I see this so many times that it isn’t funny. People simply upload the contents of their network ‘S:’ drive to a single Document Library in SharePoint Online and then try and synchronize the entire contents of that to every desktop or to a network server and attempt to share it again from there.
This is a really, really bad idea simple because SharePoint Online is designed as a collaboration tool first and foremost rather than simply a storage location. Traditional on premise file systems are arranged in some structure and the argument I see from so many people is that they want all the benefits of the cloud BUT they don’t want to change the way they work to make the most of a tool like SharePoint Online.
You know what? If you are not prepared to change the way that you work with the tools then I would seriously question why you are using those tools at all.
Let me give you an analogy. Imagine you are using a paper based ledge to total up figures. You write values in one column, then the next and then you manually add them up and place the result in the third column. If you need to change any of the values in column one or column two you need to erase it, enter the new number, recalculate the result, erase that column and update it. Hard work.
Now what happens if I show you Excel? If you type the numbers into the first two columns again, manually calculate the total and type it into the third column. What have you achieved by using Excel? Nothing much, now have you? Excel allows you to create a formula that totals the sum of the rows automatically so that it updates if anything changes. How much easier is that? Heaps.
In the process of adopting Excel you have needed to learn more about what the tool can do and learn how to create and input formulas but the end results are well worth it, because now you know that you can apply that to every ledger you create. Small investment up front, small change in the way things are done results in huge productivity gains going forward. That is how technology works.
The same is true with SharePoint Online. Desiring SharePoint Online to work ‘exactly’ the way traditional files and folders works is like driving a high performance car in first gear everywhere. It is a waste of resources. If this is solely what you are looking to achieve with a move to SharePoint Online my advice is to read no further and look elsewhere for a solution. If you do that however, I’ll bet that sooner or later you’ll realize how limiting that decision will turn out to be, since storage is NOT collaboration and provides NO major productivity gains.
As I said initially, SharePoint Online is a collaboration tool, files and folders is just storage. Migration from files and folders to SharePoint Online means you should take the opportunity to look at how you have structured things and whether there is a better way to organize your information because at the end of the day it is all about FINDING your information now isn’t it? Tell me, how much data do you actually have in files and folders today that you use? How of much of it do you have no idea what it was ever for? And how often do you never find what you are looking for in there?
SharePoint is a way of approaching these problems from a different direction. This means that you (and only you) have to make decisions about how to arrange your information. SharePoint can help with the arranging but you need to decide HOW to arrange it. What is the outcome you desire? Simply replicating what you may have in traditional files and folders is simply using SharePoint Online in first gear, that is, a complete waste of time and effort.
So prior to any migration to SharePoint Online for you files and folders, stop and think about how to COLLABORATE with your data not simply store it. Ask how you end users WANT to access the information. Ask them what makes the MOST SENSE to them. In short make their job easier when it comes to working with information and there is no better tool for that than SharePoint. Like Excel, you need to invest a little up front but the rewards are HUGE.
If you are simply going to migrate gigabytes and gigabytes of data to one Document Library in SharePoint Online DON’T! If you are prepared to learn how to take SharePoint Online out of first gear and use it for COLLABORATION not storage then you will reap the benefits.
Stay tuned to this blog for more suggestions on how to migrate to SharePoint Online for collaboration and avoid the common mistakes.

One of the problems with files stored on a local hard disk is that you are typically relying only the file name to describe the contents of the file. We all of course know that most businesses don’t have policies and procedures around how their files are name. They therefore end up with a ‘dog’s breakfast’ of gobblygook that makes sense to no one.

Studies show that most employees spend at least 30% of their week looking for information and having files in unintelligible locations with random names doesn’t make that job ANY easier! This is where moving such files into SharePoint can help.

As you see above, if I simply upload documents to a SharePoint Document Library they are just as ‘higgildy piggidly’ as they would be if they were stored on your local hard disk.

If I now press a column heading, in this case Name, you’ll find that the documents are sorted A-Z and if I press it again, Z-A. Nothing unusual about that, you can do that on your local hard drive.

If now however I select the File Type column heading I see the above which lists all the file extensions that appear in the list. If I select say the docx option what I get is:

I now see a filtered version of my files based on the file extension I selected (i.e. only those that match the filtered criteria). I can of course select more than one file extension if I want. You can tell that the list is filtered by the little filter icon net to the file type column heading.

To remove the filter just select that column heading again and select the option Clear Filter from Type.

You can of course perform this filtering on any column but even better you can add your own columns to describe the files. This is know as adding metadata.

To do this select the Library tab top left of the page to reveal the Ribbon Menu and from the right hand side of the Ribbon select Library Settings.

Scroll down this page until you locate the Columns heading. Under the list of existing columns select Create column.

Give the new column and name (here Customer), select the type of column it will be (here a choice) and add a description. Scroll down for more options.

In this case we’ll elect to Require that the column has information, which is not the normal default. This means people can’t add documents to this location WITHOUT also selecting which customer they apply to, which is great for enforcing compliance.

In the choice box you see 4 choices have been entered (Starbucks, Microsoft, HP and Other). These are the options that will be available for this field. You can always return and edit these if necessary later.

All the other fields are left as default and the OK button is selected at the bottom of the page to save the changes.

When you return to the Document Library you will see an extra column, Customers, to the right as shown above. Obviously, any existing files won’t have a value for this field since it is new, however if you edit an existing entry you will be required to enter one.

If you edit the properties of the first file you can see that there is now an additional field called Customer displayed. You will also notice that it has a star (*) next to it indicating it is a required field. You will also find a drop down selection box, which when selected will display all the options entered when the column has created.

Since it is a required field, if you attempt to leave it blank you’ll get a message like that above and you won’t be able to save any updates.

You can now go through and update the customer field for every item in the Document Library. The easy was to do this is to use the Quick Edit option from the Ribbon Menu which displays the entries like a spreadsheet so you can easily move between fields using the arrow keys and even copy and paste between cells.

When you return to the list you can now select the new column heading you created and you’ll again see a list of entries on which you can filter.

In this case, just selecting Microsoft will filter the list of items to only display those that have Microsoft in the Customer column as shown above.

It’s really that simply to add metadata to your SharePoint items. Don’t forget adding metadata works on just about everything in SharePoint, Document Libraries, Lists, Calendars, etc and is a great way to help you filter, sort and most importantly locate your data. Now isn’t that better than what you might be using with you local hard disk?

You can of course extend the concept of metadata way beyond the basics demonstrated here, however the most important thing is to think about, and define you metadata up front. What columns do you need? What type of information will they contain? How will you display the information? etc. 

Remember, SharePoint is an immensely powerful tool like most other Office applications. If you want to get the most from it you need to invest some time understanding what it does. Hopefully, this post will get you started on that path but watch out for more posts on making the most of SharePoint.

When a standard users clicks on Sites within the Office 365 portal they will see something like the above. Across the top are a number of ‘Promoted Sites’ that provide quick access to different URLs (typically SharePoint Online sites).

An administrator can control these ‘Promoted Sites’ via a number of different methods. The first is to access the Office 365 portal as themselves and select the Sites option from the toolbar across the top.

The difference when they do this from an ordinary user is that administrators will have the link Manage the promoted sites below as noted above.

Selecting that link will place the bar into edit mode as shown above. All you need to do to edit an existing entry or add a new ‘Promoted Site’ is select the appropriate tile.

Doing so will pop up a dialog box like shown above where you can makes changes including setting the Title, Description, URL (which can be any valid URL including one outside Office 365 if desired) and even the background image. You can also remove the link if you don’t want it to appear.

Once you have finished editing you can select the click here to stop editing option to save and update the changes for all users.

The other way that you can manage these promoted sites is via the SharePoint Admin center. To access this select the Admin option from the options across the top of the page and then select SharePoint.

In the SharePoint Admin center select user profiles form the menu that appears on the left.

Then select Manage Promoted Sites from under the My Site Settings in the middle of the page.

You’ll now see a list of the ‘Promoted Sites’ as shown above. Press the edit icon (the small icon with the pen, just under the check box at the left) to make changes.

You can now again make any changes you require to the entry. However, using this method you will see that you have an additional option available to you, that being Target Audiences. This allows you to show certain promoted site only to a certain set of SharePoint users determined by the audience feature. To learn more about this feature have a look at the following article:

Manage audiences

You can of course add and remove ‘Promoted Sites’ using the option on the menu bar at the top.

So there you go, two easy ways to manage the ‘Promoted Sites’ that users see when they select Sites in Office 365.

When your users press the Sites button in Office 365 they will be taken to a list of SharePoint sites they can access. However, as you can see from the above they also, by default, have the option to create a New Site.

You may not want all users to have this option since it can result in many, many unwanted and unused SharePoint site in your environment. To remove this option, login as a global administrator to the Office 365 Administration Portal.

Select Admin then SharePoint from the menu that appears.

From the bottom of the list on the left select Settings.

Scroll down the left hand side until you find the heading Start a Site. Then select Hide the Link on the right. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and select OK to apply the changes.

Now when users view that same initial page they will no longer see the option New Site.

One of the major misconceptions may people are under is that SharePoint is simply another files and folders repository. SharePoint is a collaboration solution and therefore a very different beast from what many may be familiar working with.

A good example is the issue around the modified field. Let me explain.

One of the many things that SharePoint allows is the mapping of a document library using Windows Explorer as you can see above. You can easily drag and drop files into a SharePoint library using this interface.

In this case let’s pay special attention to the Date modified for each file shown above

If you now look at the file listing in the web interface of SharePoint after copying the files across using Windows Explorer you will see that the Modified field is different in the web interface from that in the Windows Explorer view. Why is that?

The reason is that SharePoint is a collaboration system not simply files and folders storage as I said before. What does that mean? What it means is that when a document is copied to SharePoint it is now only part of an item in a list of items that together constitute a Document Library.

What that means is that in SharePoint an item is not only just the file but also things like previous versions, workflows, additional metadata, check in status and so on.

If we take a look at the properties of another item in another SharePoint Document Library that includes some of these additional elements you’ll see what I mean.

So for example, the above item includes a file called 0 – general index.docx and Title but it also contains an additional field called Customer. Thus, this Document Library item is composed of a file AND metadata. So if any of these elements of the item change then the Modified field for the whole item will change.

Thus, in a SharePoint Document library the file inside an item can remain unchanged but other information around that file in the item can change. These changes can trigger things like workflows so it important that a change anywhere in the item is reflected by SharePoint.

So in summary, remember SharePoint is not simply a files and folders replacements, it is a collaboration system and therefore different. Uploading a single file into SharePoint adds that file to an item in SharePoint that contain additional information such as metadata. Thus, any uploaded file is only part of the item in SharePoint. The Modified information you see in the web interface for SharePoint refers to the whole item, whereas the information you see via Windows Explorer (which is a much simpler client than a browser) refers directly and only to the file because it can’t read any of the additional item information from SharePoint.

I hope all that makes sense.