OneDrive for Business access via Office applications

[Arcolite]

This might sound daft, but has something changed with Office365 in the last few weeks?

 

We haven't fully rolled out O365 yet and only have a few users added (myself included).

Before I went on holiday there were three items under Open within Word and Excel (2013 and 2016).

 

OneDrive - Personal

OneDrive - SchoolName

Sites - SchoolName

 

Now though I only see...

 

OneDrive - Personal

Sites - SchoolName

 

If I want to open a document from OneDrive for Business I have to do it from the web (because I haven't got a library sync setup) were before I could do it through Word/Excel open dialogs.

 

I was working on documentation for our staff so we could start using it when they return in September. That's no longer relevant

 

Is the intention that you have a library sync setup and documents are opened via this? If so that'll be a headache for Staff who roam between machines (not to mention Students...).

The Open dialog version would have worked for our purposes.

 

I've tried this on multiple machines and with both 2013 and 2016 as well as other users. All scenarios are different now compared to our initial testing and documentation.

 

If there was a change, is it documented anywhere I read?

[TheCrust]

Out of interest, what is your client OS?

 

We are deploying Windows 10 Education v1511 site-wide along with Office 2016 via a SCCM OSD task sequence. We're working through our departments and batching each group of staff up into O365 as we update their devices - so they migrate to O365 at the same time their device is updated.

 

For the bulk of the rollout we have done this term, it has gone swimmingly: we could link O365 accounts to Windows accounts via the "Add a Work or School account" option in the Settings app, sync OneDrives via the OneDrive for Business client included in Office 2016, and sign our users in to Office apps and get the 'Sites - School name' and 'OneDrive - School name' in the open/save dialogues.

 

Except in the last fortnight, we have started to experience problems: sometimes the 'add a work or school account' option either isn't present or that part of the Settings app doesn't work, but mostly we get a OneDrive for Business client that refuses to talk to the user's OneDrive (despite it having been "touched" via the browser first), and the 'OneDrive - School name' option is missing in the office apps.

 

This doesn't happen all the time, and the bulk of our users are fine, but your experience is sounding a bit familiar to me!

[Arcolite]

My main client OS is Windows 10 Education, however I've seen the same thing happen on a Windows 7 x64 machine too.

 

What you're describing is exactly what I'm seeing too. Speaking to one of our other test users, they said it changed within the last two weeks for them too.

Edited July 13, 2016 by Arcolite

[TheCrust]

Hmm. I think we could be seeing the results of some behind-the-scenes fiddling somewhere.

 

While I don't deny there are loads of benefits to cloud computing, this is one of the downsides: you're at their mercy if the provider does something that either alters your service availability, or how that service presents itself to your users (who don't necessarily understand when things are no longer in your control, having understood for years that you were the keeper of all things with a plug on the end)

 

That said, it may even be a Windows or Office update to blame. Let's be honest, past history wouldn't rule it out either

 

How do you deploy your updates? Our SCCM server shoves them down as part of the initial OS deployment task sequence, and then maintains the machines up-to-date after that point so in order to test the theory an update may be to blame by building a completely update-free machine, I have to do a bit of fiddling of my own.

 

I'll have a crack at this as soon as I'm able and report back, but are you able to test this yourself in the meantime?

[iamLeon]

Hi, I don't want to be *that guy*... So full disclosure, I work for the company I'm about to recommend, but in this case it should hopefully be genuinely helpful advice. This tool allows you to map drives to your OneDrive for Business & SharePoint Online libraries to avoid the issues of sync (e.g. meaning that it's fine for users to roam between machines): https://www.iamcloud.com/cloud-drive-mapper The drives look and feel like normal network drives, and can have the same group policies applied to them. Several hundred schools, colleges and universities in the UK (and beyond) use it for precisely the reasons you mention.

[Davit2005]

Prob worth speaking to MS Office 365 support if not done already. They have seemed quite helpfull with me in the past.

[Arcolite]

I've managed to resolve this for my users.

 

It appears to be related to the fairly recent change to the OneDrive app.

Once you stop using OneDrive for Business and add your Business account to the standard OneDrive app you get the "OneDrive - SchoolName" option under Open and Save again.

 

Solutions like IAM Cloud will be useful in the classroom where syncing isn't possible, however for Support Staff with dedicated desktops and Teaching Staff laptops we're trying to keep things vanilla Microsoft so that they learn to use the platform and adapt to change rather than be handheld through the process by masking the change.

 

We have found in the past that our users never actually learn if we mask the change for them. We're learning organisations, that should mean Staff just as much as Students (I know, it's not always possible, but it's the aspiration we try to stick to).

Edited August 9, 2016 by Arcolite