Hi Wayne - Love this overview and think this is a major selling point for users that like network drives. My only question is how can you automatically create an organisational wide OneDrive folder structure like you have shown in the video? I've read about onedrive automount for team sites but really looking for a DFS like folder redirection solution. Also assuming files on Demand can be set via GP?
Thanks Travis! OneDrive isn't where we create a folder structure - in fact, we don't create shared folders in the traditional sense. We create "teams groupings" inside Microsoft Teams. Inside there you have channels, in the channels you have a tab called "Files", i.e. "Teams Files". This is actually a SharePoint document library - but you don't need to worry about that part. From there you can tell OneDrive to "connect" (or, i.e. sync) to whatever Team File you want to show up like a mapped drive in Windows File Explorer- and remember to select the Files on Demand checkbox. Regarding GP, I would try to move away from that as soon as feasible and move to configuration profiles using Intune. Domain controllers with traditional Windows AD isn't going anyway any time soon - but it is not the future of IT for people like us. The best thing IT pro's can do it get very nimble with Azure AD Premium Plan 2, Intune, and Azure Information Protection when it comes to security and management.
Great Advice. I have been wrestling with decisions around this for the past 6 months. I was really happy to find this and intend to follow the advice . Great help guys thank you
Hello Wayne - Thanks so much for taking the time to make this and other videos. How are open file locks handled when users edit files through the mapped drive interface? If one user has a file open for editing in a local app, opened through the traditional file explorer interface, would a second user attempting to open the file be set to read-only? Would it be consistent in both the mapped drive in file explorer interface and the Teams app Files tab interface? Is collaborative editing available when using Team Files as your file server? Thank you!
Thanks Tony! So, good question, and this question comes up from time to time. In order to lock a file for editing, in Teams, the user would have to choose to open the document library through the SharePoint interface and then "check out" the file. Cumbersome? You bet. Do I ever do it at Xerillion? No. Has it ever been an issue? No. The modern way to collaborate in Office documents is that both users can be in the same document at the same time making edits - and both can see they are in there at the same time. So, there is only 1 version of the document and both users are making changes at the same time, and both users have access to the changes from each other's work. This is yet another tech "mindshift" for IT managers who are used to legacy file share systems that lock up files for a single user on a file server. I MUCH prefer multi-user editing, AND, even better, is that SharePoint is keeping track of the changes, so if another user clobbers a file, you can just revert back to a previous version easily. Thanks for the great question!
Hi Wayne! Thank you again for these helpful videos. I'm re-posting here as I have not been able to figure this out. I see on your demo you only mapped to file explorer only the '(Team Name) - General’, and not each individual channel that may exist under that (Team Name), i.e.: Marketing - General is mapped, but not channel 'Project A', 'Campaigns', 'Social Media', etc. Question is: do you NOT map each channel (just the General), OR, you figured a way to route the sub-channels location to live inside the General folder? When I SYNC each channel, they appear on file explorer OUTSIDE of the General folder, making my left panel on file explorer non-collapsed like on MS Teams, and can not simply drag and drop folder (ie: project a), into (Team Name - General) folder. How are you handling that?
Hi Pedro! I map at the channel level. So, in my demo, I just happen to be mapping the default general channel - but, you can map any channel you wish. In other words, the other channels beside "General", are not "subfolders" - they are "peer" channels in the hierarchy.
Hi Wayne, awesome video! Are you able to point us in the right direction on how to tell OneDrive to "connect" (or, i.e. sync) to the Team File we want to show up like a mapped drive in Windows File Explorer. I know we can manually click sync on the document library, but I'm having difficulties finding the best path to automate this for our users using Intune configuration profiles.
Hey THGMatt! Thanks! I haven't looked into automating the sync through Intune yet, though as you have brought it up, it seems like an obviously good idea that I should have thought about already :) Though in thinking through the current list of controls available through Configuration Profiles and Client Apps, I don't recall ever seeing a section to click your way through this - yet. I'm very deep into developing the next video: Maintaining Microsoft 365, and right after that I have Microsoft Phones, and Microsoft Azure, so I can't dig into this one, though I like your idea so much that I think I'm going to assign a ticket to an engineer to see what is possible - likely contacting our partner technical team with Microsoft to see if something can be reasonably worked out (i.e., don't require extensive powershell scripting, ect.).
Great video Wayne, though I do have a question, we use individual Chat in teams a lot more than actual Teams channel chat, when someone posts a file in Chat (individual) I'm struggling to figure out how to copy to a Teams channel (or OneDrive, Sharepoint etc). The only option seems to be 'Edit in Teams, Open in Desktop App, Open in Browser and Copy Link'. How can I copy this to a Teams directory?
Hi - inspiring video, clear and persuasive. Thank you for posting. I've looked into Sharepoint Doc libraries before and come up against user resistance. The use case you demo'ed seems to address most users' fears. I do wonder, about the underlying sharepoint library limits though. If we migrated our file server structure much "as is" to teams files, maybe 5 or so teams (based around "security groups") would I not come up against library limits (we can easily have say 100,000 files in a nested structure of folders that would all belong in one (current) mapped drive? Much of the files are historic and unlikely to be used but working out which would be a major headache.
Thanks HollyoakRoad! Your issue with your legacy file shares is super common. Here is how we manage the process for clients....use your file migration to Microsoft 365 as the time to "clean house" on your legacy file shares...but not by looking through what stays and what doesn't....let your managers and uses do that part. Connect your users to the new "mapped drives" in Microsoft 365. Set a date where the old system becomes "read only". All new files go into Microsoft 365 and if they want to work on files in the new system, they need to copy them over to the new system. Give them 30 days to copy of whatever files they need. After 30 days, you explain you will shut down the old file system and it will become an archive - and don't worry!...if you realized you forgot to copy a file over, you will get if for them. Leadership/ownership needs to understand it is costing money to maintain, backup and protect all this legacy data that needs to be archived, needs a VPN, file servers, ect. It also slows down the users overall productivity searching through all this noise. It is time to clean things up.
Thanks for this video. We (kinda) use Document Libraries and will consider moving to Teams. In the meantime, we function almost completely out of a Microsoft RDP server in Azure. We haven't been able to move completely to sharepoint because of the duplicating documents in onedrive sync on an RDP server. That said, do you know a workaround for this? Users have a terrible time working out of sharepoint without onedrive sync because they're so used to using the windows file structure. Can you help us?
Hi Wayne. These demos are great. I think I have a pretty good grasp on how to switch our small business over to Teams/Sharepoint/OneDrive from a physical file server. We are basically using our server now as a centralized file access and sharing point in our company, but we are tied down to the office. We want to move to cloud based so we can access files anywhere. There is one thing I am hung up on. We have about a terabyte of current and archived files that we want to move from our server to a Team/OneDrive to be able to access it all once we make the switch. I created a Team, synced it so it shows in my File Explorer through OneDrive, and it all looks great. When I go to start transferring all of our current and archived files into the Team or OneDrive folder that is connected to the Team, it has to initially put it on my computer and take up hard drive space and also sync before I can free up space and everyone else in the Team can access it. Syncing a terabyte of files is going to take forever. Is there a way to put the files into the OneDrive folder/ Team without it having to sync to gain access to it? Can I somehow put all the files into the Team/ folder where they can be innidiately accessed? I know I can set it to where it saves space and only downloads the file once you click on it, but that is after the files have been uploaded originally. It is the original upload I am having trouble with. I hope that makes sense. Thank you very much for the help.
Hi Chris, I think what is hard to know in your case without more information is how much your total allotment is. Meaning 1TB + the allotment you are given per user to add to the pool. That could be creating problems for you.
Ah! That would be a REALLY cool feature - never thought of that. I'm not aware of that being available or how one would configure that based on what is configurable. Very cool idea.
This is exactly what I was looking for, the ability to log my credentials in another PC and see all my channels synced, not just the ones in onedrive. Let's hope this is added soon.
Since the backend is Sharepoint Online and viewable in Sharepoint Online you should be able to use GPO or Intune to do so as there are policies for OneDrive to auto-sync on login certain Sharepoint Document Libraries.
Hi Wayne, really a great tutorial but was not able to get a link to the files as you have shown. I also want to get an entry on the left side in my windows explorer just like yours “Xerillion (Office 365, Azure, ...)” right under your “OneDrive - Xerillion (Office 365...)”. I saw that it seems to be done with one drive sync. You have seven locations to sync in your accunt Settings in one drive which I do not have (only one). How do I get additional locations from SharePoint to show up? Thanks!
Thanks Doll! You know, when I setup the sync, the "Xerillion" name just showed up. I didn't have to do anything special. If you want to add more locations, just search for "sharepoint document library sync OneDrive".
Great video. My goal is to replace file explorer altogether with Teams and SharePoint while maintaining a traditional method for access via OneDrive (such as you have shown in your video) until users can adopt to accessing via the Teams structure. Below are a few challenges I am currently facing, I was hoping you could shed some light on how you eliminated or overcame these challenges. 1) Since this method syncs local copies to all my devices how do you avoid sync issues and the potential of conflicts for organizations with a large number of users? 2) How do we avoid the 5000-item limit threshold per library? 3) How do we prevent users from moving or deleting folders/files. I have had this happen and restoring becomes a challenge since that folder or file auto syncs with all users who have access. Happy to discuss via a Team call if you would like
Thank you...sorry I didn't see this earlier. It's strange how for whatever reason, I don't see all the comments as they come on UA-cam..and some just sporadically pop up out of the blue like this, unfortuantely months later. You have good questions, and what I'll say here is that they are too much to type out in a comment, but we address them all the time. You won't find direct answers to these on the web.
Wayne, thanks for the video's, they provide a lot of great information of how a modern environment can and should be set up. I am using many of your video's to help bring our company into the 21st century. As it relates to file servers and the migration to Team/SharePoint, how do you handle the old "public folders"? For instance, we have an HR folder and an HR Public folder. I really like the idea of having an HR Team but do I really want a separate HR Public Team? I believe Microsoft released the ability to have channels with different access rights, would this be a solution? Have you run into this before and how did you go about it?
Thanks John! As far as your question about public folders, I'll respond as if I were the IT manager planning this out, knowing what I know up to this point. Interestingly, in my cloud managed services practice, this issue about Exchange public folders has come up 2 times in the past 2 years with companies that had around 100 users each. They companies were very interested in Teams and modernizing, but they had all this legacy setup that they knew was old and clunky...but it was working and people understood the workflows. I get it. I pointed out that Exchange public folders are depreciated - not even used by Microsoft anymore and they might as well get on with the change sooner rather than later. They understood that but ultimately decided they didn't have enough pain or interest to spend the money to change. So, that is what I have seen from the field. In your situation, I would absolutely do a HR group in Teams. Only the people that have access to the group will even see it in the first place, so your access controls will be in good shape - better shape actually than something protected with Windows Active Directory. I have one myself, and then protect it with a forever retention policy. As you mention, you now can have permissions for channels inside a team if needed, but boy...I'd try to avoid that or keep that to an absolute minimum as nested sub-folders with disinherited permissions can eventually create security problems of their own.
@@Xerillion Thank you for the quick reply! I am not sure if we are on the same page for the public folder. We may be, but I am coming from Domino, (yes yikes!) to O365, so I am not quite sure what an Exchange Public Folder is. What I mean by Public Folder is when you go to our "S drive" you will see HR, HR Public, Engineering, Engineering Public, etc. Essentially, limited people have access to the specific department folder, but many may have access to view files in the department's Public folder. While I would love to get rid of something like this, our end-users are used to this functionality and they may have a hard time accepting another methodology. For instance, Engineering may put a drawing in Engineering Public so that someone in the manufacturing process can then view it. Now after typing this lengthy reply, I could see how it may make sense to create department Public folders so that all those in that Team can collaborate with one another. I will just have work with them on how to properly transfer a file from one to another.
@@jheikkila54 Yes, I agree. You just need a slight change in workflow. People don't like change, but then again, it is your job on the line if there are problems, not theirs. Your boss expects you to modernize things and keep it secure, while keeping your users productive - so, as I see it, your first step is to move out of this 1990's file sharing tech...which you are already on your way :)
I am sorry, but what do you mean by "Microsoft Teams Files"? Aren't all files in Teams' channels are stored on the backend in SharePoint site's document library? What is the benefit of migrating from a SharePoint document library to SharePoint document library? Thanks.
Hi Andrey! I'm wondering if you watched the whole video? "Teams Files" is what we call the location of files that are stored directly in Teams. When you go to a channel, and you see the Files tab, you have "Teams Files". This is where files are natively stored in Teams. You are 100% right--just like I pointed out in the video--that the file storage back end of Teams channels is handled by SharePoint, and more specifically Office 365 Groups. If someone already had their files in SharePoint document libraries and was not planning on moving into Teams, or they weren't using retention policies - I would not bother moving the files into Teams. But, this video is about moving your files into Teams, and putting them directly under the Files tab in the channel. You can also put a shortcut to your SharePoint document library under the Teams Files tab, and I did try that for a while, but that just looked messy. The big reason I moved from SharePoint document libraries to Teams Files was because I can setup file retention policies at the Teams group level, as opposed to the SharePoint where I have to do it at the site level. You can see my other video about why configuring retention policies matter. At Xerillion we are HEAVY HEAVY HEAVY Microsoft Teams users, and so I decided to suck it up and move our files out of SharePoint document libraries and into Teams Files directly, configure 7 year retention policies for most Teams groups, and forever retention policies for teams like HR, Legal, ect.
@@Xerillion Thank you. Maybe this is just semantics but I can not internalize the term "Teams Files" as I know where they are actually located. And if team member would want to sync then they will have to go back to bare-bone SharePoint. And for me it leads to the bigger issue - files that are not in the "Teams Files" are not visible through Teams interface. Meaning if you are migrating someone from shared drive or OneDrive to the team collaboration space you have to jump the hoops (like adding the whole SharePoint library as a cloud storage in EVERY channels' Teams Files. Maybe you have a better approach - I would be very much interested to learn.
@@andreyk400 yeah this is bad... "Teams Files" vs SharePoint storage is just asking for confusion... I know you said it a couple times but your just going to create confusion by differentiating... This is youtube… people don't watch videos for more than 30 seconds, they see titles. Your first sentence is "Move your file shares to Microsoft Teams Files instead of SharePoint Document Libraries"... your third sentence no one reads :)
Thank you so much for your videos! They've been very helpful in understanding what to anticipate with a Windows Teams migration. Can you explain how Teams synchronizes/updates files stored in subfolders on SharePoint while working on them in Teams channels?
Thanks Scott! If you are working with files in SharePoint document libraries --inside Teams channels--then it is just a link inside the channel, so no sync is happening, but if you were editing that file through the link, it would be saved in the Sharepoint document library. If you wanted to sync that SharePoint document library, you'd have to directly sync it outside of Teams.
You make the administration side look simple but if you migrate the NTFS folder permissions in teams - would you need to go back end of a share point to make file/folder permission changes ie explicit or inherit?
Hi Xerillion. Really awesome video. ***First Question:*** I am member of a Facebook office 365 group and i was asking the question how to structure teams and also presented there your awesome video. The answer of many users was that its not good to use Teams for migration of shared folders. They said things like "use teams ONLY for collaboration on short term issues" like projects or current work of a department. The suggestion was to move all the content and files to a Sharepoint communication website in a document library for showcase or storing the final versions. Reasons for this mentioned apporach were granular rights issues they said in the facebook group, which i cant do in teams. As in a teamsite the lifecycle is controlled by the teams After watching your videos everything was so clear but now really confused. Can you clear up things and explain again if its really enough for a modern workplace to have only 1 Teamsite and now communication site. Example is a marketing team with sub areas like marketing social media, marketing seo, marketing content: After watching your video i would have created 1 Marketing with 3 channels. in the fb post they suggested to open another marketing sharepoint site for communication. Is this necessary in your eyes?!?!? ***Second question:*** We have a marketing department with sub areas like: - marketing social media - marketing content creation - marketing for product - marketing search enginge optimization Etc etc There are workers of the marketing who are only responsible for example for social media. Also there are workers also need to see both content of 2 or 3 sub departments of the marketing. (For example (search engine and content) My big question: On a long term future process basis: is it better to create multiple teams like - Team marketing social - Team marketing content Etc etc Or is it better to have 1 Marketing team with multiple private channels??? What is the better approach in your eyes and maybe also why?
@vm GmbH - thanks for sharing the video with your group! I really disagree about the point that you MUST use a traditional SharePoint site or document libraries to structure your shared folders in Microsoft 365. In fact, in our consulting practice, we have switched from building shared folders in document libraries to building shared folders in Teams (which are really just Office 365 Groups). Inside Microsoft Teams, we create a team group for the traditional types of shared folders: Sales, Operations, IT, Finance, HR, Projects, Clients, ect. Most groups simply use the default general channel and the Files section that comes with it. Access controls are much simpler in Teams - if you have access to the teams group, you have access to everything inside it. Now, if you want to make a private conversation channel in a team group, you can, but, as with legacy file server folders (or SharePoint document libraries), doing things like creating separate permissions for subfolders, breaking inheritances, starts to make things messy. I don't agree with this concept. Also, managing permissions/access controls in the traditional SharePoint interface is not a friendly experience as it is in Teams. Teams is MUCH nicer to work in for permissions. So, to answer your first question simply: yes, you can, and our company does construct shared folders inside Microsoft 365 using Teams - and the files stay there. We do not make a separate SharePoint site - how confusing would that be for the end users? It sounds so messy and would require some training for each user initially as they will likely be putting things in the wrong place, often. After we build out the shared folders in Teams, we then use OneDrive to bring the folders into Windows File Explorer for that users - to give them that familiar Windows File Explorer experience. So, from that point - if you want to use Teams to work on files...then use Teams. If you wan to work with files inside Windows File Explorer...then use Windows File Explorer - the point is that both people access the same set of files however they feel most comfortable...and really, this is a generational thing. If you are under 25, you'll prefer to use Teams from the start, and "get it". If you are over 30, especially if you are in 40+ or 50+, you'll prefer to use Windows File Explorer. I see this over and over. So, how we build it it at Xerillion - people can use either app: Teams, or Windows File Explorer. To answer your second question about your marketing department example: I would avoid creating private conversation channels inside a Team - this simply is going to get messy and hard to manage down the road AND lead to the wrong people seeing content they shouldn't which will fall back on IT - why even go down this route if you can avoid it? I'm sure Microsoft created this ability with good reason - which is fine. Professional speaking, I would create separate teams in your scenario. While it looks good to the IT pro to have a single team called "Marketing" with several conversation channels, some with separate permissions - the users don't care. The users will only get to even see the teams they have permission to access, and everything else is really just "noise" to them, and Teams will hide that noise - even if they do have permissions. Great questions :)
@@Xerillion thanks so much for clearing this up again. I think the users from this group were old fashioned sharepoint users... :) Just to bring up the secon question again. You say you would create multiple teams, means for example: - Team_MarketingSocial_Prrivate - Team_MarketingSEO_Private - Team_MarketingContent_Private instead of Team_Marketing_Private with Channel: Social Channel: Content Channel: SEO My question now is when i am thinking about business processes and collaboration (Marketing is a case were some sub departments are close to each other): Wouldnt it be easier to have therefore all in one team implied the marketing team can see all stuff of other channels. I just think about the single Email Adress, Maybe MS Flow automatism, Sharepoint wiki site (all on one place), Planner etc etc. What do you think when you suppose this circumstances? You still think user dont mind or you think it would be better in general to have 1 time for fluent processes? (or doesnt it matter)
@@h.d.6716 If I were building this out, yes, I would have a single Marketing team, and everyone that has permissions to access this team, would have access to the channels side it. I would really try to avoid making private channels inside the team. If you need special permissions for a channel - I would prefer to make a new team.
Hi Xerillion. Still another question that came to us when we did it the same way described in your excellent Video. We have many users synchronizing the files via file explorer in windows as described in the video. Sometimes it happens that they want to stop the sync and then just delete the folder from the explorer one drive tree (instead of ending sync in onedrive app). What happens is that all files in onedrive and sharepoint gets deleted. Do you have a tipp to prevent such dangerous things done by the users??? (yes i know files are in the trash but could happen that it will not be seen by an admin)
Thanks! Your situation is interesting. We haven't run into that issue with clients or a need to address that as part of our standard setup process. I'm surprised your users are even caring to do things like this. So, if I were in that situation, I'd be digging into managing access controls and permissions. I don't have a quick "here is what we do in that case" though.
@@Xerillion ok thanks. I saw in another video of you that you talk about cloud app security alerta and deletion alerts. What you think about that? So admins and users will be emailed when Data is deleted in a certain amount....
@@h.d.6716 Oh for sure! You are talking about Cloud App Security. I would use that along with permissions around who can blow away whole sets of subfolders.
@@Xerillion ok you said "I would use that along with permissions around who can blow away whole sets of subfolders." But isn´t it so that upon this structure the teams set the permissions?!?! What permissions you mean? Sharepoint site permissions? Doesn´t they get overridden by teams?
@@h.d.6716 You didn't mention Teams. I thought you were talking about SharePoint per your earlier postings. I mentioned in my latest video (this video is older) that if you need a more complex set of permissions, you probably need SharePoint document libraries. Though, I'm not saying you do. Underneath a Teams Files tab is an Office 365 Goup- and the document management part of that is a SharePoint document library where you can get even more restrictive with your permissions.
Hi Wayne, I'm in the process of doing a similar set up as yours, please explain how do you manage the folders created by the channels? How can I make them show up inside the "General" Folder?
Hi Wayne! Searching through the comments to see if someone had asked the same question. My current concern is, you can only ‘share a link’ if the source file being shared is housed in the same Team, if it’s on a outside Team, the file attachment options reduce to only ‘upload a copy’, making ‘share a link’ unavailable. How does your team manage, NOT mapping/syncing a channel to your file explorer? (Only having the General folder mapped?) How do you manage the files that ARE uploaded to a channel that unfortunately, given the restriction, couldn’t be shared via ‘share a link?’ Much appreciated!
You know, I don't think this has come up. In your scenario - if I understand it correctly - you'd want to share a file with another user who is not a member of the team. I could see that happening, through it hasn't happened for us, and it hasn't come up in conversations with clients that I'm aware of. Sorry I couldn't be more help on that one. 🤔
Xerillion Hi Wayne, thank you for taking the time to reply to all of us! Your channel is immensely helpful. To clarify my question, I see on your demo you only have the ‘team name ABC - General’ channel mapped to file explorer, and not each individual channel you create under that team ABC. Question is: do you NOT map each channel (just the General), OR, you figured a way to route the sub-channels location to live inside the General folder?
What are the default retention policies? Also what is the difference in the teams icons, circle vs square icon when creating teams via Admin Console > Teams
Hi, using sync isnt a way to go with problem when people will make some change on the go and then sync all these files. I mean if you have a few users that mean less problem but if your entire company should use team with synchronization didn’t you will have conflicts of version on multiple files ?
Sure - you could, and there is a way around that - the user can learn how to lock the file in SharePoint, which isn't hard to do. But, of course, nobody will do that because this is a rare issue. If you did find it to be an issue for a group of people, then you would train them on how to lock files in SharePoint. Easy.
You could enable external access to Teams if you wanted. I choose not to do that in my case because I like knowing that only employees of Xerillion have access to Teams - Outlook/email is for communicating with people outside the company. If we need to share a link to a file with someone outside the company, we copy that file to our individual OneDrive. Another option would be to make a SharePoint document library specifically for external file link sharing - though again, in my case, I enjoy knowing Teams is only employees of Xerillion.
Hi I am looking at getting all our files from common shares to Teams and i see very few organisations have done it so I dont many case studies online.We have expiry dates on teams to avoid too many teams being created as we have so many projects that are being carried out.what happens to those documents after project is completed? We wouldn't want to put retention policy on all teams.Also for department teams , they would like to have some documents with only read access and selected permissions and at the same time want to collaborate with externals and that means they get guest access and eventually access all the files.How do you manage such use case
Well, if you want those level of permissions controls you will need to use SharePoint document libraries instead of Teams files. I have an updated lengthy video on this in the channel. ua-cam.com/video/ZrIGdLz1-p0/v-deo.html
So, the magic to have the interface in Teams act like a file server is to use sync files. This is something I want to stay away from to prevent patient information residing on the local drive. I just wish that Teams or OneDrive offered a similar user experience to file explorer. Is that too much to ask?
It does...IF you are an old-schooler and that is what you want. To be sure though, your file server with mapped drives is not helping keeping your patient information private. You have no visibility on what happens with that data. You have no MFA or insider threat protection. Your don't have conditional access policies. You don't have all hard drives encrypted...I could go on and on. When an IT manager takes a 1990's point of view to file sharing, it is hurting their career..less opportunities...less income...my main messages in all my videos is for IT managers to update their way of thinking so the new world of enterprise cloud IT doesn't pass them by.
@@Xerillion Thanks for your reply. I guess I should have been a bit more specific. What Users like about File Explorer is the flexibility to copy/paste files, drag and drop, move files around. And so the wish is for end-user interface in OneDrive to act similar to this. I cannot argue against some of the points you bring up that have to do with how file server or mapped drives manages the security governance. I myself am slowly forcing staff to adopt MFA so we can move sensitive files from our network share to OneDrive or SharePoint or Teams.
@@salmanel-farsi3744 understood... though as I showed in the video, the users can do those things you are describing using OneDrive sync with SharePoint files our Teams files.
Hi, great video!!! I though have a question... We have noticed that whenever a user drops a file in a Team channel, this file is autouploaded into that Sharepoint library in the background. 1. This creates a lot of clutter that we don't wish to keep in our "file server" (this being Sharepoint online). 2. If said file was dragged and dropped from a parent folder, this creates a duplicate file in Sharepoint on a different location. This is risky as users will keep on updating both files independently. I'll try to Explain this. FinanceTeam --> Folder A (Channel) --> Folder B (Channel) .... Two users are talking in channel "Folder A" and one of them drags and drops a file from within the FinanceTeam folder in Sharepoint. Now, this file exists in FinanceTeam and Folder A creating duplicates and lots of confusion between end users. Is there a way to prevent this behavior?
Thanks! I understand the situation you are describing, but it could-and does-happen on fine servers too. This is a user training issue. The users should be sharing links, not files. It as simple as that.
Hi Wayne! Searching through the comments to see if someone had asked the same question. My current concern is, you can only ‘share a link’ if the source file being shared is housed in the same Team, if it’s on a outside Team, the file attachment options reduce to only ‘upload a copy’, making ‘share a link’ unavailable. How does your team manage, NOT mapping/syncing a channel to your file explorer? (Only having the General folder mapped?) How do you manage the files that ARE uploaded to a channel that unfortunately, given the restriction, couldn’t be shared via ‘share a link?’ Much appreciated!
So you don't need a SaaS backup solution to protect data in teams? Can you pull versions of files from a several months/years back or look for a file that was deleted or moved at some point in time?
No, you don't need a SaaS backup solution, you just need to get an enterprise level subscription and properly configure your retention policies. Yes, you can pull versions and deletions-this is why this is so much more powerful than old fashioned backups. I have another video here exactly about that.
@@Xerillion Is there some way, from Teams, to add files directly to that subfolder? Or will files in that channel only ever be added to the corresponding channel (parent) folder?
You blew through security like it was nothing. we have a folder on our shared drive called engineering. In that folder everyone has read/write. Below that is a folder where we break inheritance, set everyone to read/only, and have a select group that came write. How would that translate in teams?
Hi Michael, in the video I explain the exact scenario you describe and explain that you cannot make sub channels with different permissions than the team itself. If your need a different set of permissions you'd create a different team. I'm not a fan of setting permissions as your are describing on a file server in any event. When you do things like set certain permissions at the top level, then make other sets of permissions at the sub folder level and block inheritance, ect, you increase the complexity and increase the security risk. Teams security is much simpler and straight forward than a traditional file server, which is what I hoped to convey in the video.
@@Xerillion With this scenario , when you create another Team because you need to set different permissions and dont break the inheritance, you also need to create a different document library for that Team and put the files or folders the other users need access?
@@carloscastillo9321 No. When you create another Team, you'll automatically get a document library for the General channel, and any other channels you create.
@@carloscastillo9321 I'd either directly move the files, our create a link inside the Teams channel file tab to the original SharePoint document library.
@@Xerillion Thanks for the fast response! How do you tell the OneDrive app to automatically sync these Sharepoint sites? I haven't been able to figure that out...
So, the files are up in Sharepoint with an access portal thru Teams and a sync'd set of duplicate files on your local machine or is it just a "pointer" on the local machine to SharePoint? Seems if the files are also local that would be a security risk on several fronts.
Hi Dean, it is a sync using OneDrive. and the sync can show the files as "hydrated" or "dehydrated" with Files on Demand technology. This allows the user not be dependent on a live VPN connection to their file server, or force them to copy files off the server to their local computer creating duplicates or security risk. From there you configure backend security on what/how you sync and various other topics I cover in my latest security video. On legacy file server technology, users have open access to copy/sync whatever they want and nobody knows anything about what is happening with the files. With Microsoft 365 security modernization, you provide the users with more functionality while holding much greater control over where the data goes. Like I said, this is covered in my latest video.
One Drive is garbage. I would never ever recommend One Drive for users to sync files from their desktop to SharePoint libraries or Teams. I would suggest to disable the sync files to offline clients until Microsoft fixes their One Drive sync limitations. Its a nightmare once you have over 100k files syncing across different libraries. Use SharePoint Online or Teams to access your files!
OneDrive works really well for both myself and my clients, both as a sync and store service for your personal business files, and as the technology to create a shared drive look and feel for shared folders. I don't want to get into a back and forth on this. My experience is 99% of IT Pro's out there Google search bits and pieces of things, never bother to do any formal/thoughtful training, or get a certification around a technology and then complain when when they keep bumping their head against something. Hopefully that isn't you. In our cloud consulting practice we have learned to make OneDrive work really well with a client's shared folders so people can access files using Windows File Explorer - which is how they feel most comfortable, and then they can start training on Teams and learn how to work with those files there.
@@Xerillion there's absolutely a limitation to what OneDrive can handle and Microsoft has been very vague on it. The Microsoft community has tons of organizations and users that have experienced the syncing of One Drive with SharePoint to just totally fail if it reaches either 100k to 300k files across all synced libraries. This is a fact, the engineers know it and have expressed this from the tickets we've opened with them. I agree with your statement of IT pros not doing their due diligence of planning and training, however Microsoft really needs to fine tune One Drive. As for now, syncing has been disabled for our organization.
@@01s0uljah0 Yep, I agree there is a limitation in terms of 300k files, ect., though when we do migrations for clients, we address this issue in how we build out the shared folders in Teams (or in SharePoint directly). A big question would be - so you want people syncing hundreds of thousands of company files to an individual computer? They do not want that, when asked that question directly, and then from there we build out the folders properly so that people get what they need, and can sync sets of files - or folders (or just the names when you use Files on Demand), and that solves the problem - and avoids a messy security issues as well. My input to IT Managers is do not take a 1990's Windows Server file sharing approach to your design and implementation of shared files in Microsoft 365; it requires a different mindset.
@@01s0uljah0 We also run into these sync issues constantly, even with clients that do not exceed the maximum number of files. Our helpdesk gets sync issues every week and sometimes they take hours to troubleshoot. You can, however, simulate a SMB mapped drive, which doesn't sync and has some similar functionality (just not offline). It's still not a great solution.
![[Demo Heavy] Replace your file server with SharePoint Online and OneDrive 2018](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/9ZA24q3tqBo/mqdefault.jpg)
![[Demo Heavy] Replace your file server with SharePoint Online and OneDrive 2018](/img/tr.png)
Hi Wayne - Love this overview and think this is a major selling point for users that like network drives. My only question is how can you automatically create an organisational wide OneDrive folder structure like you have shown in the video? I've read about onedrive automount for team sites but really looking for a DFS like folder redirection solution. Also assuming files on Demand can be set via GP?
Thanks Travis! OneDrive isn't where we create a folder structure - in fact, we don't create shared folders in the traditional sense. We create "teams groupings" inside Microsoft Teams. Inside there you have channels, in the channels you have a tab called "Files", i.e. "Teams Files". This is actually a SharePoint document library - but you don't need to worry about that part. From there you can tell OneDrive to "connect" (or, i.e. sync) to whatever Team File you want to show up like a mapped drive in Windows File Explorer- and remember to select the Files on Demand checkbox. Regarding GP, I would try to move away from that as soon as feasible and move to configuration profiles using Intune. Domain controllers with traditional Windows AD isn't going anyway any time soon - but it is not the future of IT for people like us. The best thing IT pro's can do it get very nimble with Azure AD Premium Plan 2, Intune, and Azure Information Protection when it comes to security and management.
This is the best video on this subject in the entire UA-cam. Awesome!
Great Advice. I have been wrestling with decisions around this for the past 6 months. I was really happy to find this and intend to follow the advice . Great help guys thank you
Hello Wayne - Thanks so much for taking the time to make this and other videos. How are open file locks handled when users edit files through the mapped drive interface? If one user has a file open for editing in a local app, opened through the traditional file explorer interface, would a second user attempting to open the file be set to read-only? Would it be consistent in both the mapped drive in file explorer interface and the Teams app Files tab interface? Is collaborative editing available when using Team Files as your file server? Thank you!
Thanks Tony! So, good question, and this question comes up from time to time. In order to lock a file for editing, in Teams, the user would have to choose to open the document library through the SharePoint interface and then "check out" the file. Cumbersome? You bet. Do I ever do it at Xerillion? No. Has it ever been an issue? No. The modern way to collaborate in Office documents is that both users can be in the same document at the same time making edits - and both can see they are in there at the same time. So, there is only 1 version of the document and both users are making changes at the same time, and both users have access to the changes from each other's work. This is yet another tech "mindshift" for IT managers who are used to legacy file share systems that lock up files for a single user on a file server. I MUCH prefer multi-user editing, AND, even better, is that SharePoint is keeping track of the changes, so if another user clobbers a file, you can just revert back to a previous version easily. Thanks for the great question!
Thank you! I think that might actually work for us.
Hi Wayne! Thank you again for these helpful videos. I'm re-posting here as I have not been able to figure this out.
I see on your demo you only mapped to file explorer only the '(Team Name) - General’, and not each individual channel that may exist under that (Team Name), i.e.: Marketing - General is mapped, but not channel 'Project A', 'Campaigns', 'Social Media', etc.
Question is: do you NOT map each channel (just the General), OR, you figured a way to route the sub-channels location to live inside the General folder? When I SYNC each channel, they appear on file explorer OUTSIDE of the General folder, making my left panel on file explorer non-collapsed like on MS Teams, and can not simply drag and drop folder (ie: project a), into (Team Name - General) folder.
How are you handling that?
Hi Pedro! I map at the channel level. So, in my demo, I just happen to be mapping the default general channel - but, you can map any channel you wish. In other words, the other channels beside "General", are not "subfolders" - they are "peer" channels in the hierarchy.
Hi Wayne, awesome video! Are you able to point us in the right direction on how to tell OneDrive to "connect" (or, i.e. sync) to the Team File we want to show up like a mapped drive in Windows File Explorer. I know we can manually click sync on the document library, but I'm having difficulties finding the best path to automate this for our users using Intune configuration profiles.
Hey THGMatt! Thanks! I haven't looked into automating the sync through Intune yet, though as you have brought it up, it seems like an obviously good idea that I should have thought about already :) Though in thinking through the current list of controls available through Configuration Profiles and Client Apps, I don't recall ever seeing a section to click your way through this - yet. I'm very deep into developing the next video: Maintaining Microsoft 365, and right after that I have Microsoft Phones, and Microsoft Azure, so I can't dig into this one, though I like your idea so much that I think I'm going to assign a ticket to an engineer to see what is possible - likely contacting our partner technical team with Microsoft to see if something can be reasonably worked out (i.e., don't require extensive powershell scripting, ect.).
Great video Wayne, though I do have a question, we use individual Chat in teams a lot more than actual Teams channel chat, when someone posts a file in Chat (individual) I'm struggling to figure out how to copy to a Teams channel (or OneDrive, Sharepoint etc). The only option seems to be 'Edit in Teams, Open in Desktop App, Open in Browser and Copy Link'. How can I copy this to a Teams directory?
Hi - inspiring video, clear and persuasive. Thank you for posting.
I've looked into Sharepoint Doc libraries before and come up against user resistance. The use case you demo'ed seems to address most users' fears. I do wonder, about the underlying sharepoint library limits though. If we migrated our file server structure much "as is" to teams files, maybe 5 or so teams (based around "security groups") would I not come up against library limits (we can easily have say 100,000 files in a nested structure of folders that would all belong in one (current) mapped drive? Much of the files are historic and unlikely to be used but working out which would be a major headache.
Thanks HollyoakRoad! Your issue with your legacy file shares is super common. Here is how we manage the process for clients....use your file migration to Microsoft 365 as the time to "clean house" on your legacy file shares...but not by looking through what stays and what doesn't....let your managers and uses do that part. Connect your users to the new "mapped drives" in Microsoft 365. Set a date where the old system becomes "read only". All new files go into Microsoft 365 and if they want to work on files in the new system, they need to copy them over to the new system. Give them 30 days to copy of whatever files they need. After 30 days, you explain you will shut down the old file system and it will become an archive - and don't worry!...if you realized you forgot to copy a file over, you will get if for them. Leadership/ownership needs to understand it is costing money to maintain, backup and protect all this legacy data that needs to be archived, needs a VPN, file servers, ect. It also slows down the users overall productivity searching through all this noise. It is time to clean things up.
Terrific video Wayne thanks for sharing.
Thanks for this video. We (kinda) use Document Libraries and will consider moving to Teams. In the meantime, we function almost completely out of a Microsoft RDP server in Azure. We haven't been able to move completely to sharepoint because of the duplicating documents in onedrive sync on an RDP server. That said, do you know a workaround for this? Users have a terrible time working out of sharepoint without onedrive sync because they're so used to using the windows file structure. Can you help us?
Hi Wayne.
These demos are great. I think I have a pretty good grasp on how to switch our small business over to Teams/Sharepoint/OneDrive from a physical file server. We are basically using our server now as a centralized file access and sharing point in our company, but we are tied down to the office. We want to move to cloud based so we can access files anywhere. There is one thing I am hung up on. We have about a terabyte of current and archived files that we want to move from our server to a Team/OneDrive to be able to access it all once we make the switch. I created a Team, synced it so it shows in my File Explorer through OneDrive, and it all looks great. When I go to start transferring all of our current and archived files into the Team or OneDrive folder that is connected to the Team, it has to initially put it on my computer and take up hard drive space and also sync before I can free up space and everyone else in the Team can access it. Syncing a terabyte of files is going to take forever. Is there a way to put the files into the OneDrive folder/ Team without it having to sync to gain access to it? Can I somehow put all the files into the Team/ folder where they can be innidiately accessed? I know I can set it to where it saves space and only downloads the file once you click on it, but that is after the files have been uploaded originally. It is the original upload I am having trouble with. I hope that makes sense. Thank you very much for the help.
Hi Chris, I think what is hard to know in your case without more information is how much your total allotment is. Meaning 1TB + the allotment you are given per user to add to the pool. That could be creating problems for you.
Great tutorial. Is there a way to save the onedrive sync settings so the next device you log into can see the same "Mapped Teams Drive"?
Ah! That would be a REALLY cool feature - never thought of that. I'm not aware of that being available or how one would configure that based on what is configurable. Very cool idea.
This is exactly what I was looking for, the ability to log my credentials in another PC and see all my channels synced, not just the ones in onedrive. Let's hope this is added soon.
Since the backend is Sharepoint Online and viewable in Sharepoint Online you should be able to use GPO or Intune to do so as there are policies for OneDrive to auto-sync on login certain Sharepoint Document Libraries.
Hi Wayne,
really a great tutorial but was not able to get a link to the files as you have shown. I also want to get an entry on the left side in my windows explorer just like yours “Xerillion (Office 365, Azure, ...)” right under your “OneDrive - Xerillion (Office 365...)”.
I saw that it seems to be done with one drive sync. You have seven locations to sync in your accunt Settings in one drive which I do not have (only one).
How do I get additional locations from SharePoint to show up? Thanks!
Thanks Doll! You know, when I setup the sync, the "Xerillion" name just showed up. I didn't have to do anything special. If you want to add more locations, just search for "sharepoint document library sync OneDrive".
Great video.
My goal is to replace file explorer altogether with Teams and SharePoint while maintaining a traditional method for access via OneDrive (such as you have shown in your video) until users can adopt to accessing via the Teams structure. Below are a few challenges I am currently facing, I was hoping you could shed some light on how you eliminated or overcame these challenges.
1) Since this method syncs local copies to all my devices how do you avoid sync issues and the potential of conflicts for organizations with a large number of users?
2) How do we avoid the 5000-item limit threshold per library?
3) How do we prevent users from moving or deleting folders/files. I have had this happen and restoring becomes a challenge since that folder or file auto syncs with all users who have access.
Happy to discuss via a Team call if you would like
Thank you...sorry I didn't see this earlier. It's strange how for whatever reason, I don't see all the comments as they come on UA-cam..and some just sporadically pop up out of the blue like this, unfortuantely months later. You have good questions, and what I'll say here is that they are too much to type out in a comment, but we address them all the time. You won't find direct answers to these on the web.
Wayne, thanks for the video's, they provide a lot of great information of how a modern environment can and should be set up. I am using many of your video's to help bring our company into the 21st century. As it relates to file servers and the migration to Team/SharePoint, how do you handle the old "public folders"? For instance, we have an HR folder and an HR Public folder. I really like the idea of having an HR Team but do I really want a separate HR Public Team? I believe Microsoft released the ability to have channels with different access rights, would this be a solution? Have you run into this before and how did you go about it?
Thanks John! As far as your question about public folders, I'll respond as if I were the IT manager planning this out, knowing what I know up to this point. Interestingly, in my cloud managed services practice, this issue about Exchange public folders has come up 2 times in the past 2 years with companies that had around 100 users each. They companies were very interested in Teams and modernizing, but they had all this legacy setup that they knew was old and clunky...but it was working and people understood the workflows. I get it. I pointed out that Exchange public folders are depreciated - not even used by Microsoft anymore and they might as well get on with the change sooner rather than later. They understood that but ultimately decided they didn't have enough pain or interest to spend the money to change. So, that is what I have seen from the field. In your situation, I would absolutely do a HR group in Teams. Only the people that have access to the group will even see it in the first place, so your access controls will be in good shape - better shape actually than something protected with Windows Active Directory. I have one myself, and then protect it with a forever retention policy. As you mention, you now can have permissions for channels inside a team if needed, but boy...I'd try to avoid that or keep that to an absolute minimum as nested sub-folders with disinherited permissions can eventually create security problems of their own.
@@Xerillion Thank you for the quick reply! I am not sure if we are on the same page for the public folder. We may be, but I am coming from Domino, (yes yikes!) to O365, so I am not quite sure what an Exchange Public Folder is. What I mean by Public Folder is when you go to our "S drive" you will see HR, HR Public, Engineering, Engineering Public, etc. Essentially, limited people have access to the specific department folder, but many may have access to view files in the department's Public folder. While I would love to get rid of something like this, our end-users are used to this functionality and they may have a hard time accepting another methodology. For instance, Engineering may put a drawing in Engineering Public so that someone in the manufacturing process can then view it. Now after typing this lengthy reply, I could see how it may make sense to create department Public folders so that all those in that Team can collaborate with one another. I will just have work with them on how to properly transfer a file from one to another.
@@jheikkila54 Yes, I agree. You just need a slight change in workflow. People don't like change, but then again, it is your job on the line if there are problems, not theirs. Your boss expects you to modernize things and keep it secure, while keeping your users productive - so, as I see it, your first step is to move out of this 1990's file sharing tech...which you are already on your way :)
I am sorry, but what do you mean by "Microsoft Teams Files"? Aren't all files in Teams' channels are stored on the backend in SharePoint site's document library? What is the benefit of migrating from a SharePoint document library to SharePoint document library? Thanks.
Hi Andrey! I'm wondering if you watched the whole video? "Teams Files" is what we call the location of files that are stored directly in Teams. When you go to a channel, and you see the Files tab, you have "Teams Files". This is where files are natively stored in Teams. You are 100% right--just like I pointed out in the video--that the file storage back end of Teams channels is handled by SharePoint, and more specifically Office 365 Groups. If someone already had their files in SharePoint document libraries and was not planning on moving into Teams, or they weren't using retention policies - I would not bother moving the files into Teams. But, this video is about moving your files into Teams, and putting them directly under the Files tab in the channel. You can also put a shortcut to your SharePoint document library under the Teams Files tab, and I did try that for a while, but that just looked messy. The big reason I moved from SharePoint document libraries to Teams Files was because I can setup file retention policies at the Teams group level, as opposed to the SharePoint where I have to do it at the site level. You can see my other video about why configuring retention policies matter. At Xerillion we are HEAVY HEAVY HEAVY Microsoft Teams users, and so I decided to suck it up and move our files out of SharePoint document libraries and into Teams Files directly, configure 7 year retention policies for most Teams groups, and forever retention policies for teams like HR, Legal, ect.
@@Xerillion Thank you. Maybe this is just semantics but I can not internalize the term "Teams Files" as I know where they are actually located. And if team member would want to sync then they will have to go back to bare-bone SharePoint. And for me it leads to the bigger issue - files that are not in the "Teams Files" are not visible through Teams interface. Meaning if you are migrating someone from shared drive or OneDrive to the team collaboration space you have to jump the hoops (like adding the whole SharePoint library as a cloud storage in EVERY channels' Teams Files. Maybe you have a better approach - I would be very much interested to learn.
@@andreyk400 yeah this is bad... "Teams Files" vs SharePoint storage is just asking for confusion... I know you said it a couple times but your just going to create confusion by differentiating... This is youtube… people don't watch videos for more than 30 seconds, they see titles. Your first sentence is "Move your file shares to Microsoft Teams Files instead of SharePoint Document Libraries"... your third sentence no one reads :)
Thank you so much for your videos! They've been very helpful in understanding what to anticipate with a Windows Teams migration. Can you explain how Teams synchronizes/updates files stored in subfolders on SharePoint while working on them in Teams channels?
Thanks Scott! If you are working with files in SharePoint document libraries --inside Teams channels--then it is just a link inside the channel, so no sync is happening, but if you were editing that file through the link, it would be saved in the Sharepoint document library. If you wanted to sync that SharePoint document library, you'd have to directly sync it outside of Teams.
Awesome video with real life benefits discussed. Thanks for the video!
You make the administration side look simple but if you migrate the NTFS folder permissions in teams - would you need to go back end of a share point to make file/folder permission changes ie explicit or inherit?
You don't migrate the NTFS permissions. You make make new permissions. You don't bring over the legacy settings of a file server.
@@Xerillion Many thanks🙂
Hi Xerillion.
Really awesome video.
***First Question:***
I am member of a Facebook office 365 group and i was asking the question how to structure teams and also presented there your awesome video.
The answer of many users was that its not good to use Teams for migration of shared folders.
They said things like "use teams ONLY for collaboration on short term issues" like projects or current work of a department. The suggestion was to move all the content and files to a Sharepoint communication website in a document library for showcase or storing the final versions.
Reasons for this mentioned apporach were granular rights issues they said in the facebook group, which i cant do in teams. As in a teamsite the lifecycle is controlled by the teams
After watching your videos everything was so clear but now really confused.
Can you clear up things and explain again if its really enough for a modern workplace to have only 1 Teamsite and now communication site.
Example is a marketing team with sub areas like marketing social media, marketing seo, marketing content:
After watching your video i would have created
1 Marketing with 3 channels.
in the fb post they suggested to open another marketing sharepoint site for communication.
Is this necessary in your eyes?!?!?
***Second question:***
We have a marketing department with sub areas like:
- marketing social media
- marketing content creation
- marketing for product
- marketing search enginge optimization
Etc etc
There are workers of the marketing who are only responsible for example for social media.
Also there are workers also need to see both content of 2 or 3 sub
departments of the marketing. (For example (search engine and content)
My big question:
On a long term future process basis: is it better to create multiple teams like
- Team marketing social
- Team marketing content
Etc etc
Or is it better to have 1 Marketing team with multiple private channels???
What is the better approach in your eyes and maybe also why?
@vm GmbH - thanks for sharing the video with your group! I really disagree about the point that you MUST use a traditional SharePoint site or document libraries to structure your shared folders in Microsoft 365. In fact, in our consulting practice, we have switched from building shared folders in document libraries to building shared folders in Teams (which are really just Office 365 Groups). Inside Microsoft Teams, we create a team group for the traditional types of shared folders: Sales, Operations, IT, Finance, HR, Projects, Clients, ect. Most groups simply use the default general channel and the Files section that comes with it. Access controls are much simpler in Teams - if you have access to the teams group, you have access to everything inside it. Now, if you want to make a private conversation channel in a team group, you can, but, as with legacy file server folders (or SharePoint document libraries), doing things like creating separate permissions for subfolders, breaking inheritances, starts to make things messy. I don't agree with this concept. Also, managing permissions/access controls in the traditional SharePoint interface is not a friendly experience as it is in Teams. Teams is MUCH nicer to work in for permissions. So, to answer your first question simply: yes, you can, and our company does construct shared folders inside Microsoft 365 using Teams - and the files stay there. We do not make a separate SharePoint site - how confusing would that be for the end users? It sounds so messy and would require some training for each user initially as they will likely be putting things in the wrong place, often. After we build out the shared folders in Teams, we then use OneDrive to bring the folders into Windows File Explorer for that users - to give them that familiar Windows File Explorer experience. So, from that point - if you want to use Teams to work on files...then use Teams. If you wan to work with files inside Windows File Explorer...then use Windows File Explorer - the point is that both people access the same set of files however they feel most comfortable...and really, this is a generational thing. If you are under 25, you'll prefer to use Teams from the start, and "get it". If you are over 30, especially if you are in 40+ or 50+, you'll prefer to use Windows File Explorer. I see this over and over. So, how we build it it at Xerillion - people can use either app: Teams, or Windows File Explorer. To answer your second question about your marketing department example: I would avoid creating private conversation channels inside a Team - this simply is going to get messy and hard to manage down the road AND lead to the wrong people seeing content they shouldn't which will fall back on IT - why even go down this route if you can avoid it? I'm sure Microsoft created this ability with good reason - which is fine. Professional speaking, I would create separate teams in your scenario. While it looks good to the IT pro to have a single team called "Marketing" with several conversation channels, some with separate permissions - the users don't care. The users will only get to even see the teams they have permission to access, and everything else is really just "noise" to them, and Teams will hide that noise - even if they do have permissions. Great questions :)
@@Xerillion thanks so much for clearing this up again. I think the users from this group were old fashioned sharepoint users... :)
Just to bring up the secon question again. You say you would create multiple teams, means for example:
- Team_MarketingSocial_Prrivate
- Team_MarketingSEO_Private
- Team_MarketingContent_Private
instead of
Team_Marketing_Private with
Channel: Social
Channel: Content
Channel: SEO
My question now is when i am thinking about business processes and collaboration (Marketing is a case were some sub departments are close to each other): Wouldnt it be easier to have therefore all in one team implied the marketing team can see all stuff of other channels. I just think about the single Email Adress, Maybe MS Flow automatism, Sharepoint wiki site (all on one place), Planner etc etc.
What do you think when you suppose this circumstances? You still think user dont mind or you think it would be better in general to have 1 time for fluent processes? (or doesnt it matter)
@@h.d.6716 If I were building this out, yes, I would have a single Marketing team, and everyone that has permissions to access this team, would have access to the channels side it. I would really try to avoid making private channels inside the team. If you need special permissions for a channel - I would prefer to make a new team.
Hi Xerillion.
Still another question that came to us when we did it the same way described in your excellent Video.
We have many users synchronizing the files via file explorer in windows as described in the video. Sometimes it happens that they want to stop the sync and then just delete the folder from the explorer one drive tree (instead of ending sync in onedrive app). What happens is that all files in onedrive and sharepoint gets deleted.
Do you have a tipp to prevent such dangerous things done by the users??? (yes i know files are in the trash but could happen that it will not be seen by an admin)
Thanks! Your situation is interesting. We haven't run into that issue with clients or a need to address that as part of our standard setup process. I'm surprised your users are even caring to do things like this. So, if I were in that situation, I'd be digging into managing access controls and permissions. I don't have a quick "here is what we do in that case" though.
@@Xerillion ok thanks. I saw in another video of you that you talk about cloud app security alerta and deletion alerts. What you think about that? So admins and users will be emailed when Data is deleted in a certain amount....
@@h.d.6716 Oh for sure! You are talking about Cloud App Security. I would use that along with permissions around who can blow away whole sets of subfolders.
@@Xerillion ok you said "I would use that along with permissions around who can blow away whole sets of subfolders."
But isn´t it so that upon this structure the teams set the permissions?!?! What permissions you mean?
Sharepoint site permissions? Doesn´t they get overridden by teams?
@@h.d.6716 You didn't mention Teams. I thought you were talking about SharePoint per your earlier postings. I mentioned in my latest video (this video is older) that if you need a more complex set of permissions, you probably need SharePoint document libraries. Though, I'm not saying you do. Underneath a Teams Files tab is an Office 365 Goup- and the document management part of that is a SharePoint document library where you can get even more restrictive with your permissions.
Hi Wayne, I'm in the process of doing a similar set up as yours, please explain how do you manage the folders created by the channels? How can I make them show up inside the "General" Folder?
This is my newer video on the subject: ua-cam.com/video/b5-uWmCWfIw/v-deo.html
Hi Wayne! Searching through the comments to see if someone had asked the same question. My current concern is, you can only ‘share a link’ if the source file being shared is housed in the same Team, if it’s on a outside Team, the file attachment options reduce to only ‘upload a copy’, making ‘share a link’ unavailable.
How does your team manage, NOT mapping/syncing a channel to your file explorer? (Only having the General folder mapped?) How do you manage the files that ARE uploaded to a channel that unfortunately, given the restriction, couldn’t be shared via ‘share a link?’
Much appreciated!
You know, I don't think this has come up. In your scenario - if I understand it correctly - you'd want to share a file with another user who is not a member of the team. I could see that happening, through it hasn't happened for us, and it hasn't come up in conversations with clients that I'm aware of. Sorry I couldn't be more help on that one. 🤔
Xerillion Hi Wayne, thank you for taking the time to reply to all of us! Your channel is immensely helpful. To clarify my question, I see on your demo you only have the ‘team name ABC - General’ channel mapped to file explorer, and not each individual channel you create under that team ABC.
Question is: do you NOT map each channel (just the General), OR, you figured a way to route the sub-channels location to live inside the General folder?
What are the default retention policies? Also what is the difference in the teams icons, circle vs square icon when creating teams via Admin Console > Teams
I cover retention policies in a another video called "Backing up Office 365 for Free". I don't understand your other question.
Hi Wayne- How to enable IRM on Teams files?
Hi, using sync isnt a way to go with problem when people will make some change on the go and then sync all these files. I mean if you have a few users that mean less problem but if your entire company should use team with synchronization didn’t you will have conflicts of version on multiple files ?
Sure - you could, and there is a way around that - the user can learn how to lock the file in SharePoint, which isn't hard to do. But, of course, nobody will do that because this is a rare issue. If you did find it to be an issue for a group of people, then you would train them on how to lock files in SharePoint. Easy.
great video! how can you share a link to these files outside your organization using Teams?
You could enable external access to Teams if you wanted. I choose not to do that in my case because I like knowing that only employees of Xerillion have access to Teams - Outlook/email is for communicating with people outside the company. If we need to share a link to a file with someone outside the company, we copy that file to our individual OneDrive. Another option would be to make a SharePoint document library specifically for external file link sharing - though again, in my case, I enjoy knowing Teams is only employees of Xerillion.
Hi I am looking at getting all our files from common shares to Teams and i see very few organisations have done it so I dont many case studies online.We have expiry dates on teams to avoid too many teams being created as we have so many projects that are being carried out.what happens to those documents after project is completed? We wouldn't want to put retention policy on all teams.Also for department teams , they would like to have some documents with only read access and selected permissions and at the same time want to collaborate with externals and that means they get guest access and eventually access all the files.How do you manage such use case
Well, if you want those level of permissions controls you will need to use SharePoint document libraries instead of Teams files. I have an updated lengthy video on this in the channel. ua-cam.com/video/ZrIGdLz1-p0/v-deo.html
So, the magic to have the interface in Teams act like a file server is to use sync files. This is something I want to stay away from to prevent patient information residing on the local drive. I just wish that Teams or OneDrive offered a similar user experience to file explorer. Is that too much to ask?
It does...IF you are an old-schooler and that is what you want. To be sure though, your file server with mapped drives is not helping keeping your patient information private. You have no visibility on what happens with that data. You have no MFA or insider threat protection. Your don't have conditional access policies. You don't have all hard drives encrypted...I could go on and on. When an IT manager takes a 1990's point of view to file sharing, it is hurting their career..less opportunities...less income...my main messages in all my videos is for IT managers to update their way of thinking so the new world of enterprise cloud IT doesn't pass them by.
@@Xerillion Thanks for your reply. I guess I should have been a bit more specific. What Users like about File Explorer is the flexibility to copy/paste files, drag and drop, move files around. And so the wish is for end-user interface in OneDrive to act similar to this. I cannot argue against some of the points you bring up that have to do with how file server or mapped drives manages the security governance. I myself am slowly forcing staff to adopt MFA so we can move sensitive files from our network share to OneDrive or SharePoint or Teams.
@@salmanel-farsi3744 understood... though as I showed in the video, the users can do those things you are describing using OneDrive sync with SharePoint files our Teams files.
Can use them as mapped drives though
What do you mean?
Hi, great video!!! I though have a question...
We have noticed that whenever a user drops a file in a Team channel, this file is autouploaded into that Sharepoint library in the background.
1. This creates a lot of clutter that we don't wish to keep in our "file server" (this being Sharepoint online).
2. If said file was dragged and dropped from a parent folder, this creates a duplicate file in Sharepoint on a different location. This is risky as users will keep on updating both files independently. I'll try to Explain this.
FinanceTeam
--> Folder A (Channel)
--> Folder B (Channel)
....
Two users are talking in channel "Folder A" and one of them drags and drops a file from within the FinanceTeam folder in Sharepoint. Now, this file exists in FinanceTeam and Folder A creating duplicates and lots of confusion between end users. Is there a way to prevent this behavior?
Thanks! I understand the situation you are describing, but it could-and does-happen on fine servers too. This is a user training issue. The users should be sharing links, not files. It as simple as that.
Hi Wayne! Searching through the comments to see if someone had asked the same question. My current concern is, you can only ‘share a link’ if the source file being shared is housed in the same Team, if it’s on a outside Team, the file attachment options reduce to only ‘upload a copy’, making ‘share a link’ unavailable.
How does your team manage, NOT mapping/syncing a channel to your file explorer? (Only having the General folder mapped?) How do you manage the files that ARE uploaded to a channel that unfortunately, given the restriction, couldn’t be shared via ‘share a link?’
Much appreciated!
what does that mean the tiny Icon on Document Libraries and files/folders?
Hmmm.not sure what you are referring to.
@@Xerillion it looks like a star inside a shape
So you don't need a SaaS backup solution to protect data in teams? Can you pull versions of files from a several months/years back or look for a file that was deleted or moved at some point in time?
No, you don't need a SaaS backup solution, you just need to get an enterprise level subscription and properly configure your retention policies. Yes, you can pull versions and deletions-this is why this is so much more powerful than old fashioned backups. I have another video here exactly about that.
@@Xerillion What enterprise license would you need? Everyone we have has a O365 Business Premium license.
@@DylanBogusz You need to upgrade to Office 365 E3 from where you are at. Better yet, get Microsoft 365 E3.
What happens if Teams fail to open? can you access the files through folders explorer?
Yes.
@@Xerillion Many thanks for the quick reply - will go the down team's route.
Can the retention policy be set at the main channel only? or can be set at sub channels too?
@@jonskitch8082 I don't think I understand your question.
Once you've got this set up, if a user creates a new folder within File Explorer, will it show up as a new Channel in Teams?
No, it shows up as a subfolder in that channel's files section.
@@Xerillion Is there some way, from Teams, to add files directly to that subfolder? Or will files in that channel only ever be added to the corresponding channel (parent) folder?
How do you enable IRM on teams document and open it in teams and not desktop apps?
I'm not aware that you can do that at this time.
You blew through security like it was nothing. we have a folder on our shared drive called engineering. In that folder everyone has read/write. Below that is a folder where we break inheritance, set everyone to read/only, and have a select group that came write. How would that translate in teams?
Hi Michael, in the video I explain the exact scenario you describe and explain that you cannot make sub channels with different permissions than the team itself. If your need a different set of permissions you'd create a different team. I'm not a fan of setting permissions as your are describing on a file server in any event. When you do things like set certain permissions at the top level, then make other sets of permissions at the sub folder level and block inheritance, ect, you increase the complexity and increase the security risk. Teams security is much simpler and straight forward than a traditional file server, which is what I hoped to convey in the video.
@@Xerillion With this scenario , when you create another Team because you need to set different permissions and dont break the inheritance, you also need to create a different document library for that Team and put the files or folders the other users need access?
@@carloscastillo9321 No. When you create another Team, you'll automatically get a document library for the General channel, and any other channels you create.
@@Xerillion I got it, how do you recommend moving the Document Library to the Teams files?
@@carloscastillo9321 I'd either directly move the files, our create a link inside the Teams channel file tab to the original SharePoint document library.
When syncing through OneDrive, are your Teams Files syncing automatically, or do you need to go in and manually sync those sites?
Automatic
@@Xerillion Thanks for the fast response! How do you tell the OneDrive app to automatically sync these Sharepoint sites? I haven't been able to figure that out...
@@FishFPS Well, you don't have to tell it to sync automatically, it just does it.
So, the files are up in Sharepoint with an access portal thru Teams and a sync'd set of duplicate files on your local machine or is it just a "pointer" on the local machine to SharePoint? Seems if the files are also local that would be a security risk on several fronts.
Hi Dean, it is a sync using OneDrive. and the sync can show the files as "hydrated" or "dehydrated" with Files on Demand technology. This allows the user not be dependent on a live VPN connection to their file server, or force them to copy files off the server to their local computer creating duplicates or security risk. From there you configure backend security on what/how you sync and various other topics I cover in my latest security video. On legacy file server technology, users have open access to copy/sync whatever they want and nobody knows anything about what is happening with the files. With Microsoft 365 security modernization, you provide the users with more functionality while holding much greater control over where the data goes. Like I said, this is covered in my latest video.
One Drive is garbage. I would never ever recommend One Drive for users to sync files from their desktop to SharePoint libraries or Teams. I would suggest to disable the sync files to offline clients until Microsoft fixes their One Drive sync limitations. Its a nightmare once you have over 100k files syncing across different libraries.
Use SharePoint Online or Teams to access your files!
OneDrive works really well for both myself and my clients, both as a sync and store service for your personal business files, and as the technology to create a shared drive look and feel for shared folders. I don't want to get into a back and forth on this. My experience is 99% of IT Pro's out there Google search bits and pieces of things, never bother to do any formal/thoughtful training, or get a certification around a technology and then complain when when they keep bumping their head against something. Hopefully that isn't you. In our cloud consulting practice we have learned to make OneDrive work really well with a client's shared folders so people can access files using Windows File Explorer - which is how they feel most comfortable, and then they can start training on Teams and learn how to work with those files there.
@@Xerillion there's absolutely a limitation to what OneDrive can handle and Microsoft has been very vague on it. The Microsoft community has tons of organizations and users that have experienced the syncing of One Drive with SharePoint to just totally fail if it reaches either 100k to 300k files across all synced libraries. This is a fact, the engineers know it and have expressed this from the tickets we've opened with them.
I agree with your statement of IT pros not doing their due diligence of planning and training, however Microsoft really needs to fine tune One Drive.
As for now, syncing has been disabled for our organization.
@@01s0uljah0 Yep, I agree there is a limitation in terms of 300k files, ect., though when we do migrations for clients, we address this issue in how we build out the shared folders in Teams (or in SharePoint directly). A big question would be - so you want people syncing hundreds of thousands of company files to an individual computer? They do not want that, when asked that question directly, and then from there we build out the folders properly so that people get what they need, and can sync sets of files - or folders (or just the names when you use Files on Demand), and that solves the problem - and avoids a messy security issues as well. My input to IT Managers is do not take a 1990's Windows Server file sharing approach to your design and implementation of shared files in Microsoft 365; it requires a different mindset.
@@01s0uljah0 We also run into these sync issues constantly, even with clients that do not exceed the maximum number of files. Our helpdesk gets sync issues every week and sometimes they take hours to troubleshoot. You can, however, simulate a SMB mapped drive, which doesn't sync and has some similar functionality (just not offline). It's still not a great solution.