Just noticed an announcement in our admin message center (dated 5/8/17) about upcoming improvements to the "sharing experience" for OneDrive for Business (specifically mentioning the sync clients).  Does anyone from the community know if this might have anything to do with the/my eagerly-awaited Mac desktop sync client shared folder functionality?

Tune into the SharePoint Virtual Summit tomorrow where we will be demoing this feature and annoucing the rollout dates!

Aha!  Thanks for the info.  Had to look it up... in case anyone else is interested:

 

https://blogs.office.com/2017/03/21/announcing-the-sharepoint-virtual-summit/

 

Fingers crossed...


@Abhimanyu Singh wrote:

Yes this. @Stephen Rose the context menu "Get a Link" is absolutely must and is sorely missed. In absence of this, users have to go online and go through a convoluted process of getting a link via web interface!


@Stephen Rose Any update on the right-click context-menu "Get a Link"? I am yet to hear anything on this. This functionality is most essential for our users.

 

My users keep complaining of the convoluted process of getting a direct link to any file where they have to open their OneDrive or SharePoint library in browser and use the "Get Link" there.

 

The new "Share" option in the context menu shnown in the Virtual Summit yesterday, doesn't cut it for getting those links quickly enough. The new "Share" option will open up the dialog for sharing options in a window with embedded web interface which will be slow and frustating. We want that old "Get a Link" option back which was lightening fast and gave the direct link (relevant people) straight away without going through the hoops.