OneDrive

OneDrive is not the location for Business Data

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Over the past few months I’ve noticed more Office 365 solutions and Add-Ins that use OneDrive as the location to store data. This has always concerned me as I see OneDrive for Business a very different solution to others so I hope this brings some clarity to my thinking and hopefully start a discussion where either I will be put right or wrong.

Lets remember what OneDrive for Business is first. It’s a storage place for you to store data within your Office 365 tenant. But what is more important is how do we get this personal storage? OneDrive for Business is part of a SharePoint license. You can assigned a user a SharePoint Online license and they can access what they are given access to but they do have OneDrive straight away.

Now here is my main point. A users OneDrive is only a temporary location of storage during the life of an organisation. A users OneDrive is created when that user is licensed. When the license is removed, the OneDrive is deleted 30 days as part of an Office 365 retention policy meaning any data that is not backed up or achieved from that location is deleted and not recoverable.

Knowing this, do you want business critical data stored in a temporary location. If data is important and needs to be kept when this user leaves or the license is removed, you need to ensure that you have your business continuity.

So how should we use OneDrive?
• OneNote Notebooks – Your notes from meetings. If you need to share them for business use, store them in the right location such as CRM if they are customer based or the SharePoint team site.
• Expenses Forms (Before submitting)- While you fill out your form during the month but then an app is used to send the files to the right SharePoint team site or third party location

Where I feel you shouldn’t be using OneDrive
• Customer Note
• Customer opportunity information
• Customer proposals – this includes draft version. These should be stored in the right location
• Business critical data

If a member of staff leaves and you decide to archive their OneDrive to SharePoint Online – why? Why not make them store this information in there anyway.

It makes me wonder why we need more than 1TB of storage in OneDrive for Business – what do you need to store in there for it to be 1TB, or 2TB, 10TB and of course this only increases as we will soon get unlimited storage. Just because OneDrive for Business has more storage available to you than SharePoint Online, does not mean you should store your data there.

So please do let me know your thoughts, am I right, wrong or should I be thinking it in a different way?

#Office365 Pro Plus: Click to Run vs Office on Demand

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Did you know there were two ways of getting Office 365 Pro Plus when you get the license in Office 365.  With E3, A3 and the individual licenses you get the ability to use Office on your local desktop using a form of streaming and caching on your machine to so you can use Word, Excel, Outlook etc when you want with and without an internet connection.

ClicktoRunvsOnDemand

What many people don’t realise is that there is also Office On Demand built into Office 365 which you are licensed for when you get hold of the Office 365 Pro Plus license.

Office On Demand

Located as a page in the SharePoint Online feature, users can stream Office to their computer.  The version is not installed (even though a file of less than 1MB is used to make it all happen) or cached and is a pure streaming version of office.

Unlike the full Office download, it requires your internet connection to always be up and connected for you to use it but does allow you to use the latest and greatest where ever you are without having to worry about large downloads.

To access Office on Demand you have to navigate to your Office 365 OneDrive for Business where it is then located down the left and side.

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With Office On Demand, there are some application not available such as Outlook.  If you are on the move, Outlook Web Access should provide you with great functionality.

Application Full Download On Demand
Word Yes Yes
Excel Yes Yes
PowerPoint Yes Yes
Access Yes Yes
Publisher Yes Yes
InfoPath Yes No
Outlook Yes No
OneNote Yes No
Lync Pro Client Yes No
Visio No Yes (with correct license)
Project No Yes (with correct license)

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Here are some other details and features

Feature Download On Demand
Initial Download required Yes Yes (but Microsoft quote no install is required)
Size of download 0.9MB 0.9MB
Additional Downloads Yes No
Offline Availability Yes No
Available from Office 365 Portal OneDrive for Business

What Else with Office on Demand

There are additional features with Office on Demand over Office 365 Pro Plus which includes Visio and Project.  These are also available if you have them licensed as part of your Office 365 subscription.

When to use Office on Demand

Using Office on Demand from your OneDrive Quick Launch is a great choice when you’re:

  • On a PC that you don’t use regularly (you don’t want to use up one of your 5 permissible subscription licenses, for example).
  • On a PC where you don’t have admin rights to perform an installation (you’re using a borrowed computer, for example).
  • On a PC at home if your IT administrator has disabled your ability to manage your installations (you’d like to install Office, but this option is not available).

quoted from office.microsoft.com