OneDrive for Business FAQ

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Update 5-11-15:  Great new roadmap information. Please see the OneDrive for Business roadmap post here.

I get asked a lot of questions about OneDrive for Business from customers so I have put together a quick FAQ to help:

How many OneDrives are there? I see one in Windows 8 and then I see one with Office 365 Education. I also see SkyDrive and SkyDrive Pro. What are the differences?

There are two OneDrive offerings available. One is our consumer OneDrive, formerly known as SkyDrive, which comes with 7GB of free storage and is catered towards personal storage use.  The other offering comes with Office 365 and is called OneDrive for Business, formerly known as SkyDrive Pro, which requires a valid Office 365 login to leverage. The default storage is now 1TB for OneDrive for Business.

Here is a matrix with the differences:

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Can I use the OneDrive consumer sync technology with OneDrive for Business?

No, the OneDrive sync integration with Mac, Vista, Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 does not sync to OneDrive for Business.  There are different folder sync technologies required specifically for OneDrive for Business and currently we only have Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 folder sync clients. Mac client is slated for later this year.

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Grab all the OneDrive and OneDrive for Business sync clients here.

Can I use the OneDrive consumer mobile apps with OneDrive for Business?

No, these are also separate mobile and tablet apps for OneDrive for Business.

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To download those apps on for tablet, Android, iOS visit here.

Can I have both OneDrive consumer and OneDrive for Business installed on the same computer?  

Yes, you can have both sync clients installed and there is no collision between the two sync technologies.

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both OneDrive sync technologies installed

What are the ways I can get the OneDrive for Business sync client?

There are two ways to obtain the OneDrive for Business sync client:

1) It is automatically installed with the following Office 2013 installations:

    • Office Professional Plus 2013
    • Office 365 E3/A3 SKU which includes Office 365 ProPlus
    • Office 365 Midsize Business
    • Office 365 Small Business Premium
    • Student Advantage (Office 365 ProPlus for Students)

2) If you do not have Office Professional Plus 2013 installed via one of the versions above, you can download a separate OneDrive for Business client with the download links above for Windows 8.1, Windows 8, Windows 7.

See herefor more manual installation steps of OneDrive for Business if needed.    

Can I setup OneDrive for Business Sync automatically for users?

Unfortunately, there is no way to do this currently. The only current method is to have the end users click ‘Sync’ inside of OneDrive for Business.  See here for more directions.

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Can I map a drive to OneDrive for Business?

Currently, there are methods I have heard of however they have mixed results with this. See here and here for steps. There is also new unsupported code available to help with mapping a drive to OneDrive for Business via a login script. See here.   One example I have seen work from a command line is (replace tenant with your tenant name) and you must make sure the WebDAV service is running:

Net use w: \\tenant-my.sharepoint.com@SSL\DavWWWRoot\Personal\user_domain_com/documents /PERSISTENT:yes

Can I preprovision OneDrive for Business so my endusers don’t have to wait to use on first time use?

Yes, there is a way to preprovision OneDrive for Business using the new CSOM API.  See sample code here and here.

Can I redirect my local folders (\documents, \pictures, etc) via Group Policy to OneDrive for Business?

Yes, there is a way to do this using environment variable mappings.  Please see steps here.      

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