One Drive for Business, my friend and my foe. Over the past year or so i have grown to love it’s functionality but find myself baffled by some of it’s errors. It’s pretty clear from speaking with my clients that the two things that need to change are the ability to sync more than just a document library (i.e. selective sync) and to fix the more common sync errors. (RED X is the devil.) So it’s nice to hear some news about the NEXT GEN SYNC client being available by year end. Also nice to hear they have introduced more control over what OD4B can share and to who. Here is a brief overview of recent updates.
Ability to block devices not domain joined.
You can now restrict domain access with OD4b. This means, you cannot sync offline unless your device is a member of the allowed domain. You can also block all MACS and Restrict Sync Personal PCs. This is great from a management perspective as a concern raised with me before was the fact that people can download company data to any device.
To limit to only certain domain joined PCs…
1. Identify Domain GUID
$domain = (get-ADForest).domains; foreach($d in$domain) {get-ADDomain -identity $d | select objectGuid}
2. Run Following PS command
set-spotenanysyncclientrestriction -enable -domainguid “xxxxx”
- User is told they can’t take library offline.
- The request to sync is also held in compliance centre so admins can call the user to advise as to why they could not sync the library.
Ability to enrol devices into MDM via OneDrive for Business
This allows you to do a selective wipe of any device with your company OD4B connected.
You don’t need to have Email connected, so its more than just active-sync enrolment.
Q What if i have my personal One Drive account ?
Well it resets the application but keeps the personal data. So all good.
However you need to reset up your personal account, but it will connect up to local files so won’t re-download.
Limit amount of storage OD4B can use.
You can now change the amount of data a user can have in OD4B.
For example if you wanted to reduce from 1TB to 500GB, you can use the following command. (must use quota in MB)
Set-SPOSite -identity https://odbase-my.sharepoint.com/personal/reubenk_odbase_onmicrosoft.com -storagequota 512000
Some other points to note…
- Shared with Everyone folder will no longer be provisioned on new tenancies moving forward. It can be enabled however.
- You can now turn off share with EVERYONE and ALL USERS.
- Next Gen Sync Client is out Q4.
- Adding Offline Support to Mobile Apps is coming in Q4.
- Complete Web Client Refresh coming Q3.
- Ability to restrict what external domains you can share with coming Q3.
Improving all the time…but hurry up with selective sync please !!!!
paulgilbride.com 