What is OneDrive for Business?

What is OneDrive for Business? This article is based on public presentations at the Microsoft Ignite event and is not an official Microsoft document and may not represent an official Microsoft position on the state of OneDrive for Business. 1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY OneDrive started out as a free consumer file hosting tool (SkyDrive) that allows you to store your files, pictures, and other files to the cloud, sync them with your computer and access them via a mobile or web browser. Users are able to share documents publicly or with contacts using a Microsoft Account. OneDrive for Business (O4B) is a close relative to the consumer version but is actually quite different under the covers. O4B has its heritage in MySites and Groove and will allow you to do much more than the consumer version because it is based on SharePoint under the covers. These additional features include versioning, workflow, extensive search, document co-authoring and much of the collaboration features we ve become used to on SharePoint. Documents can also be shared externally, synchronized offline with your computer and accessed much the same way as OneDrive. This article explores the details of OneDrive for Business available today and a bit on the future direction. 2 THE BUSINESS VALUE OF ONEDRIVE Whether you re an IT professional or an executive responsible for managing information workers and their content in an enterprise, why should you care about OneDrive for Business? 2.1 SECURITY OF YOUR INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY Today, 60% of employees report working with 10 or more people on a day-to-day basis. Half of these employees work with more than 20 people. It s almost certain that people in your organization are sharing content with people outside your organization probably for legitimate business reasons - and also making content available to them while they re not on the corporate network. How are they doing it today? Most likely they re subscribing to a service like Box, Dropbox, or OneDrive and that one action ensures that you have content maybe proprietary content out on a cloud service that may or may not be secured and totally outside of your control. More details on Security and Compliance below, but suffice it to say that O4B has significantly more security options in place to help control your IP. 2.2 WORK ANYWHERE, ANYTIME ON ANY DEVICE Gartner says that by 2016 40% of the workforce will be mobile, and by 2015 at least 60% of information workers will interact with content applications via a mobile device. In order to create a positive experience and increase user adoption, you ll want to ensure your service supports access over the web available from any device. 1

2.3 COLLABORATION WITH EXTERNAL PARTNERS AND CUSTOMERS O4B allows your information workers to provide controlled access to content, and for Office content, allows them to perform real-time coauthoring either in the browser or in the Office client. Versioning is built in and multi-factor authentication is provided to ensure that your content is being accessed by the right people. 3 ONEDRIVE FOR BUSINESS 101 3.1 FEATURES BREAKDOWN 3.1.1 The Foundation O4B is THE file, sync, and share foundation for O365. It has (or will have) integration points with email, office, etc. and is the foundation where users consume files in Office 365. 3.1.2 Collaboration O4B is really built for individual use or informal collaboration, not to be confused with Team sites for more structured collaboration. It s a place where users are able to store their files and access them from any device, take advantage of the great features like coauthoring (where changes are visible in the browser real-time now). Simple sharing options (internal and external) UI features that make it easy and intuitive to share with external partners. IT professionals will be happy to know that those features can also be disabled. One of our favorite new features is that if a document is shared with you, not only is the document synchronized to your local O4B folder, but the document will also appear in your personal O4B site. The document is a link to the original sharing location, and this becomes a great central repository for all content that has been shared with you via O4B. 3.1.3 Storage Currently there is support for 1 TB storage per user and Microsoft has made the commitment to eventually support unlimited storage. 3.1.4 Mobile There are synchronization clients for PC/Mac (Preview), tablet, and phone with support for Android, ios and Windows phone. 3.1.5 Compliance IT has full control over external access, and can manage security access. Compliance includes Records Management Policies, ediscovery, IRM and all of the other compliance features of SharePoint. More details on compliance below (section 5.6). 3.1.6 Cross-browser web client Users have full modern functionality that you would expect, such as right-click actions to edit, delete, copy and other file functionality. Drag and Drop upload or copy files directly to your sync folder. Rich file previewing is provided for office docs and PDFs, also for images and video. Hover cards show those 2

document previews prior to opening, and coauthoring changes are visible real-time. Simple copy and move are new UI features to make it easier to do the basic file functions. Create files and folders allow you to create and invite people to a folder upon creation to quickly get up and running. 3.1.7 Search Smart search uses the new Office Graph functionality and searches content across SharePoint Online, O4B and other document repositories that have been shared with you. Hit highlighting in the title or the content of the document shows your keyword location and in general the search capabilities are very nice. More details in the Delve section below. 4 COMPARISON WITH ONEDRIVE FOR CONSUMERS The table below provides a quick comparison of the features of OneDrive (for consumers) and OneDrive for Business: Feature OneDrive OneDrive for Business Desktop Syncing Synchronize documents to your computer and work with them offline. Navigate files on your computer as you would normally. Mobile Access Access via Android, ios or Windows phones Real-time Coauthoring author documents simultaneously with others in the browser or in the Office client. Create/Edit Documents in a Browser Pretty good authoring experience in the browser and the resulting document is fully compatible with Office client tools. Document Versioning keep track of previous versions of documents and restore if necessary. Multi-Factor Authentication request a second form of authentication such as a text or phone call to ensure that documents are accessed by the right people. Auditing/Reporting keep track of who s doing what with your files. SharePoint Goodness pretty much anything that s available in SharePoint document libraries are available: Metadata and Templates, workflow, Records Management, Views, Sorting and Filtering, granular security, Lists Uses existing credentials Allows Directory Sync for SSO or ADFS Built in Compliance: FISMA, HIPAA BAA, EU Model Clauses, and ISO 27001. 3

5 OFFICE 365 INTEGRATION All content stored in O4B has great integration with Office 365. Following are some of the details: 5.1 EDITING WITH OFFICE AND OFFICE ONLINE Office documents in O4B can be edited in the browser using Office Web Apps, or using the desktop client of the office Suite (Office Pro Plus is included in Office 365 subscriptions). 5.2 VERSION CONTROL The goodness of SharePoint version control allows you to do things like roll back to previous versions, right-click on a document to view a breakdown of all versions, view a specific version, and restore or delete a version. 5.3 YAMMER Editing Office documents in OWA allows you to maintain contextual yammer conversations. Simply open a file and start a yammer conversation within the context of the file. 5.4 MODERN ATTACHMENTS IN OWA Modern attachments is taking the concept of email attachments, but if you re sharing a file attachment within O4B, it looks like a physical attachment, but it s actually a link to the document stored within O4B. From that point you can grant permissions and other actions from within the email. 5.5 DELVE Delve and Office Graph are ways of understanding and discovering content across all of your environments. Signals into the Office Graph build a history of actions and interactions over time and applies machine learning to identify relationships amongst the content and across users. Delve surfaces frequent files, those shared with others or those documents that might be relevant to you. Delve has a nice card interface that shows a document preview and other relevant metadata of the document. Delve also includes the concept of Boards, which allows you to pin content and favorite content interesting to you that others might also be interested in. 5.6 COMPLIANCE CENTER Office 365 now includes an overarching service called the Compliance Center which allows you to manage the security aspects of your content. O4B can take advantage of this feature using the below: 5.6.1 Auditing and Reporting This feature allows you to filter, query and see all of the activity and usage on O4B. Activity reports can be run based on date/time range, and filter on specific actions such as which files have been shared. All 4

context around the activity is logged and reported, and you can narrow it down to a specific user or a specific file. Results can then be export to a CSV file. 5.6.2 Data Loss Prevention (DLP) and ediscovery With email you can define policies that define sensitive data types, such as a social security number in an email. Those capabilities are now applied to O4B and SharePoint Online. There are over 50 predefined sensitive data types (SSN, credit card numbers, etc.), that the user can use to create rules and block access to the content. Incident reports tell you how many times breach of particular policies have happened. The service displays a policy tip for the employee and an email is sent to the employee and others to identify any breach of protocol. The system can also block access to the sensitive files (available by end of CY). EDiscovery allows you to discover content and optionally place those documents on hold. The EDiscovery solution uses search to find content across Mail, SharePoint Online and O4B, optionally deduplicate the content and then hold or export the content to a working site. 5.6.3 Mobile Device Management (MDM) The MDM features allow you to manage mobile devices using Intune, apply encryption to mobile devices, set pins, and also provides app management and remote wipe of data. 5.6.4 Information Rights Management (IRM) IRM allows IT to apply security when anyone downloads a document thereby protecting your assets by requiring authentication before viewing, expiring content, and optionally limiting the features that the user can do with a document. IT also has the capability to block synchronization on unmanaged PC s. 5.6.5 Other Capabilities Users can apply Data Retention Policies to content, such as creating rules to say if a document hasn t been modified in a certain period, recycle the document. O4B also reaps other benefits from the platform such as encryption at rest and complies with a number of standards such as ISO 27001, HIPAA BAA, FISMA, etc. 6 MOBILITY O4B now includes unified mobile apps across all platforms (Android, ios, and Windows) to connect to OneDrive or O4B using the same app for phones & tablets. Users can upload, edit, copy and move files from within the app, and also include features like search across your repositories, recover from the Recycle Bin, and the ability to see files shared with me and the ability to grant permissions to others. 7 THE FUTURE The overall direction of the O4B team is around driving the experience across the web, mobile and sync and unifying them into a singular seamless experience across OneDrive and O4B. To that end, following are some upcoming features, and most of the proposed timelines. 5

7.1 END USER 7.1.1 Currently rolling out or released Mobile Sharing and DLP Policy Tips the ability to share content from any mobile device and to receive DLP Policy notifications when sharing protected content. 7.1.2 Q2 2015 Updated PDF Experience with ios/android, the ability to send a link from ios/android, save attachments from OWA to OB, and Expiration of Anonymous Shares. 7.1.3 Q3 2015 Next generation Sync Client Preview, Unified Web UX (look and feel of the consumer sync to O4B), and read-only Mobile Offline files for ios Android Company Shareable Links (the scenario is the ability to share with someone in the organization, who can then share with someone else in the org. Also the ability to do things like share with a team for a week, and after a week one-click touch to take control back. 7.1.4 Q4 2015 PC/Mac Sync Clients are generally available, and a new Windows 10 Universal App with the ability for read-only offline files 7.1.5 Planned The following features are planned, but no scheduled release date has been declared: - Offline Mobile editing - Offline Mobile folders - Mobile PDF annotation support for ios/android - Modern attachments for Outlook - Expiration of all external shares 7.2 SECURITY, CONTROL COMPLIANCE AND DEVELOPER 7.2.1 Currently rolling out or released Auditing & reporting (preview), the ability to disable sync on unmanaged PC s, DLP Phase 2 (preview), and Unified OneDrive API one modern REST based API across the platform. 7.2.2 Q2 2015 Migration API SDK, which is an API that allows developers to push large volumes of files to the system. Office 365 Management Activity API (Auditing), the ability for developers to work with activity data, plumb it into BI, measure and report on that data. Finally, storage quota control, a feature where IT can define individual storage quotas. 7.2.3 Q3 2015 This release will include an Allowlist/Denylist for external sharing domains. This will allow you to deny gmail.com, but allow contoso.com (for example). Archiving of external sharing emails, which is an 6

internal BCC to an archive mailbox; Intune support for personal/business accounts, where if you remote wipe a device, can selectively pick that just business data get wiped. 7.2.4 Q4 2015 DLP Phase 3, which provides exceptions for locations and conditions in addition to rules; the ability to disable external sharing for specific users (disallow legal team from sharing, for example); remove the 20,000 file limit (ships with next-gen sync client) and large file support (10Gb) (ships with next-gen sync client). 7.2.5 Planned no current timeline The following features are planned, but no scheduled release date has been declared: - Unlimited Storage - DLP support for mobile apps - Cross-tenant sharing control where specific vendors can have unique sharing rules. - OneDrive usage reporting telemetry and instrumentation collected in the background will give IT the ability to understand how O4B is being used. 8 SUMMARY OneDrive for Business should be a great addition to an enterprise portfolio, especially providing that it will give your IT more control over intellectual property within your organization. As the new capabilities are rolled out throughout the year, working with O4B will become more and more seamless to your end users and will eventually become the normal way of doing business storing content and collaborating with external partners and customer. Since 1988, Kiefer Consulting has been focused on the simple premise that they succeed when their customers succeed. They are an award-winning Microsoft Gold Partner who provides full lifecycle services for Sitecore,.NET, Mobile, and SharePoint on premise and SharePoint Online (Office 365) and are the leading solution provider in Northern California, focused on transforming client needs into usercentric systems. We have CMAS (3-12-70-0506G) and MSA procurement vehicles to business with the State and other local government entities. As of June 2015, we now resell Nintex (Web and Mobile Forms & Workflow for SharePoint) and AvePoint (Enterprise Collaboration & SharePoint Administration Tools). Refer to CMAS (3-15-70-0506H). For more information, please contact them at info@kieferconsulting.com or +1 916 932 2770. 7

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