Shared OneDrive Business folders

Over Clocker

Over Clocker

Over Clocker

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Hi guys,

Setting up a new O365 portal for my business (might move to it from GSuite) and I'm a little confused between the differences/benefits of using OneDrive for Business shared folders, or using Team folders.

Generally, online resources say to use Teams (Sharepoint) to setup a new team and add files within there, however I'm not overly familiar with that.

What I want to actually achieve:

We have a terminal server which people login to. I was proposing to install OneDrive under the logged in admin user on our data server to sync files from OneDrive to a shared folder on the data server, which will then be mapped as a drive for users on the TS.

Some staff also have laptops for extended offline work, so we were going to then install OneDrive to their laptops too.

Can OneDrive pull down shared folders to sync to local devices under different people's logins?

Thanks,
Mal
 
I also see there is the Sync button in SharePoint to sync a folder down to a local machine, but can this be set centrally so our staff don't need login to Sharepoint first and do this for each folder?

Thanks
 
Over Clocker said:
I was proposing to install OneDrive under the logged in admin user on our data server to sync files from OneDrive to a shared folder on the data server, which will then be mapped as a drive for users on the TS.
Click to expand...
Oof that's just going to be a never-ending source of pain.
 
Over Clocker said:
Hi there, care to share why etc?

Thanks,
Mal
Click to expand...
a) it relies on your admin account always being logged in
b) it relies on the OneDrive app even supporting that scenario, where multiple different users are holding locks on multiple different files (potentially multiple locks on the same file)

Any time you try to create a solution from something that was not designed for that purpose (and I can guarantee won't be supported), you are going to end up with unforeseen consequences. What happens if you have corruption of files? What happens every time the users are merrily modifying the files without knowing that either the admin account got logged off or the OneDrive app fell over, and is therefore no longer syncing changes? At the very least you are going to get regular calls from the users complaining that their "enterprise cloud drive solution" isn't working and you'll have to login to the server to troubleshoot it. Unhappy users, unhappy you. All bad.

Edit: What happens when Sheila on the network has modified a file while the OneDrive app had crashed (unbeknown to her) while also Keith on his laptop has modified the same file (which did get synced because OneDrive is happily running on his laptop, but the file didn't have a lock on it to tell him he couldn't modify it because Sheila had it open)? My point is: unforeseen issues, unsupported, hacked together with string and sticky tape = all bad.
 
It’s horrid isn’t it. On my iMac at home I have our work OneDrive setup .... and all it does is sync stuff to Dropbox for me.
 
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