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OneDrive Business Mac Sync client 'preview'

  • February 10, 2015
  • 11 replies
  • 50 views
emily
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Today after a user complained about us not wanting them to use DropBox for secure client/company information, I did some Googling and found that Microsoft had actually released a beta version of their OneDrive for Business syncing app for Macs.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=45519

Shockingly, it actually works really well. It adds a folder just like DropBox and you can sync stuff automagically. You can drag in folders and multiple files and everything.

external image link

I'm actually surprised I didn't hear about this elsewhere. It says the publication date is 1/28/2015, so it's relatively new. And perhaps this is a good sign that Microsoft is going to be good on their word of some other new Mac Office clients this year.

Anyone else using this in their environment or at the very least testing it out yet? (I have it scoped to IT department users on Macs and a limited number of users that generally volunteer to test things out via Self Service, no plans on pushing it out yet.)

ekw | jamf @ jamf

    11 replies

    davidacland
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    • davidacland
    • Valued Contributor
    • February 10, 2015

    Thanks, good find. I completely missed it!

    M
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    • mikeh
    • Contributor
    • February 10, 2015

    So far it's been pretty stable. There are a couple complaints that I have about the client. I think the scenarios that concern me will probably be somewhat uncommon, but it's better to anticipate them now.

    - The client doesn't handle certain punctuation symbols in file names particularly gracefully, even when those symbols might be completely legal on the Mac: ':', '', etc. The OneDriveBusiness client will require you to rename them and display an error badge on the menu bar icon before syncing the files. Other services tend to handle these files without complaining and/or more gracefully, in my experience. I had 4 documents out of maybe 1000 that the client won't sync; somebody else had 3. YMMV (and that's what concerns me...)

    - The client has no (immediately apparent) support for selective syncing. It absolutely needs this support if Microsoft is going to provide 1TB or unlimited storage options to each subscribing user. I really have no desire to watch OneDriveBusiness sync a 200GB+ OneDrive to a 128GB (or even a 256GB) SSD in a MacBook Air SSDs and render the MBA unusable. And I do anticipate that a few of our users are going to try to sync large quantities of data.

    P
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    • pblake
    • Contributor
    • February 11, 2015

    We use Box.com. It's more secure than Dropbox and has great enterprise management.

    F
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    • freddiecox
    • Contributor
    • February 11, 2015

    I don't have a lot of content on there, but I've been much more impressed with it than the previous OneDrive client.

    Only complaint is no Yosemite "Dark Mode" Support so I had to go in and invert the colors in the One Drive For Business.app/Contents/Resources folder as it was the last menu bar item I had that I couldn't see.

    emily
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    • emily
    • Author
    • Hall of Fame
    • February 11, 2015

    @freddie.cox I didn't even realize one was there until there was a sync error and a little red x was randomly in my menu bar. It's the same for the non-beta OneDrive consumer-level app, so we'll see if they ever do anything about that.

    Since the consumer-level app has selective syncing, I'm guessing the Business one will eventually.

    ekw | jamf @ jamf
    bentoms
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    • bentoms
    • Hall of Fame
    • February 11, 2015

    @pblake, just make sure your Box Sync app is up to date: http://enterprisemac.bruienne.com/2015/02/07/box-cutting-how-i-stumbled-onto-a-serious-security-flaw-in-box-sync-for-mac/

    P
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    • prodservices
    • Contributor
    • February 11, 2015

    thanks for the heads up on this

    P
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    • pblake
    • Contributor
    • February 12, 2015

    @bentoms - Thanks for the heads up. I ran a report. We are patching any stragglers. Luckily box updates it's self when you connect so most our users are above that version. :)

    dpertschi
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    • dpertschi
    • Contributor
    • February 25, 2015

    Hmmm, basic functionality is good, though I've not tried the sharing or versioning features.

    Anyone know what time frame MS might deliver this as GM?

    S
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    • Simmo
    • Contributor
    • February 26, 2015

    How does it differ from the non-business version?

    Tired installing it, doesn't seem to load any app or create a onedrive folder.

    Read up on it a bit, looks promising since 365 will be implemented here quite soon.

    T
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    • TomH
    • New Contributor
    • October 13, 2015

    @emilykausalik latest OneDrive preview has selective sync :D

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