IT Strategy tips to get staff using onedrive more to save their work

[password1234]

Hey guys

 

We look after a large number of small infant and primary schools across our county as part of traded services. we are slowly trying to get some of the schools to start considering moving over to Office365 alot of them are just using network shares as a dumping ground and getting them to do housekeeping is a big struggle and they are constantly running out of disk space on the box and no one really wants to take responsiblity of house keeping!

 

Does anyone have a good strategy in place which they use in terms of getting users to get in the habit of making use of Onedrive..i.e. using onedrive to save files which they need access from home to and just saving files locally if they plan to use it in place?

 

The problem we have is teachers and staff they are after ease of access and are so used to just clicking save as browse to their network folder and save it there or even save it on their desktop (which we are trying to slowly move them away from)

 

Introducing onedrive they may find it a bit tiredsome having to get on to the web portal/upload / download files etc (Sure it will require training to get this done) in the interim they may just revert making life easy for themselves and just dumping everything on the desktop/shares

 

so just wondering if anyone has any good IT strategy tips in terms of saving work- we will still want to keep network drives but we could enforce possibly like a storage limit on network drive to then force the users to start making use of one drive

 

Bearing in mind here the staff are mainly infant/primary school teachers across small schoolls

[DODICT]

if its primaries then can you not whack the client on - only issue(s) with using the client to be storage and set up time where you have lots of users accessing different machines. That way they could just use one drive directly from explorer ?

 

With 'on demand' I even know secondaries that have the client working to give users that familiar method of saving/opening etc. Obviously needs setting up but there are threads on here how to config silent install and config on a network - once you had it nailed once it would be pretty easy to roll the config round.

[fredbayker]

You should check the OneDrive threads on here - also look into known folder move.

[mukz]

Dare i say it but shut the server down n when they complain, say because its full it cant process commands so it shuts itself down.

Then make them take ownership of the housekeeping and give them the alternative to spending money which is migrating to O365

[thimon]

As has been mentioned, deploy the OneDrive client to all devices and redirect document folders to OneDrive, users won’t notice the difference. In terms of running out of disk space, migrate file shares over to SharePoint Online instead of a traditional file server.

[mrbios]

I wanted to start forcing people to use onedrive more as well, but that's stalled since discovering the issue that if someone saves and logs off too quickly they lose everything because the client won't have uploaded the file, and the process of logging off wipes the file from the temporary directly it goes into on the local machine.

 

How are people avoiding that issue? as i find the most likely time for people to save a change is at the end of a lesson where they just go file > save > log off in quick succession.

[thimon]

That shouldn’t happen. OneDrive files are saved to a local location (not temporary for us) then the client uploads it. If a user logs off that quick (never had anyone do that) then the client should upload the file upon next logon.

[Rob_D]

We use https://www.dmsystem.co.uk/user-group-management/onedrive-connect to map OneDrive to a drive letter the same as their network/home drives. There's some limitations with larger media files, but it does make for a pretty transparent solution.

Personally, I'd use quotas to make the local storage less useful. We do this with new students, they get 100KB for their home drive (because we can't not have one) and then they're told to save everything to their OneDrive or the Sharepoint share (also mapped through ODC).

[thimon]

Is that a paid for service? If you follow Microsoft’s GPO instructions and set a local directory for the OneDrive client to save files to, then you can map a drive to that location for all users via GPO. We use this method to map OneDrive as O drive to replace users H drive which used to mapped their file server home drive (file server now decommissioned).

[Rob_D]

Yeah OneDriveConnect is a paid for thing. We've got it as part of a larger support contract so I'm not sure what it would be on it's own.

[TechMonkey]

That shouldn’t happen. OneDrive files are saved to a local location (not temporary for us) then the client uploads it. If a user logs off that quick (never had anyone do that) then the client should upload the file upon next logon.

We had this issue with pupils. They don't always use the same device so it couldn't be guaranteed that they would get the file next time. Then there is the classic issue of a pupil coming to us 4 weeks later so no hope in heck of finding it.

 

We managed to replicate the issue and speed of logging off.

[mrbios]

That shouldn’t happen. OneDrive files are saved to a local location (not temporary for us) then the client uploads it. If a user logs off that quick (never had anyone do that) then the client should upload the file upon next logon.

 

I've tested this a few times, but maybe there's a setting to ensure that temporary directory persists? I've used the GP to change the local location of OneDrive files, then watched that folder disappear as someone logs off.

 

We've had it 2-3 times and we only push onedrive as a "you can use this, if you want" kind of thing at the moment, we're reluctant to really push it until we know a problem like this isn't going to become a headache.

[mavhc]

Is the issue they log off and onedrive wipes everything because of a onedrive setting? Or your profile is wiped because of a GPO setting? Or they don't login again to finish the sync?

 

Can't onedrive keep running until it finishes sync? Seems like google file sync pauses logoff until it's finished.

 

Really why isn't it a service on the machine that syncs every user's stuff in the bg? Lame programming MS

[mikeprice]

Sometimes the only solution is either

 

a)Thumbscrews

or

b) make sure that the OneDrive option is properly publicised and made easy to use - then let the network drive option run out of space (POSSIBLY by subtly adding random large files) and then pointing to an agreed policy that has also been publicised that says they should use the OneDrive option

 

 

 

I think most of know that the thumbscrews option is probably easier - but option (b) is probably the more professional approach

 

YMMV

 

 

 

 

Oh - and in my experience - in several schools - deleting massive ZUMBA videos stored by PE would help

several of them from each staff member - including duplicate by basically all of them!

jus' sayin'

Edited January 6, 2020 by mikeprice

[MartinT]

We activated OneDrive (for Business) by Group Policy, migrated every users' files to their OneDrive and then disabled their old file share. It took about two months to get each user done and then I shut down the file server over Christmas. It really helps if you have AD Sync or AD FS in place.

[thimon]

I've tested this a few times, but maybe there's a setting to ensure that temporary directory persists? I've used the GP to change the local location of OneDrive files, then watched that folder disappear as someone logs off.

 

There shouldn't be a temporary location used at all. Use Group Policy to create a new directory %OneDriveSync% then use folder creation to create relevant documents folders for each user. Then point the OneDrive client to save in the %OneDriveSync% area, as well as pointing folder redirection to this location.

 

[mavhc]

Make sure you have Seamless SSO enabled, or Azure joined I guess, so there's no need to login. The aim is the user shouldn't notice a change at all

[win]

Assuming it's a reasonably new version of Windows 10 the onedrive client is built into the OS so you won't need onedrive for business, just a good group policy setting (especially using files on demand). Use quotas to keep the storage levels low and tell them that the onedrive blue cloud offers 1TB for free!

[mrbios]

There shouldn't be a temporary location used at all. Use Group Policy to create a new directory %OneDriveSync% then use folder creation to create relevant documents folders for each user. Then point the OneDrive client to save in the %OneDriveSync% area, as well as pointing folder redirection to this location.

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]56218[/ATTACH]

 

You confused me initially, but i've worked this out now. So you're right that the "OneDrive - School Name" folder still exists and has the files in, if the userprofile hasn't been cleared. Currently we wipe student user profiles daily on shutdown which is why that confused me. The OneDrive application actually has a temporary store it caches changes in as well, so when you copy a file to onedrive, the application stores that change file in that hidden folder, and that hidden folder is deleted on logoff. That's the one i was referencing. I was hoping that folder would persist even if the user profile didn't.

 

I've setup the Environment Variable as you have, that's very handy as i wasn't sure how i could create custom folders in all users OneDrives. Thank you for that one!

 

I'm now looking at making a logoff script that will look for any files modified in the last 60 seconds within the "OneDrive - School Name" folder, and automatically copy them to the users local Downloads folder, then setting storage sense to wipe files in downloads if they're older than 90 days. That way for 90 days any potential failed syncs will be in the users downloads folder, but won't accumulate too much disk usage over time......i've not setup storage sense yet so I'm just hoping i can make it do what i want. Also that way i can continue to delete user profiles daily for students rather than having to increase that and potentially end up with full disks.

[MartinT]

Storage Sense is handy. Thanks for that, now setup here.

[mavhc]

If you're having to delete everyone's profile from shared machine every day seems like you have bigger problems, doesn't that massively slow down logins for a start?

[mrbios]

If you're having to delete everyone's profile from shared machine every day seems like you have bigger problems, doesn't that massively slow down logins for a start?

 

Not at all, 30 seconds is an average login time.

 

There's 1100 students, if i didn't clean them off regularly i'd end up with what i'd guess as between 4 and 8 profiles per day per machine, times that by a week, or a month and you end up with a lot of data building up in the Users directory filling up drives...even more so if we're expecting cached OneDrive data to be in there even with files on demand turned on. They're all 120gb drives with a fair bit of space free, but i'd prefer to ensure that can't fill up by keeping the profile area clean. Staff ones remain for a month, as they generally log on to the same PC each day for the most part, so it's only students that are an issue.

[mavhc]

Back to my original question, when do missing files that are in a profile get uploaded again, do you have to wait for that user to log in to the same computer?

 

If not then leaving the files for 2 days would work, someone else logs in, the bg service syncs everything.

[mrbios]

Back to my original question, when do missing files that are in a profile get uploaded again, do you have to wait for that user to log in to the same computer?

 

If not then leaving the files for 2 days would work, someone else logs in, the bg service syncs everything.

 

The same user has to login to the same computer before that user profile is removed. Which can be a pain if a teacher doesn't have a set seating plan, especially given like us we're on a two week timetable. Personally i'd have to set student user profiles to not remove for 15 days as a minimum, and hope that the student still logs on to the same PC during the next lesson in there. This would work for computing lessons for example, but if a Science teacher booked an IT suite one week, they're not necessarily going to go into the same IT suite the next week, and even then they won't have seating plans for one off booked IT suite lessons.

 

It's a right pain.

 

I'm going to push ahead with making a script to save any files with a modified time of the last minute or two prior to logoff to a temporary store. At least on the odd occasion the issue occurs we'll be able to recover someones work, then i'll script that to auto cleanup every X days. That's the only short term workaround i can come up with for the time being to mitigate the issue.

[mavhc]

Annoying, it should really be a bg service that is installed once and manages the sync for all users.

 

At least Windows Offline Files defaults to saving directly to the server, not locally to sync at another time. Plus it runs sync on logoff