Server storage to one drive

[Mixed]

Hey all,

 

I have convinced our school to finally attempt to move from on-site storage for all files to onedrive - beginning with the admin team.

 

Currently, our file structure is an absolute mess and it's impossible to find files unless you've worked here for years and understand the jumble.

 

I'm just looking to see if anyone has any suggestions on file structure or examples to look at. Trying to avoid bringing over years of unused files as there has never been a proper archiving structure put in place.

 

Thanks in advance,

[Mako]

I sadly don't have time to write a longer response, but based on the words above I just need to jump in and suggest you don't use OneDrive for this. This is a job for SharePoint and/or Teams.

 

OneDrive is "one's own drive" - i.e great for individual users. It gets horribly messy if you use it for departmental storage, which some of our staff did on their own will and quickly found the drawbacks. As a school we are doing managed departmental moves to SharePoint. OneDrive will replace the on-premises home drive via Known Folder Move which is good for individual user storage.

 

By all means migrate their home drives to OneDrive, but not shared drives or departmental files.

[psydii]

Each Department/Functional Area gets their own SharePoint site (well actually they get a Team, which gives them a distribution list, teams capabilities, a SharePoint site and within that a default Document Library where they will store all their files).

 

SLT get their own Team - The Head's PA owns the file structure. - it is transient - when non-transient work is ready to be shared with a wider audience it moves to a more public site (see Information Site/Intranet below).

 

Middle Management group gets their own team, again managed by the PA to the Head, again transient, but often work exists here for a few years before being cleaned out.

 

HR has a Team, but also Communication Site where they publish to the wider school community

Finance has a Team, and a Communication Site.

Facilities has a Team and a Communication Site.

Safeguarding has a Team and a Communication Site. This Communication Site is mostly a web page directing to the appropriate 3rd party system that securely handle and track safeguarding concerns.

Teaching and Learning (a specific role held by a DH) has a team, and an Communication site.... this is where information and policies, guidance around our house T+L style are published.

Various special projects also have teams that are stood up and down as appropriate.

etc. etc.

 

Some Communication Sites are like little mini-intranets, others are just a Document Library with all staff being having Read Only access.

 

Finally there is a Hub Site we call the intranet... this has links out to all the Communication sites above, and a document library where the Head's PA can drop files that don't quite fit into any of the other categories. This pages and its contents are highly curated by the PA, BM and NM over the summer to reset for the new academic year.

 

As members of SLT change roles, there is some flexing of the above structure.

Edited May 4, 2023 by psydii

[KK20]

This is how we did ours:

 

Old school structure:

 

Personal documents -> redirected to server share

Personal desktop -> redirected to server share

Staff shared area -> redirected to staff server share

pupil shared area -> redirected to pupil server share

 

New structure

 

Sharepoint staff library

Sharepoint pupil library

Onedrive per user

 

migration:

 

sharepoint file migration, lifted the entirety of staff share to staff library and disabled staff share

sharepoint file migration, lifted the entirety of pupil share to pupil library and disabled pupil share

onedrive -> Advised that quota would be removed on desktop and documents in 1 year. Onus on people to move own stuff. 1 year time, quota moved to 0.

 

It worked for us. Some caveats. We did spool up a shared drive for media as sharepoint is a pig for working with large videos (art, PE, DT, Drama departments). This uses a QNAP NAS drive as its backend and is designed for "working" directories. It is backed up to another QNAP NAS drive. A third media sharepoint library was added for media destination.

 

Over time the libraries have had various administrators appointed to areas for access and control purposes. We havent had the need to have individual sites - we dont use sharepoint as an intranet, purely as a file repository.

Edited May 4, 2023 by KK20

[E_G_R2]

+1 for sharepoint library over OneDrive.

[Mixed]

Sorry I did mean sharepoint, thanks for all the suggestions this is really helpful and will get to planning.

[mavhc]

Same question as to a real library, who's the librarian? Who's in charge of the structure and contents and filing?

 

When syncing to your computers with onedrive you don't want a million files syncing, so need to structure it like your school is structured, per department usually