[office365] Sharepoint / SkyDrive Pro file types

[william_tropico]

Hello,

 

We have Office 365 for Education and using the emails for both staff and students (Plan A2). With the latest upgrade a few weeks ago SkyDrive started to appear. So far we have only tested this with a few members of the admin staff but would like to start rolling SkyDrive out for students and staff. Alot of Post 16 students have been assigned a Microsoft Surface RT so would like to get SkyDrive Pro syncing through this. However I have a few questions about skydrive/sharepoint online in education.

 

File Extensions - Is it possible to block certain file types from the users personal sky drive folder (e.g. exe, bat, cmd files)? Don't want students to be able to save scripts or executables to their storage area.

 

AD/GPO Synchronisation - Are there any GPO out there to configure SkyDrive Pro (installed with MS office 2013 plus) so it automatically logs them into their Sky drive folder? We don't want this to sync with their home directory "yet", however we would like to look at the possibility of having user areas stored in 'the cloud'

 

Bulk Management - Is there a way to roll out skydrive to users? Currently the user needs to log in and setup/upgrade their personal site in skydrive online.

 

If anyone is currently using skydrive/sharepoint online/office 365 I would appreciate if you can tell me how you manage it/ what issues have occurred and what you want to see.

 

Thank you,

Will

[zag]

I don't think many people will use it. Its a massive downgrade from the normal skydrive live@edu accounts used to get.

 

I also don't think there is any way to manage it via GPO, not that I have seen anyway. There were some people testing mapping the drive a while back but it wasn't reliable in my testing.

 

Basically its pretty useless

[jamesbmarshall]

I don't think many people will use it. Its a massive downgrade from the normal skydrive live@edu accounts used to get.

 

Basically its pretty useless

 

How so? I'd love to understand why you feel this way - SkyDrive Pro gives users 25GB free space... they can upload files, share them, sync them to the desktop, create, edit and collaborate with the Web Apps. It's different to consumer SkyDrive, granted, but useless?

 

 

To the point of the original questions, RT cannot be domain joined so the question of managing these devices by GPO for SkyDrive Pro is slightly irrelevant. Once a user configures the synchronisation they shouldn't need to sign in again, unless their credentials change.

 

You can roll out SkyDrive Pro by putting a tick in the box for the SharePoint Online licence in Office 365. It's not possible (well, not supported/easy) to "warm up" SkyDrive Pro for users - it's provisioned on first logon.

[william_tropico]

Basically its pretty useless

 

I'm aware that office 365 account is not the same as a Microsoft account which is annoying me greatly. The lack of management is also a downside especially as an office 365 customer

 

To the point of the original questions, RT cannot be domain joined so the question of managing these devices by GPO for SkyDrive Pro is slightly irrelevant

We have asked the students to download SkyDrive Pro from the Windows Store for RT Devices. Only want to GPO when users log onto domain computers. e.g. their user area will become their skydrive folder

 

ou can roll out SkyDrive Pro by putting a tick in the box for the SharePoint Online licence in Office 365. It's not possible (well, not supported/easy) to "warm up" SkyDrive Pro for users - it's provisioned on first logon.

Thought as much, users are assigned Sharepoint in the licences. Guess we will need to have a stage rollout.

 

Thank you,

Will

[AngryTechnician]

On File Extensions - there is a small and (at present) fixed list of file types that are blocked on SharePoint Online. .exe., .bat, and .cmd are allowed and there is no built in mechanism to block them.

 

I'd also love to be able to auto-configure SkyDrive Pro but that sad fact is that the Microsoft Office team are focused on BYOD and no longer even perform testing in managed AD environments like we use in schools, let alone give us the tools to manage these sorts of features. The fact that Office 365 sign-ins are still horribly broken in Office 2013 when you use roaming profiles tells you all you need to know about what the focus is now.

Edited October 23, 2013 by AngryTechnician

[william_tropico]

I'd also love to be able to auto-configure SkyDrive Pro but that sad fact is that the Microsoft Office team are focused on BYOD and no longer even perform testing in managed AD environments like we use in schools

 

Hmm I guess they want users to move/use Intune but even this wont help with storage...well as far as I can see

[mylesJ]

Hi William_tropico.

 

File Extensions -> It is not possible to block file extensions in SkyDrive Pro. The block list is managed by Microsoft. An alternative may be to run a regular script to see what files are being stored there and alert/remove offending ones? However that's not trivial task.

 

Bulk Management -> Are you referring to migration as well? I released a new version of my file migration tool, Files To Go, to support bulk migration of personal folders/home drives to SkyDrive Pro. The tool performs pre-migration checks and alerts you to things like not enough storage in a SkyDrivePro or too many files for the sync client. More details here: Office 365 SharePoint Online File Migration Tool

 

Myles

 

Office 365 MVP