I participated in the YamJam last week, the team has done a great job putting together a summary in a Q&A form. You can join the network as not to miss any future YamJams or announcements made by requesting an invitation https://www.yammer.com/itpronetwork/ See you there!
OneDrive for Business YamJam Summary
Overview: On April 2nd, Microsoft hosted the OneDrive for Business YamJam to answer questions about the announcement that OneDrive for Business would be available as a standalone product. Microsoft responses to questions are provided by Michal Gideoni, Mark Kashman, Bill Baer, Atanu Banjeree, Eugene Lin, Kate Dramstad, Roberto Franco, Lincoln DeMaris, Vasu Rangaswami, Sesha Mani, Office 365 IT Pro Team as well as our Most Valued Professionals Darrell Webster, Hans Brender, Joel Oleson and Benjamin Niaulin. Read the notes below for a summary of what we discussed. Next time, tune in to the live YamJam!
Primary Topics:
· OneDrive for Business Standalone
· Future Plans
· General Questions & Functionality
· Sync
A: Yes. We just announced the ability to purchase OneDrive for Business standalone: http://blog.onedrive.com/onedrive-for-business-is-now-available-as-a-standalone-service/Q: When will OneDrive for Business be available as a standalone subscription?
A: Now. See plans and pricing here: https://onedrive.live.com/about/en-us/plans/Q: So if one of my customers subscribes to OneDrive for Business standalone, then decides to ‘upgrade’ everyone to full blown Office 365 – what is the transition process?
A: They can upgrade from standalone to O365 SKUs , same as any existing transition.
Q: Are there no limitations as to which Office 365 plan ‘family’ you can upgrade to?
A: You can only upgrade to the O365 E family.
Q: Since OneDrive for Business as a standalone product is more than twice as expensive as the OneDrive personal service, what are the benefits that justify the cost difference?
A: You can find a summarized comparison between OneDrive and OneDrive for Business here. https://onedrive.live.com/about/en-us/plans/. There are a number of benefits to OneDrive for Business that we have found resonate with IT Pros, such as eDiscovery, compliance and administrative control. For example, if an employee leaves your organization your IT department can remove their access to your organization’s OneDrive for Business. Such controls are not available in OneDrive, which is intended for personal documents.
Future Plans
Q: When can we expect OneDrive for Business Sync for Mac?
A: OneDrive for Business Sync for Mac client will be coming by end of calendar year 2014.
You can review this session and see a preview of it working: http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/SharePoint-Conference/2014/SPC245
And per our announcement on 4/1 of the new OneDrive for Business standalone SKU, we, too updated the overall OneDrive site to call out Mac support as “Mac OSX – Sync client coming later this year” for ODB, review it here: https://onedrive.live.com/about/en-us/download/ (then click the “+” sign drop down and select “PC | Mac”).
Q: How can people join the beta program for OneDrive for OSX?
A: We will announce beta programs when they are ready – but they will be through selective channels, and scoped to start with.
Q: When can we expect two factor (multi-factor) authentication?
A: We introduced MFA to Office 365 in February to extend to all provisioned users as opposed the limited support of Global Administrators introduced in June. You can use MFA and create App passwords to use with client applications.
Q: Are there any plans to allow OneDrive to interface with NAS hosted folders?
A: If this is a SharePoint 2013 installation that uses RBS and NAS device then yes, CDB content on the device can be synchronized.
Q: When are we likely to see Yammer using OneDrive for Business for document storage?
A: If you are referring to ability to link to OneDrive for Business docs within Yammer docs? This is already possible today. OR- if you are asking about Yammer Group docs showing in your OneDrive for Business ‘shared with me’ view, this is a direction we are going and something we are looking into, but don’t have a timeline to share yet.
General Questions and Functionality
Q: Is OneDrive a cloud solution only, or can it be On-Premises?
A: You can extend SharePoint Server 2013 SP1 with OneDrive for Business. However the OneDrive service itself is in the cloud and not on-prem. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn167720(v=office.15).aspx
Q: How does OneDrive integrate with Yammer and SharePoint 2013?
A: See these two blog posts: http://blogs.office.com/2014/03/03/work-like-a-network-enterprise-social-and-the-future-of-work/
http://blogs.office.com/2013/09/12/starting-yammer-conversations-from-documents-stored-in-sharepoint-online/
Q: What support can we expect for metadata (including managed metadata)?
A: OneDrive for Business supports metadata the same way that SharePoint Online does today.
Q: We would like to implement OneDrive with our On-Prem SharePoint 2010 deployment. Best practices around this?
A: OneDrive for Business redirection can be accomplished with SharePoint 2010 – while SharePoint 2013 Service Pack 1 adds a native configuration option in Central Administration, in 2010 you can use Trusted MySite Host locations to redirect users personal site (OneDrive for Business) to Office 365.
Q: Does OneDrive (and SharePoint library synchronization) work seamlessly with BitLocker?
A: Yes, like all of our products built for use with Windows, it will work with BitLocker.
Q: How will OneDrive for Business work with “Personal” OneDrive? Can people share across them? Is it possible to prevent sharing?
A: The consumer offering of OneDrive and OneDrive for Business are separate products. In OneDrive for Business, there are no special behaviors around OneDrive consumer users so you don’t have to worry about taking additional measures to prevent sharing.
Q: How can IT help end users clear the confusion between OneDrive and OneDrive for Business?
A: There’s a comparison here https://onedrive.live.com/about/en-us/plans/ and more details about it: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint-server-help/what-is-onedrive-for-business-HA102822076.aspx
Q: Are there artifacts around security that can be used to share within our company?
A: For questions related to security and compliance with Office 365 (OneDrive for Business) please check out the Office 365 Trust Center which outlines our practices and compliance criteria. Go here: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/business/office-365-trust-center-cloud-computing-security-FX103030390.aspx
Q: Does OneDrive support MDM platforms to enable secure access on mobile?
A: Yes, you can do that with the current MDM partner solutions.
Q: Is there any way to pre-provision the OneDrive spaces so the users don’t have to go through the setup process the first time?
A: Pre-provisioning is supported, check out this blog for some examples on programmatic provisioning:http://blogs.msdn.com/b/frank_marasco/archive/2014/03/25/so-you-want-to-programmatically-provision-personal-sites-one-drive-for-business-in-office-365.aspx
Q: Where can I get more details on how to redirect OneDrive to OneDrive for Business in office365, please?
A: Here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn627523(v=office.15).aspx
Q: SharePoint SP1 now allows you to divert OneDrive content to Office 365. Is the Office 365 access now included in the SharePoint On-Prem license?
A: No. The SharePoint Server 2013 license does not provide Office 365 use rights. You will need to provision a Tenant and assign user licenses.
Q: There are new limits for site collection sizes and tenant sizes, but I don’t recall hearing of new limits to file sizes in SharePoint.
A: We announced at SharePoint Conference 1TB site collections and unlimited tenant storage scale:http://blogs.office.com/2014/03/14/sharepoint-online-announces-1tb-site-collections-and-unlimited-tenant-storage-scale/. We haven’t announced an update to file size.
Q: When will we break through the 5,000 limit?
A: It is a known limit for syncing SharePoint 2013 document libraries. We have a 20,000 item limit for OneDrive for Business folder sync. Both are known and actively being reviewed. There is a lot of confusion around the item limit. 5,000 items can be sync’d in normal libraries. 20,000 items sync’d in “OneDrive for Business aka My Site” library. If you go over 5,000 items in a single folder your library will break. If you go over 5,000 items in all folders you will lose some administrative capabilities such as setting permissions, creating indexed columns, and configuring the document library. You can however, have more than 5,000 items if done correctly (nested sub folders) and you don’t need to modify any settings after you pass that threshold. We have extensive documentation on designing large lists here – http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262813.aspx.
Q: When will be able to deploy OneDrive for Business via SCCM?
A: Try using the Click-To-Run OneDrive for Business installation, Click-to-Run is an alternative to the traditional Windows Installer-based (MSI) method of installing and updating Office.
Q: Is there a tool available to migrate from Google Drive to OneDrive?
A: Many of our partners do support this.
Q: If OneDrive for Business has been deployed as part of an Office 365 installation, can it fully replace SharePoint Online for document sharing and collaboration within groups? If not, what are the important features that would be missing?
A: This blog has some great info that will answer your question, even though the product name has been changed to OneDrive for Business from SkyDrive Pro http://en.share-gate.com/blog/what-is-skydrive-pro-in-sharepoint-2013.
Q: Will I someday be able to send (onetime use) link to OneDrive for Business specific file to external users? Same way I can do with OneDrive?
A: By sharing with a link: http://office.microsoft.com/en-001/sharepoint-server-help/share-documents-or-folders-in-onedrive-for-business-HA102788380.aspx.
Q2: But that way I can share only to users in my AD/SharePoint. I would like to share to people who would just have link I sent.
A2: You can send onetime doc requests from OneDrive for Business today. You can send a link to an external user, and you can ensure they need to sign in to view, or you can make it anonymous. More here: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/office365-sharepoint-online-enterprise-help/manage-external-sharing-for-your-sharepoint-online-environment-HA102849864.aspx.
Q: If I save a document in Office 365 I see both my personal OneDrive and my OneDrive for Business. If I wish to attach a file to an email, Outlook only sees my personal one drive. Is that the way it’s supposed to work?
A: Review what the Exchange team announced this week about “Enhanced Document Collaboration,” more here in their blog post:http://blogs.office.com/2014/03/31/the-evolution-of-email/
Q: I have set for my users to have a 5GB OneDrive for business limit. I can see that in the site collection list, that is the case. However – when I or anyone else accesses his OneDrive FB storage metrics page it says it’s 25.000MB. Am I doing something wrong?
A: The new default is 25GB for any ODB user in O365; here’s the original blog when we upped the limit:http://blogs.office.com/b/office365tech/archive/2013/08/27/skydrive-pro-increases-storage-and-ease-of-sharing.aspx. You can then allocate in blocks higher, but would not be able to set to 5GB.
Q: Why can I set the Mysite quota to be less than 25gb? Or let me ask in another way – where do I then set the ODFB quota? I was certain it’s the Mysite quota?
A: The new UI is within the SPO-Admin center, the “OneDrive” tab on the left. More here in this previous blog post on same (look for graphics in blog that should help): http://blogs.office.com/b/office365tech/archive/2013/08/27/skydrive-pro-increases-storage-and-ease-of-sharing.aspx
Sync
Q: What is the best resource for trouble shooting when a client PC isn’t synchronizing properly?
A: Here’s a “Solve problems” article for OneDrive for Business: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/office365-sharepoint-online-enterprise-help/solve-problems-youre-having-with-the-onedrive-for-business-sync-app-HA104047973.aspx
Q2: In my experience, sync is the biggest problem with it thus far. Seems most people just leave the data in the cloud, because when it fails, it doesn’t seem to recover well and it’s a challenge to troubleshoot for users and admins.
A2: Beyond troubleshooting, the team is releasing updates to the sync client each month, primarily now focused on improving sync assurance and user ability to troubleshoot.
Q: Is there the possibility to select which documents within a SharePoint library are synced when using OneDrive? When you have large libraries there can be a lot of documents being synced, but you don’t necessarily want a lot of small libraries either?
A: We understand the scenario (selective synchronization) and its importance and are investigating it; however, it is not possible today to synchronize an individual item within a library.
Q: Our primary need to deprovision a OneDrive is to remove the ability to offline sync to a non-managed device. We also find it highly desirable to be able to manage offline sync for OneDrive Personal Site libraries. If there was a programmable method to disable offline sync on a OneDrive document library we would have a great reduction in numbers of OneDrive deprovisioning each year (most would then be tied to the SPO license).
A: We’re investigating a few ways to handle these scenarios in the future.
Q: We are trying to promote OneDrive for Business adoption and get users off Google Drive/Dropbox. The inability to share an entire folder for anonymous read-only access is killing adoption – the users don’t want to have to share each document one at a time. Is there any plan to allow anonymous sharing at the folder level?
A: This is a great feedback to allow anonymous sharing at the folder level. We will take it into consideration. ODFB does allow today ‘Shared with everyone’ folder that you can simply drag-n-drop to share with everyone in your organization.
Q: Synchronization of SharePoint Team site content appears to be limited to the WIN32 client. Are there any plans on supporting other platforms, especially iPads (given the Office for iPad release)?
A: On mobile devices with limited storage we want to provide the option to control the amount of content downloaded. For iPad see also:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/onedrive-for-business-formerly/id655772279?mt=8
Benjamin Niaulin's Blog 
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Hi Benjamin,
Great Article and quite insightful on the functionality of OneDrive. I have doubts about this claim though, am I missing something or do I presume correctly that there is no support for SharePoint metadata in OneDrive.
“Q: What support can we expect for metadata (including managed metadata)?
A: OneDrive for Business supports metadata the same way that SharePoint Online does today.”
From experience this isn’t true as OneDrive for Business does not support metadata from SharePoint as displayed in its service description (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/onedrive-for-business-service-description.aspx). You cannot add custom metadata to document library as then display this offline in OneDrive. Also when syncing files to OneDrive you are not prompted to add required metadata.
That is correct and I think the conversations had during YamJam are not shown as a Q and A summary but there isn’t Metadata on your computer as Windows Explorer isn’t extended like that. What they meant is “supports metadata the same way that SharePoint Online does” meaning yes you can but it is in SharePoint because OneDrive for Business is the MySite Document Library in Microsoft’s perspective. Even though it really is the Sync tool. So you definitely right, the offline documents will not have Metadata once they are on Sync’ed but their Metadata will stay intact in the library.