Resolving OneDrive for Business file conflicts

In a recent post:

Working with OneDrive for Business offline

I highlighted a scenario where if a user edited files synced with OneDrive for Business desktop app offline while another user edited those same files online, when the first user tried to sync, after coming back online, they would get an error. This could also potentially result the loss of one of the copies of the changed document.

I believe I have a solution to solve that issue so let me run through it here. So here’s the scenario first.

Robert is using OneDrive for Business in Office 365 and has a number of files as you can see above stored in there and accessible via a browser.

He has shared a document ‘cloud qualification worksheet’ with user Lewis Collins directly from his OneDrive for Business, as you can see above. Robert has also allowed Lewis the ability to edit this document.

Robert has also synced his OneDrive for Business to his local laptop using the free desktop app and all the files are up to date as you can now see from the above screen shot.

Lewis can work with the document in Word or using Office Online.

Robert can do the same and because both are online any changes get replicated to both users and to Robert’s desktop.

Ensuring that all his OneDrive for Business documents are synced and up to date Robert gets on a plane and goes offline.

While offline, Robert opens the file from his desktop and makes the changes you see above. This means the file in his desktop version of OneDrive from Business is different from the original.

While Robert is offline, Lewis also goes into the same file and changes it as shown above. Because he remained online, this version now becomes the one that is saved into Office 365.

So now we have 2 different versions of the same file. One is in Office 365 and one is on an offline notebook.

Robert completes his travel and goes back online.

At the next sync, the desktop app now indicates an error, because the file in Office 365 has been edited by someone else and so has the local copy. It therefore displays a sync error on that file as shown above, indicated by a red icon on the file on Robert’s notebook.

If Robert now right mouse clicks on the file with the error and selects the OneDrive for Business option and the View sync problems option from there he sees:

At this point you need to be careful of what you do to retain both copies of the file so you can manually merge the changes.

Step 1 – Copy the original offline edited file

On his laptop Robert need’s to take a copy of the file that is displaying the error and allow it to sync back to Office 365.

As you can see, now on his local machine he now has the original file with the error and a copy of it synced to Office 365.

If he now navigates to his OneDrive for Business via the browser he sees this new file is also in the cloud.

Step 2 – Delete the original offline file

Returning to his laptop, Robert now deletes the file with the error from the OneDrive for Business location on his laptop. Remember, he has already made a copy of this file before deleting it.

His laptop now looks like the above with no errors and all files synced.

As expected, when he refreshes his browser he see exactly the same thing in his OneDrive for Business in Office 365.

If he opens the copy of the file he made, Robert sees that it has all the changes he made while offline as shown above. The original file is now not in either location, that is why you need to copy the offline edited version first and allow it to sync.

Step 3 – Restore the deleted file from the Recycle Bin via the browser

From OneDrive for Business in the browser Robert selects the Recycle Bin link on the left.

From the Recycle Bin Robert selects the file he just deleted in his desktop and then selects Restore Selection.

He confirms the restore by pressing OK.

If Robert then returns to his OneDrive for Business by selecting the My Documents link on the top left he will see that the original file has not only been restored but it is also still shared!

If Robert now views that file in a browser he sees that it contains the edits that Lewis made online as shown above.

In a matter of moments that restored file synced to his desktop using the desktop sync app as shown above.

He can now open the file from his desktop and merge the changes with his original (which is saved as a copy here as well) and then update the original back to Office 365, while retaining all the user sharing he enabled earlier.

Summary

So if you get a conflict with a file that has been changed in the cloud and on a synced desktop performed the following:

1. Create a copy of the desktop file saved to OneDrive for Business.

2. Delete the desktop file from the local machine.

3. Restore the file from the recycle bin via the browser and OneDrive for Business online.

That process will allow you to retain a copy of both files as well as the original OneDrive for Business sharing.

I am sure there are other ways of doing this but this worked for me. It is important to follow the process in that order and from the right locations, otherwise you risk losing one of these files.

Hopefully, an upcoming iteration of OneDrive for Business will do this auto-magically for you, however until then this should do the trick for those occasional times when two people edited the same file while one of them was offline.

Windows 7 and 8 machines come to Azure

Oh man, this blog is currently turning into the ‘I love Azure’ site isn’t it? But WOW, here’s another announcement that is a game changer in my mind.

Microsoft Azure now has Windows 7 and 8 virtual machines as you can see from the above screen shot. Before this I was using Windows Server 2012 as a workstation to have a ‘clean’ machine to test and demo Office 365.

With the availability of these new desktop Windows systems I can create an even more EXACT test/demo installation in the cloud. This is BRILLIANT since I can now dozens of machines in Azure to test all sorts of scenarios. I would have run out of disk space long ago if even attempted this on my workstation.

Here’s another thing to ponder. if Windows desktop systems are now available via Azure how far away can a full blown Virtual Desktop Offering be? How long can it be before this Virtual Desktop becomes an option in Office 365? My guess? Not long.

Enough. I’m off to spin up more Azure demo machines. What can I say? I love Azure more and more every day!

Clarification – I overlooked the fact that these images are currently only available to MSDN subscribers. Also these images are not meant for production just testing. However, none the less, it certain tells me where all this is going.

Bye bye tower

For over 8 years I’ve used the above tower machine in a range of roles. I bought it for around $800 initially and used it to run my Hyper-V servers, both production and testing. I eliminated the production requirements of the Hyper V machine by moving them to the cloud (e.g, this blog used to run on a SharePoint site I had running on that machine). The test machines I migrated on Virtual Box running on a big HP Envy 17” laptop so they would be at least portable.

Once its life as a Hyper V host was over I reprovisioned the box to run Windows desktop operating system for a while.

Recently, I was considering getting a replacement for this machine to run everything plus some more virtual testing machines. However, as I outlined in this blog post:

I finally get Azure

When I stopped and thought about what I actually wanted to do I realized I could do everything I needed to in the cloud using something like Azure for the high end grunt for my virtual testing environment.

That meant I no longer needed to spend the $2,500 or so buying a new desktop, Azure would be far more cost effective since I simply turn off the the Azure virtual machines when I don’t need them so it costs me next to nothing.

After that epiphany, and without the need to replace this tower, my thoughts turned to whether I actually needed that machine at all. To make sure, I switched it off and started to use my Surface Pro as my main machine.

After two weeks, and having not turned the old tower box on, I knew I no longer required its services. It has now been wiped and is appearing on eBay looking for a new owner.

This $800 piece of hardware as served me well over the years. In that time it only blew its power supply twice for a grand total of about $150 for parts to repair. When I bought the box initially I toyed with the idea of buying a name brand server and building my ‘date centre’ on that but then I decided to take the opposite path and get the cheapest thing possible and see how long it lasted.

Well 8 years later it is running without an issue and would make anyone a fine workstation. But you know what? This machine has once again confirmed to me why the cloud is fast becoming the solution for more and more IT ‘stuff’. So much so that I no longer need this tower machine, I can use my Surface, Azure and Office 365.

Since I have simplified my own IT and moved more stuff to the cloud I have have cut my power bill by more than 50%. I expect that to fall even further without this tower machine being on most of the day. I have more space under my desk, my office is less noisy and I don’t keep kicking it accidentally either!

This however is not the end of my minimization quest. Next on the list is my long serving HP Envy 17”, which currently needs an external fan blowing on it to keep it cool enough to rest your hand on. With all my testing machine now in Azure and accessible on any device just about I no longer have need for it either. So when I can get a Surface 3 Pro that HP machine will also be looking for a new home.

When I take look back to the time when I had over 6 independent servers running on unique hardware doing different things, a desktop, a laptop, etc to what minimal equipment I have now but with more power, functionality and flexibility thanks to the cloud, I can only imagine what the future holds.

However, like I said, my process is not complete yet. The HP Envy 17” is now on borrowed time and I look forward to further falls in my next electricity bill.

Yammer integration has arrived

One of big things I see with Office 365 is the integration with social. I have been a big fan of Yammer and have been using the free offering for a while now.

Recently I started to configure the direct integration with Office 365 so I could take advantage of all the new things that are coming such as Officegraph and project Oslo.

However, the main reason I wanted Yammer integration was based n this post:

Yammer bring conversations to your OneDrive and SharePoint Online files

That highlight how Yammer can work with SharePoint today.

As you can see from the above, after configuring my Yammer network and then turning it on as my default social network I have the conversations feature available to me. Yeah-HA!

Now it’s ‘play’ time.

Why OneDrive for Business?

This is the final post in a series on questions I’ve seen on OneDrive for Business that apparently don’t have an easily locatable answer on the Net. The previous instalments if you missed them were:
– Answering some OneDrive for Business questions
– OneDrive for Business document sharing
– Working with OneDrive for Business offline
So here’s the final question:
There is a plethora of cloud file services solutions out there. How is OneDrive for Business really any different from DropBox, etc., aside from the name on the box and its “really great TLA” sales bafflegab?
OneDrive for Business now stands amongst a crowded field of cloud storage options for business. So what makes it different and better from the others?
1. It can grow with your needs. Now by that I don’t mean in capacity what I mean as you move from simply cloud storage to full online collaboration.
To understand what I am on about with this I suggest you read this post of mine:
SharePoint Online migration – Start up is key
My point is that I believe smart businesses are moving from purely a place to store their files to somewhere in which they can share more than just file information. A place they can collaborate and be more productive.
Few other products around at the moment have the ability to grow from storage to a complete collaboration environment.
2. It is compliant with lots of world wide industry standards, including those of the European Union, HIPPAA, etc. For more detailed information visit:
Office 365 Trust center
This means that it conforms to independent standards giving it better security and privacy than its competitors.
3. Incorporates eDiscovery. If a businesses needs to locate information across all its users data, including what may have been deleted by the users, then it needs eDiscovery. OneDrive for Business allows you to preserve the contents of users data, without interfering with them so it can be recovered at anytime in the future.
4. Incorporates administrator auditing. Business administrators can generate reports across all their OneDrive for Business users to see what events have transpired. They can also create custom reports to suit their needs. They can also easily see what external using is configured and control that directly from an administration portal.
5. Per user control. Administrators can control whether users can sync information to their desktops, whether they can share documents outside their business and how they access the information. They can also quickly and easily prevent a user accessing information without having to delete it.
6. Allows PowerShell control. Administrators can complete a growing number of administration tasks using the PowerShell scripting language. No longer do they need to do everything via the web console, they can develop a custom script and simply run that as many times as they need.
7. Individual files are stored with their own encryption key on random storage pools. Quoting:
http://blogs.office.com/2014/05/12/enterprise-grade-cloud-services-a-high-bar-required-for-security-compliance-and-privacy/
The technology moves beyond a single encryption key per disk to deliver a unique encryption key per file. With advanced encryption technology, every file stored in SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business is encrypted with its own key, and subsequent updates to a file are encrypted with their own unique key as well. This makes OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online highly secure content storage for your data.
8. Includes Data Loss Prevention (DLP). Again from:
http://blogs.office.com/2014/05/12/enterprise-grade-cloud-services-a-high-bar-required-for-security-compliance-and-privacy/
DLP prevents the sharing of sensitive content either inside or outside an organization by automatically classifying and identifying a customer’s data at rest using deep content analysis. IT administrators can then construct queries through the eDiscovery Center, similar to how they already perform compliance queries, and view or export the results.
This is basically the document fingerprinting concept I posted about a while back;
Protecting your information with Office 365
9. Includes Information Rights Management (IRM). This allows you to control not only who accesses a document but what they can do i.e. they can view it but not print it.
Set up IRM In SharePoint Online
10. I believe that office 365 overall has better security than other providers. Here is just one video of how all that happens in general:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4QqQG8tTSg#t=123
For greater depth on Office 365 security visit the Office 365 Trust Center.
11. All OneDrive for Business users now get 1TB of space included in their plan.
https://blog.onedrive.com/1tb-for-every-business-user-with-onedrive-for-business/
12. You can integrate OneDrive for Business directly with SharePoint 2013 on premise so you can have a hybrid deployment when it comes to storage of user data.
Overview of OneDrive for Business in SharePoint Server 2013
13. You can add email, conferencing and Office Desktop subscriptions. If you purchase OneDrive for Business as a stand alone offering you can easily and quickly add Office 365 email, conferencing and desktop applications by upgrading to the full suit of Office 365 products. This allows you to also license Office for iPad.
14. It includes Office Online. This means you can view and edit your Office document directly in a browser on any device with full fidelity.
Office Online
It also includes real time document co-authoring.
15. It is built on SharePoint. This means OneDrive for Business is basically a full SharePoint site. This means you can add additional document libraries to it, along with a mailbox, lists, etc. You can create subsites and so on just like you do with SharePoint.
That neatly loops me back to point one about OneDrive being able to grow with your needs. There are plenty more points I could add here though.
In summary, most other cloud storage solutions are just that, storage, no more. OneDrive for Business is simply a component of a powerful online collaboration tool that can be extended as far as you want, when you want.

Working with OneDrive for Business offline

In two previous posts:

Answering some OneDrive for Business questions

OneDrive for Business document sharing

I’ve been doing a deep dive into how OneDrive for Business allows co-authoring on documents. I’ve covered working both directly from a browser but also using the OneDrive for Business desktop sync app.

That’s all well and good if you are always connected to the cloud but what happens in those rare cases when you aren’t? So let’s see.

If you followed along with the previous post you will know that we have two users working on a document from OneDrive for Business.

Robert Crane has a Word document in his OneDrive for Business in Office 365 called ‘cloud qualification worksheet’ that he has shared with Richard Dawson who is a member of the same Office 365 tenant.

Now let’s say that Robert has this document sync’ed to his desktop using the OneDrive for Business desktop app. Everything is up to date and no one is currently editing the document. he takes his laptop on a flight and decides to work on that document while he is disconnected from the cloud, which he can do as he has a local copy.

For Robert, his updates are saved to his local machine in the local OneDrive for Business location.

For Richard, who remains online during this process, he continues to make changes to the document while Robert is travelling.

So now we have the worst case scenario. Both Robert and Richard have changed the same file. Richard’s updates are now in OneDrive for Business in the cloud and Robert’s are on his local machine waiting till he reconnects to the Internet to sync.

So now, Robert arrives at his destination and connects to the Internet, what happens?

You’ll see that Robert get an error when his OneDrive for Business next tries to synchronize to Office 365. This is a clear indication that there are sync issues.

So if Robert right muse clicks on the file that has the error and selects OneDrive for Business then View sync problems from the menu he sees the following dialog.

The result is that it seems to think there is a problem downloading the file as well a conflict. For the resolution of the conflict it says to open the file using its application to resolve.

So I did that and as you can see in the above screen shot I get no apparent options to resolve the conflict.

Ok, now the question is how do you resolve this so you can at least keep the two files and allow the one on OneDrive for Business to remain shared.

If I however simply tried to rename the file on my desktop then I still got the sync error (as it is still the same file just with another name).

After taking a copy of my local desktop file and allowing it to sync and then deleting the conflicting file from my desktop it also removed that file from OneDrive for Business in Office 365. This meant that all the changes Richard Dawson made where lost and Richard could no longer access the file since the one shared had been deleted. Basically, even though the file on my desktop was reporting a conflict deleting it also deleted versions in the cloud. Watch that.

At the moment this is where OneDrive for Business does have limitations. However, the best solution is to avoid these type of offline issues by firstly checking the file out if you believe you will need it offline for an extended period. Checking a file out means that no one else can change the file until you check it back in. That means here Robert should have checked out the file before leaving and checking in back in upon arrival. During that period Richard could not edit the file but he could at least view it.

There will always be a struggle working offline in an online world and hopefully the OneDrive for Business desktop sync app will improve soon to add more intelligence on how this is dealt with. Simply being able to rename one copy while retaining the other copy seems like the smartest thing to me. However, at the moment if you delete the conflict it deletes the sync’ed version on OneDrive for Business even though it is different, so beware of such conflicts. The best suggestion is to make a copy of the file in OneDrive for Business using a browser before attempting anything on the desktop.

Roll on an updated sync client for OneDrive for Business on the desktop I say.

OneDrive for Business document sharing

In a previous post I covered how basic document collaboration and co-authoring worked with OneDrive for Business. That was in response to this question:

Does OneDrive provide any file locking at all? I.e., if two people open the same file at the same time, does it manage locking to prevent both updating the same file with conflicting updates, or does is simply provide collision notification later?

A follow question on from that was:

How is offline/synchronized file access reconciled with shared access (if at all)?

So let me address that one in this post.

If you followed along with the previous post you will know that we have two users working on a document from OneDrive for Business.

The previous post covered how they where able to work together on the document using both Office Online and Office on the desktop as well as mixing and matching between all of the options.

Now what happens if Robert elects to sync that Word document to his desktop and work on it there. Let’s see.

As you can see above the document in question is synced to the desktop using the OneDrive for Business desktop app. You’ll notice that it is all up to date since it has a green check mark over the type icon.

If Robert right clicks on the file he received the context sensitive menu shown. He select’s Edit.

This opens the document in Word as normal for Robert. He can now start editing it.

As before, Richard now see multiple people working on the document (top right) and see that the paragraph being edited by Robert using Word is ‘locked’ (i.e. Richard can’t edit this area until Robert saves his changes) when he starts working on the document also.

Richard is free to change any other part of the document.

Let’s now return to Robert’s desktop .

When Richard starts making changes using Word Online Robert receives notification of this in his desktop document as well a corresponding ‘lock’ on the paragraph Richard is working with using Office Online in a browser as shown above. This means Robert can’t change that area that Richard is working on until Richard is complete and Robert saves and ‘refreshes’ his document.

You will also notice a little globe next to Richard name here in Robert’s version indicating Richard is editing ‘online’ (i.e. using Office Online). If you also mouse over Richard’s name you might see the message that updates are available and you should refresh the document. This means Richard has made changes and to get the latest version Robert should save and ‘refresh’.

Since Richard is using Office Online any changes he makes are automatically saved and the document in OneDrive for Business is also updated. You can tell when Office Online saves are complete by looking at the bottom of the window as shown above where it says saved.

Once these online updates are saved they are automatically available to others. If those people are also using Office Online they will see the changes immediately. If they are working ‘offline’ using Office for the desktop they will need to save and refresh their document to see the changes.

When they do so they will see the above message in their desktop application. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear in my testing that you see if overlay if one of the editors is using Office Online.

If Richard now opens the document in Word both users will get a similar experience to what was outlined in the previous post with desktop to desktop editing, so I won’t revisit that here.

Thus in summary, using the OneDrive for Business desktop app to sync files locally and opening and editing from this location while online is pretty much an identical experience to what happens if you open and edit a document directly from the browser. It allows you and others to work on the document together at the same time while keeping up to date.

You will notice if you right mouse click on the file in your OneDrive for Business location on your desktop there is a OneDrive for Business menu option as shown above. Basically the options available there simply take you directly to you OneDrive for Business in a browser to allow you to perform the selection.

Thus, if I select Share from this menu all it does it take me directly to the Share option for that file in my OneDrive for Business in a browser (I’ll also need to login to Office 365 if I haven’t already).

So, the OneDrive for Business desktop client app allows you to synchronize you files from your OneDrive for Business location in Office 365 to your desktop. When you work with these desktop sync’ed files you get very much the same co-authoring experience you would if you had opened the documents directly from a browser. Any command menu shortcuts redirect you back to browser to complete.

So now the question is what happens with this synchronization process when one of the authors is offline and makes changes? That’ll be the subject of an upcoming post so stay tuned.