Deploying OneDrive (Windows 10) to ICT Suites

[waya01]

Hi,

 

I'm trying to make as much use out of Office 365 as possible. I'm really hitting issues when it comes to OneDrive though as Microsoft seem to love putting in as many obstacles as possible.

 

My ideal solution would be students logging onto workstations in ICT Suites would have a Group Policy configuring OneDrive for their account (nearly at that stage). Then the sync folder would be located in their user area on the network, this would prevent a local cache being syncronised to the hard drive of every workstation they log onto. OneDrive client doesn't like syncing to network paths but can get around this using symbolic links. But OneDrive then has issues every now and again, deciding the folder it's syncing to is a different folder and needs setting up again.

 

Has anyone got this working reliably? I would really like to make use of the space students have available in OneDrive and having a copy of their user areas sync'd to our file servers would be great. I don't want OneDrive syncing their files to local hard drives and I don't want to map network drives to their OneDrive areas, as they are very glitchy when copying files to and from. Also they will be storing large photoshop files on the onedrive area too in some cases. I'd rather not have them opening and saving large files direct to their OneDrive areas.

 

Hope someone can help.

 

Andrew

[philpie-work]

I have been attempting a similar thing and have hit similar problems. Have you managed to get the Sync client to actually follow symbolic links to a network path? I've been trying to make this work but in recent versions of the client the ability of it following symbolic links to a network path has been removed, symbolic links to a local path work fine though. Would be interested in what version of the sync client you are using.

[free780]

I'd be interested to know how you can store up to 1tb per user. That's a lot of storage.

[sted]

could you cheat it and set it up to a c:\onedrive\%username%\ path then use login/out scripts to copy data to/from this folder at logon /logoff?

[gshaw]

Unless you delete the sync cache at logoff \ shutdown you can potentially run out of space pretty quickly if lots of users are logging into those machines. The only way around it is to use something like iamcloud CDM to live map OneDrive so there's no sync cache.

 

Comes at a cost if you want something supported, otherwise this script is the next best alternative http://www.edugeek.net/forums/cloud-services/161915-onedrive-mapper-liebensraum.html

 

Edit: re-reading your requirement with large files you may be a bit stuck there. If they're having to store the cached files on the network anyway why not just publish those online through Work Folders and save the OneDrive sync complication? Where we've been considering OneDrive the primary driver is to reduce on-prem storage requirements but it's a case of trying to square the circle of having fast access to storage but at the same time have the 1TB capacity.

Edited June 23, 2016 by gshaw

[sted]

from your description mainly accessing files in school over a lan and sometimes at home you might do better looking at work folders (depends on your internet connection) so internally its just the same as any other file server externally you can read/sync files to a windows 8.1/10/ios device fairly easily

[Lonix]

Interesting, we are considering this option going forward for work files but looking at the issues you are having. It's never smooth sailing is it.

 

Think we may end up sticking to a new internal SAN box.

[Alis_Klar]

Does seem to be a blind spot in Microsoft's vision. Guess just acting as a dumb file repository in the cloud is low profit/benefit for MS. So much confusion between onedrive sync client versions and sharepoint folders etc. Do you still require One drive for Business (groove.exe) to sync sharepoint folders?

[sted]

Does seem to be a blind spot in Microsoft's vision. Guess just acting as a dumb file repository in the cloud is low profit/benefit for MS. So much confusion between onedrive sync client versions and sharepoint folders etc. Do you still require One drive for Business (groove.exe) to sync sharepoint folders?

no with windows 10 I can sync my work and home onedrive content in the same app it just shows 2 clouds in systray

[Alis_Klar]

Is there any way of making work folders work with shared drives? I.E. more than one user is accessing the folder? Can someone confirm there is no web interface for work folders? Edited June 29, 2016 by Alis_Klar

[sted]

do you mean can fred and bob both access the same workfolder? if so a cautious yes I THINK when you set it up you can tell it how to store files and using standard folder permissions it should be possible to set it up this way but I havnt tried it

 

as far as I know there is no web interface for work folders

[Alis_Klar]

Sorry i'm hijacking thread. Watched

explaining work folders and didn't get the impression it allowed shared folders or had a web interface. Guess there is no way to enforce security if you can download files to untrusted PC's. That's the problem with solutions like foldr. Foldr works really well though does lower security. At least with Office 365 you can open a version in Word or Excel online in a browser and save it back to cloud copy. Foldr also uses the sharepoint plugin to allow you to edit the online copy and save back to the server without forking the document.

[garethEds]

I'm sure I setup ONeDrive once on my home machine so that it simply showed the files in an Explorer window and not download/sync them. They were clickable and opened in the correct apps, but just didn't sync.

 

Or did I dream it.

 

It's something we want to do - but the domain is different to our school 365

 

Gareth

[sted]

I'm sure I setup ONeDrive once on my home machine so that it simply showed the files in an Explorer window and not download/sync them. They were clickable and opened in the correct apps, but just didn't sync.

 

Or did I dream it.

 

It's something we want to do - but the domain is different to our school 365

 

Gareth

 

no you can do it with windows 7 and above (7 just needs a service started iirc) but its something i cant see a way of automating or making particularly easy. Basically you can add it so it works/looks like a mapped drive

[garethEds]

no you can do it with windows 7 and above (7 just needs a service started iirc) but its something i cant see a way of automating or making particularly easy. Basically you can add it so it works/looks like a mapped drive

 

Can you remind me how to do it?

[sted]

click add network location follow the wizzard Edited June 30, 2016 by sted