Onedrive for Business synch problems

shc · 06 Jan 2017

Dear all,

I am attempting to set up Onedrive for Business for a non profit organisation.

The desired functionality is to have an 'admin' account and 6+ user accounts.

Is there any way to create a folder structure as admin (which has to be via the web-based interface) then share the folders across the user accounts?

On attempting to do this, the shared fold is never downloaded/synchronised to the computers with the Onedrive user accounts configured on.

Having searched the internet for answers I have found suggestions to use the 'classic' one drive web interface in order to specify that the folder be synchronised. On doing this I have no option to do so, merely to view the folder which then gives me a 'cannot be found' error message.

Look forward to any clarification of whether this is or isn't possible with Onedrive for business.

Thanks.

Kari · 06 Jan 2017

First of all, all those users (admin + all standard users) of course need an individual Office 365 / Azure AD account. Assuming they are not using computers for private stuff and therefore personal standard OneDrive is not set up on computers, this is a simplified explanation about the process.

By default each O365 Business / Enterprise user has a folder called Shared with Everyone on their OneDrive for Business. Also by default this folder is already shared with everyone in the organisation:

Onedrive for Business synch problems-image.png

Everything the admin user (or any other user) wants to share with everyone else within the organisation should be placed here. All users can access the shared content from left pane of the web UI and move content to any of their personal folders:

Each individual user needs then install Office software (Sign in to your account). This will also install the OneDrive client:

OneDrive icon is shown in notification area of the Taskbar, it can be grey (OneDrive not set up), white (personal OneDrive) or in this case blue (OneDrive for Business):

Now each user simply right clicks the OneDrive icon and selects Settings, then Choose folders to select which folders they want to sync to local computer:

The admin user of course selects the Shared with Everyone folder to be synced; everything he / she then saves in this folder will automatically be shared with everyone else, everything removed from this folder will no longer be shared:

In fact it's not complicated. OneDrive for Business works surprisingly well, making sharing within organisation easy.

Kari