Onedrive - syncing files

[risherwood]

Hello,We currently have Onedrive for business setup as part of our O365 package. Staff and students are using this fine at the moment logging in via the 365 platform.However, we would like to use the Onedrive app on Windows 10 to allow users to save their files to this location and this then directly syncs the files to their cloud account and not saved locally to the PC. We want this to basically replace the use of Homedrives on the network that we are currently using.We dont want any files to sync locally to the PC as this will cause local space to be used up when different users login to the same PC's.We have so far tested it by creating a file, saving it to the Onedrive folder on Windows 10. this then syncs up and appears in the Onedrive window on 365 but once we remove the profile from the PC, the file is removed from all platforms.so basically what we want to for a file to be created, saved to the onedrive folder then syncs to the cloud but it not kept in this folder.thanks in advance.

[chrisjako]

Currently looking at doing this too, to my knowledge what you are trying to achieve is not advisable (totally get rid of file server home drives)

 

Best you can do is have onedrive for office365 setup alongside you home area to sync so that students and staff can access a copy of their directory structure "offsite"

 

Assuming you have office365 setup with SSO then a good place to start with this would be this article

 

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/onedrive/use-group-policy

 

in order to configure the above you will need your tenant ID: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/onedrive/find-your-office-365-tenant-id

[IAMCloud_Leon]

Hi folks - you might be interested in checking out https://www.iamcloud.com/cloud-drive-mapper which actually sponsors this forum, as it resolves the issues you're facing. Also allows you to do folder redirection into each user's OneDrive too, which means all Windows folders - Desktop, Documents, Favourites, Downloads etc will all be in the cloud - not on the local machine. There's a free trial so feel free to give it a whirl.

[thimon]

We’re moving everyone to OneDrive, away from our File Server. Folder redirection still works to the user’s OneDrive area, with Files on Demand enabled the OneDrive flies don’t take up any local hard drive space, perfect for shared devices. For 1:1 devices and offline use users can right click OneDrive in file explorer and select save files for offline use. Hope that helps!

[IAMCloud_Leon]

One of the numerous problems with Files on Demand -> https://blog.iamcloud.com/the-slow-burning-crisis-of-selective-sync

[thimon]

@IAMCloud_Leon We're also using Cloud Drive Mapper btw as we're using SharePoint online

[IAMCloud_Leon]

Sweet! Btw did you see the new Teams integration we just released? I'm pretty excited about it - so far as a person can get excited about mapped drives ;-) https://blog.iamcloud.com/cloud-drive-mapper-ms-teams-awesome Let me know if you want me send you over an online meeting to demo it.

[synaesthesia]

Reading that article on Files on Demand in particular, why would it just "postpone" problems? If set to not sync at all, what problems would your product solve?

[IAMCloud_Leon]

Our product solves quite a lot of different issues, which depends on the context of different IT environments, and has support for certain end-points and functionality not present in the OneDrive client at all. Also has greater backwards compatibility for desktop/legacy apps. But aside from that, to address the specific point on not syncing at all. CDM is much more restrictive than ODFOD and doesn't allow for any kind of offline files at all. Keeping the user experience familiar with drives also means that users aren't given any choice or chances to deviate from the intended method you want them to access their files. The feedback we get from our customers is that it's just simple, intuitive and doesn't lead users into behaviours that may not ultimately be in the best interest for their organisation. Like Dropbox Infinite & GoogleDrive FS, ODFOD is awesome for consumers and in smaller businesses where users all have a very clear understanding and personal responsibility over their data. CDM keeps things simple and unambiguous. But it's not for everyone. Edited June 12, 2019 by IAMCloud_Leon

[synaesthesia]

Cheers

[Smokebomb]

The problem with all the drive mappers for OneDrive we have used is that they use the WebDAV protocol to connect to Office 365 (@IAMCloud_Leon please correct me if your product does it a different way). File Explorer doesn't always play nice with this and it can be slow, even on our 1Gb internet connection (especially if you are trying to upload large files such as video). Test thoroughly before going this route.

 

In 2017/18 we provided students on-premise H drives and OneDrive mapped to O with a competing product to IAMCloud. We did away with mapped drives for students this year and embraced the OneDrive client with Files-on-demand. While we have had teething issues along the way I would say the client has come a long way from where it was at in September 2018. Look at installing it per-machine which significantly speeds up initial setup at logon.

 

The only PCs we have had space issues on have 120GB SSD's. We have some maintenance scripts running delprof2 to tidy up old profiles which helps. Anything with a 240GB+ SSD has been fine (while utilising files-on-demand).

[IAMCloud_Leon]

Hi @Smokebomb - there's a bit to unpack there, but to summarise: I can't comment on the performance whichever product you used. Our product does currently use webdav for some of its processes (but we're pretty close to releasing a version that doesn't, which we're pretty excited about). That said, we have done quite a lot to mitigate some of webdav's limitations to improve the transfer speeds of it by adding in compression and some other things. When you say Windows Explorer doesn't play nicely with webdav - I'm not sure what you mean there. Webdav is very stable in Windows Explorer. It's a Windows protocol, so it would be weird for it to be unstable within Windows. I'd say in fact that it's more stable than most sync systems like OD & Google Drive. But you're absolutely right that it does definitely have some limitations when transferring very large files - that's one of the reasons we've been working on a new product if I'm honest.

 

The thing about the ODFOD that I mentioned is the issues usually happen in reverse - not teething issues but ageing issues. Normally it's the case in tech that you have a few little issues at the beginning and after a while you iron out the kinks and it gets better with time. What we've experienced - and what a lot of the comments on forums have been saying - is that the people who adopt ODFOD for the longest, actually have the most issues. So who you just get started with ODFOD, organisations normally have a pretty great experience for the first year or so. But it's after that that people start finding those little issues start creeping in more and more.

 

You're right that the OD client has improved since 2018, but so have products like ours (and presumably our competitors too). But CDM isn't for everyone, and I wholeheartedly agree with your suggestion to thoroughly test any solutions before purchasing. That's why we offer a free trial to be honest.

[IAMCloud_Leon]

Out of interest - do you folks have any wish-list ideas or current issues right now in terms of cloud storage? I'm thinking back-end server sync/backups, desktop to cloud file migration, hybrid cloud storage. That kind of thing? It's always good to hear specific use cases. We're always looking for new problems to solve :-)

[Smokebomb]

Hi @Smokebomb - there's a bit to unpack there, but to summarise: I can't comment on the performance whichever product you used. Our product does currently use webdav for some of its processes (but we're pretty close to releasing a version that doesn't, which we're pretty excited about). That said, we have done quite a lot to mitigate some of webdav's limitations to improve the transfer speeds of it by adding in compression and some other things. When you say Windows Explorer doesn't play nicely with webdav - I'm not sure what you mean there. Webdav is very stable in Windows Explorer. It's a Windows protocol, so it would be weird for it to be unstable within Windows. I'd say in fact that it's more stable than most sync systems like OD & Google Drive. But you're absolutely right that it does definitely have some limitations when transferring very large files - that's one of the reasons we've been working on a new product if I'm honest.

 

The thing about the ODFOD that I mentioned is the issues usually happen in reverse - not teething issues but ageing issues. Normally it's the case in tech that you have a few little issues at the beginning and after a while you iron out the kinks and it gets better with time. What we've experienced - and what a lot of the comments on forums have been saying - is that the people who adopt ODFOD for the longest, actually have the most issues. So who you just get started with ODFOD, organisations normally have a pretty great experience for the first year or so. But it's after that that people start finding those little issues start creeping in more and more.

 

You're right that the OD client has improved since 2018, but so have products like ours (and presumably our competitors too). But CDM isn't for everyone, and I wholeheartedly agree with your suggestion to thoroughly test any solutions before purchasing. That's why we offer a free trial to be honest.

 

To clarify my comments on File Explorer, I was referring to file copy progress which doesn't work properly (large files get to 99% quite rapidly but can sit there for several minutes while file(s) continue to upload, and crashing out on file uploads larger than 4GB (a WebDAV limitation). File explorer also shows the drive mapping with the usable space of the C: drive rather than what they have in their OneDrive which can confuse users. I look forward to hearing about your new product which may mitigate these issues

Edited June 12, 2019 by Smokebomb

[IAMCloud_Leon]

To clarify my comments on File Explorer, I was referring to file copy progress which doesn't work properly (large files get to 99% quite rapidly but can sit there for several minutes while file(s) continue to upload, and crashing out on file uploads larger than 4GB (a WebDAV limitation). I look forward to hearing about your new product which may mitigate these issues

 

Oh cool. Yes indeed. It absolutely mitigates those issues - it's pretty snappy. I use it myself at the moment, although it's still a bit bare bones while we add the functionality into it that currently exists in our webdav-based client. But won't be too much longer (a few months) until we release the full version.

[Smokebomb]

Hello,We currently have Onedrive for business setup as part of our O365 package. Staff and students are using this fine at the moment logging in via the 365 platform.However, we would like to use the Onedrive app on Windows 10 to allow users to save their files to this location and this then directly syncs the files to their cloud account and not saved locally to the PC. We want this to basically replace the use of Homedrives on the network that we are currently using.We dont want any files to sync locally to the PC as this will cause local space to be used up when different users login to the same PC's.We have so far tested it by creating a file, saving it to the Onedrive folder on Windows 10. this then syncs up and appears in the Onedrive window on 365 but once we remove the profile from the PC, the file is removed from all platforms.so basically what we want to for a file to be created, saved to the onedrive folder then syncs to the cloud but it not kept in this folder.thanks in advance.

You can use attrib to force OneDrive files back to online-only, effectively cleaning the drive up for you (info here). Here's some powershell you could use in a group policy logoff script:

get-childitem $env:userprofile'\OneDrive' -Force -File -Recurse |where Attributes -eq 'Archive, ReparsePoint' | foreach {attrib.exe $_.fullname +U -P /s}

[mrgrg32]

I would stay away from Iamcloud CDM, we have been using it for a few years - too many issues (drive map disconnecting all the time, takes forever to open large files, not very user friendly for non-technical users. ).

[thimon]

I would argue the opposite. The latest client version of Cloud Drive Mapper is great, maps the drives really quickly and for us, we don't have any drive mapping disconnection problems. I find it's all about educating users and managing expectations. If users wish to open large files then they should use the web browser version of SharePoint Online, which is MUCH faster at loading large files. If you're hosting multimedia files you should also be using an Asset Library, not a Document Library. We advertise the mapped drives as a legacy option for opening shared areas, for most documents this is fine. However more and more users are adopting to access SharePoint Online via a web browser. In terms of user friendly, if you've got everything setup correctly there should be nothing for your user to do, the client will automatically login as the user upon computer logon and map the drives. Edited March 26, 2021 by thimon

[IAMCloud_Leon]

I would stay away from Iamcloud CDM, we have been using it for a few years - too many issues (drive map disconnecting all the time, takes forever to open large files, not very user friendly for non-technical users. ).

Hey - I'm really sorry to hear that. If you want to reach out to me directly to see if there's anything we can do to help out with these issues just drop me a line @ [email protected]

 

Just to reply on your specific points though. A few of our customers did used to report some issues with drive disconnection. This is because CDM uses the Windows WebClient/Webdav connection, and in CDM's case this used to natively authenticate to SharePoint via web cookies. This interaction was a bit fragile in some environments and could be impacted by other applications that tried to use the same SharePoint cookies. But issues relating to drive disconnection were largely resolved last year when we upgraded the authentication to use Microsoft's MSAL framework. If you are still using the product, I'd definitely recommend upgrading to the latest version. If you've already given up, then I'm sorry to see you go.

In terms of the user experience not being great for untechnical users - we've not heard that before. There is normally no user interaction at all. Users should just use their mapped drives and be pretty much unaware that CDM is even there.

 

In terms of the big files taking ages to download though. This is definitely fair. It is definitely a known limitation of webdav that it can be slow for very large multi-GB files. The good news about this though is that later this year, we'll have fully moved away from webdav and will be integrating directly via API over HTTPS, which will be pretty much the same speed as accessing the files through the SharePoint web view. We're really excited about the new generation client coming later this year, and it will be a substantial improvement across the board from our current client.

Obviously if you are still looking for a solution at that point to solve your 365 file access problems then just get in touch again and we'll happily let you have a decent evaluation period to regain confidence in the product.

 

All the best, Leon

[jslate1980]

Hi Leon, is there any time frame on when the new client will be released. Just we have been told the issue we are having is down to webdav throttling.