Onedrive for Business Updates?

[Mr_Jiminy]

Confused somewhat with how updates OneDrive for Business Sync Client, installed with Office Professional Plus 2016, are delivered to clients.

 

Is this actioned through WSUS or do I have to manually deploy updates?

[psydii]

If you are looking at the modern OneDrive for Business client (i.e. not groove.exe) then the onedrivesetup.exe that is included unpacks the onedrive client into the user's appdata folder and executes and updates the client from there. The client auto-updates to its own merry schedule. It may or may not have any regard as to whether you or your org is on "insider / monthly / semi-annual targeted"). WSUS or SCCM have no part to play.

 

Quite how onedrivesetup in the office folders gets called vs the one in the windows folders I have no idea.

 

We often see installed versions that do not match any of the versions published here:https://support.office.com/en-gb/article/New-OneDrive-sync-client-release-notes-845dcf18-f921-435e-bf28-4e24b95e5fc0

[Mr_Jiminy]

The client auto-updates to its own merry schedule.]

 

Silly questions, but does the auto-update also applies to LTSB?

[Michael]

I believe so, but you wouldn't get all the 'features'. It's going to cause mass confusion long-term, as you can only get the full functionality on 1709, but the OneDrive build number will read the same regardless of version of Windows 10.

[free780]

I believe c:\Windows\SysWOW64\OneDriveSetup.exe runs on first logon and downloads the latest onedrive.exe. Its a per user install. The legacy older OneDrive for business isn't being actively developed so I'd avoid that.

[Mr_Jiminy]

Thanks Michael, yes spotted the FOD options are greyed out, although to be honest I'm not overly concerned at that in the iterim.

 

How have you been handling this for your education clients?

[Michael]

I deliberately disable the built-in OneDrive client via GPO, as the cache location needs to be a physical volume and not a mapped location. As above, the OneDrive for Business client has been discontinued, as you can use the same OneDrive application for both personal and work based accounts (if you left it enabled).

 

I'm sure the 1709 version works great (I never got round to testing it), but it also means you have to battle all the other bloat along with it. No doubt the next LTSC version of Windows 10, due in 2019 will address this.

 

I know Microsoft's argument is that the new features are too integrated with the likes of Explorer, but it just makes a mockery of giving everyone 1TB of space; you can only use it if you're using 'this version of Windows' with 'this version of OneDrive', it's where Microsoft are going completely wrong.

[psydii]

Where they've got it wrong is allowing us enough rope to hang ourselves. If they want to complete with Google and Apple they should just force everyone onto the 6 monthly feature update cycle and be done with it.

 

Instead they kowtow to enterprise dinosaurs and let the admins try to control what versions are out there. It is too complex to keep on top of unless you stick with LTSB and Office 2016 VL and pretend it is still 2004, but even then OneDrive and Teams do their own thing.

 

We've got 1709 rolling for fresh installs, existing clients are updating in waves and Office is already updated. TBF we have been brutal in the past with legacy software and hardware, and keep everything else on annual maintenance so there isn't a huge technical debt to pay off before upgrading.

 

It would be nice though if the OneDrive in Office received a little bit of acknowledgement in the OneDrive documentation, or that we got some visibility of versions being deployed.

[sted]

Where they've got it wrong is allowing us enough rope to hang ourselves. If they want to complete with Google and Apple they should just force everyone onto the 6 monthly feature update cycle and be done with it.

 

Instead they kowtow to enterprise dinosaurs and let the admins try to control what versions are out there. It is too complex to keep on top of unless you stick with LTSB and Office 2016 VL and pretend it is still 2004, but even then OneDrive and Teams do their own thing.

 

We've got 1709 rolling for fresh installs, existing clients are updating in waves and Office is already updated. TBF we have been brutal in the past with legacy software and hardware, and keep everything else on annual maintenance so there isn't a huge technical debt to pay off before upgrading.

 

It would be nice though if the OneDrive in Office received a little bit of acknowledgement in the OneDrive documentation, or that we got some visibility of versions being deployed.

diddnt they bring the 2 versions together so you can use the built in windows client to sync/access into either/both versions now

[Michael]

I'm not entirely sure I agree (but I don't want to go off topic of this conversation). The last major versions of Windows, including the likes of Windows XP and Windows 7 (widely used in Enterprise/Education), both have/had 10 year cycles of support; so to go from 10 years to 6 months, this doesn't make sense either.

 

Unfortunately I think Microsoft have made a bit of a 'hash' of the whole OneDrive situation. I suspect Office 2019 won't have a OneDrive client at all, will probably be Windows 10 only and will use OneDrive built in the OS (which makes some sense). Just a shame Microsoft haven't released a patch to remove OneDrive bundled with Office 2016, as it doesn't work (even if you try)!

 

Trust me, give it a few more years of update cycles and you'll be fed up of updating/imaging workstations constantly. You have to weigh up the Educational benefits as I mentioned in a previous discussion.

[psydii]

...give it a few more years of update cycles and you'll be fed up of updating/imaging workstations constantly...

 

**PSYDII Sets a reminder in his diary**.

[free780]

The SAC has an 18 month support period. You can skip feature updates. To be honest the pain isn't the new features, group policy etc. It's getting your PCs to wake out of hours and upgrade.

[psydii]

The OneDrive sync client update process:

 

https://support.office.com/en-gb/article/The-OneDrive-sync-client-update-process-2f748bc6-6f01-4406-a791-ec047f066d6d