As you may well know I have written a number of books that are available on my site or from places like Amazon. One of these is:
Getting Started with SkyDrive Pro for Office 365.
I recently received a very poor review from PL1 Pgrmr that reads:
Not what it purports to be: I found this book to be totally corporate oriented. When I bought it, my thought was to understand Skydrive and how it works better. This book fails on all counts. After skimming it, I was sorry I even bought it. Stay away unless you are in a corporate environment.
Now my first reaction, especially to the review title, has annoyance as I certainly believed that both the title and the description were valid. However, upon reflection I can see where the problem lies.
Office 365 has a Home Edition that also includes SkyDrive but the consumer version NOT the Pro version. So this person would seem to have Office 365 Home Edition and was looking for information about SkyDrive, bought my book and was disappointed because my book only covers the business versions of Office 365.
So here we have a great example of how inconsistency in products confuses end users:
1. Office 365 Home is NOTHING like Office 365 for business
2. SkyDrive Pro is NOTHING like consumer SkyDrive
Now I do understand that Microsoft is trying to unify its products and brand all under one cloud banner but it is still very confusing for end users. Even I had to stop and look at this from the point of view of someone who has purchase Office 365 Home and wants information on SkyDrive and how easily it would be to confuse my book on Office 365 Business and SkyDrive Pro.
It is so easy as technology people who understand the differences between products like SkyDrive and SkyDrive Pro to overlook the fact that the vast majority of end users struggle to differentiate the products. It also highlights how you have to really, really specific with these cloud offering to ensure you are targeting exactly the right audience.
No one is at fault here, it is just confusion around the product editions. I have now updated the description on Amazon to indicate my book doesn’t talk to the Office 365 Home edition and I have left a comment for the reviewer indicating what I believe is where the confusion lies.
My book NEVER attempted to cover consumer SkyDrive and in the first few pages (which I am sure you can view via a preview it does say:
It is important not to confuse the consumer edition of SkyDrive and SkyDrive Pro
and
This means it covers material that is applicable for Enterprise Office 365 Plans and well as for the Small Business and Professionals Plans. It will not cover the consumer version of SkyDrive.
However, I do understand how someone using the Office 365 Home edition could still be confused, yet I think the title of the review is a little harsh but I accept that is what happens when you publish publically.
So what’s the point of this post? I suppose it is to say always ensure that you avoid confusion in the minds of consumers when it comes to your products. If there is confusion there will be frustration like that experienced by the reviewer and myself as an author both expecting different content from a product of the same name, that being Office 365. That frustration results in negative sentiment when in fact each product provides a great solution for home users and for business. It is unfortunate that they are so dissimilar but share a common name.
Oh well, I need to update that SkyDrive Pro book anyway.
Tag: SkyDrive
Disabling SkyDrive Pro in Office 365
SkyDrive Pro in Office 365 is a personal area where users can store files. Every user in Office 365 currently receives 25GB of space allocated to them, that can be increased up to 100GB if desired. However, what happens if you don’t want users to have access to this web based file storage in office 365? Can it be disabled? Yes it can. Here’s how.
A user’s standard SkyDrive Pro looks something like that shown above. To remove this access the first thing you’ll need to do is login as an administrator to the Office 365 portal.
In the top right of the portal you’ll find an Admin option, which if selected will display the menu shown above. From this menu select SharePoint.
In the SharePoint admin center select user profiles from the menu on the left and then Manage User Permissions from the People section on the right.
You should see here that the group Everyone except external users has the rights to Create Personal Site. To prevent any future users from creating or accessing SkyDrive Pro simply Remove this group.
If the box is blank, as shown above then no new users will have access to SkyDrive Pro. You can of course individually add users and group in here for whom you wish to have the ability to create SkyDrive Pro at any stage.
What does that look like if a newly created user now attempts to access SkyDrive Pro?
When they try and access SkyDrive Pro from the menu across the top of their account by selecting SkyDrive they will be taken to the Newsfeed tab as shown above.
Can you remove the SkyDrive option from the menu bar across the top of the page? Not at this stage.
Now that is all well and good for NEW users, what about that already have SkyDrive Pro set up? Can that be disabled? Yes it can but the process is much more involved.
A users SkyDrive Pro is basically a SharePoint subsite created in the Site Collection:
under /personal
Now the primary administrator for the Office 365 tenant (i.e. the first login assigned when the tenant was created) has full rights to the site collection
however they only have read rights (like every other Office 365 licensed user) by default to another individuals SkyDrive Pro. Thus, if that administrator navigates to a users SkyDrive Pro they can view it but not make changes. This needs to be changed so the administrator can take control.
To change the ownership of an individual users existing SkyDrive Pro site you need to return to the SharePoint admin center and select Manage User Profiles from the People section in the right hand side of the screen.
Now run a search for the user whose SkyDrive Pro you wish to modify. In this case Lewis Collins as shown above.
On the right of the Account name you will find a down arrow which when selected will display the menu above. From this menu select Manage site collection owners.
By default you will see the users name listed as the Primary and Secondary Site Collection Administrator. You’ll need to remove the user from both locations and the recommendation would be to add the administrator so that the site still can be managed.
Thus now, Lewis Collins no longer should have access, only Robert Crane (i.e the tenant administrator) does.
Once that is saved the administrator should now be able to access the URL of the users SkyDrive Pro and be able to edit the site.
You’ll know you’ll be able to do that if when you select the Cog icon in the top right of the screen you see a menu like that shown above that includes the menu item Site Settings. Select this item to continue.
Select Site Permissions from under the Users and Permissions section in the top left of the page as shown above.
Select the user from the list by placing a check mark to the left of their name and then selecting Remove User Permissions from Ribbon menu.
Don’t forget that the user is still a member of the group Everyone except external users, so if you don’t also edit that security group in Office 365 and remove them from there they will continue to have read access.
If however no one except the administrator needs access to this users SkyDrive Pro Site then simply remove the group Everyone except external users using the same process above.
In this case we only want the administrator to have access so we have removed everything displayed. The administrator will continue to gain access to the site no matter what rights are modified in the actual SharePoint site because they where made a Site Collection administrator previously.
Return to Site Settings using the Cog in the top right hand corner of the window.
Now select Site collection administrators from the Users and Permissions section in the top right as shown above.
If any items appear in here that you don’t want to gain access (i.e. the user Lewis Collins) remove them and press OK to save.
Return to Site Settings again and this time select People and Groups at the top of the Users and Permissions section.
If the user appear here, place a check to the left of their name and then select the Actions menu.
From the menu select Delete users from Site Collection.
Press OK to continue.
You might ask why didn’t I do that first and remove the user from the Site Collection in one action? The reason is, I wanted to illustrate how many locations it is possible to provision rights. I would therefore highly recommend you check all areas I have run through here to ensure the user no longer appears.
So finally,
Before, with normal SkyDrive Pro access:
After, with no SkyDrive Pro access:
Now when a user visits their SkyDrive Pro they will no longer see any files or they will no longer be able to upload documents. Basically, they have no access.
You need to beware of the fact that a users SkyDrive Pro area is a dedicated SharePoint site in which the user has full admin rights when it is created. This means that can change permissions, create subsites with different permissions and so on. It is like giving users full access to a folder on a network drive.
The easiest way to prevent a user from accessing SkyDrive Pro is to disable the account or remove their rights to SharePoint, however the above scenario illustrates that you can still permit access to SharePoint but not SkyDrive Pro, even if SkyDrive Pro for that user has already been created. It is a lot of work to do that but at least you know how to if you need to. Just beware that there may be further permissions enabled by a user (perhaps giving buddy hidden access) that you may have to dig out. Finger crossed, most users won’t alter the defaults but beware they certainly have the power to if they want by default!
Great OneNote videos
If you are reader of this blog you’ll know what a big advocate I am for OneNote. Coupled with SkyDrive or SharePoint Online it is really the premier collaboration solution out there. if you haven’t used it then you really should.
With that in mind here are three new videos demonstrating what OneNote can do for a variety of people.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSH6gOt5dEw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nw1WTa9vvO4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMAuwE3O1e0
OneNote, use it. You won’t regret it!
What is SkyDrive Pro
I see a lot of questions out there about what SkyDrive Pro actually is. I have documented it before but here’s some updated links and information.
SkyDrive Pro is part of SharePoint Online (via Office 365) or SharePoint Server 2013 on premise. Here I will deal exclusively with SharePoint Online and as such referring to it as SkyDrive Pro Online.
SkyDrive Pro Online is designed for personal storage of documents in the ‘cloud’ and is available with all Office 365 plans that include SharePoint Online.
What is SkyDrive Pro?
[VIDEO] – SkyDrive Pro
By default it includes 25GB of storage space per licensed user which can be upgraded currently to a maximum of 100GB per user.
There is also free SkyDrive Pro client sync software for:
Windows
iOS
Windows 8
Android
This client allows you to access SkyDrive Pro Online documents on your device.
For Windows devices, this client, also provides the ability to maintain an local (off line) copy that is sync’ed with SkyDrive Pro Online.
Sync libraries using SkyDrive Pro
Store, sync and share your content
Store, sync and share your content [PDF]
Summary
– SkyDrive Pro is completely different from SkyDrive.
– SkyDrive Pro is ONLY available via SharePoint 2013 on premise or from Office 365.
– SkyDrive Pro Online is designed as a per user personal document storage area which starts with 25GB of space per licensed user.
– SkyDrive Pro Online storage can be increased up to 100GB per user.
– SkyDrive Pro client is available on various platforms and allows easy access to SkyDrive Pro Online documents from devices.
– SkyDrive Pro includes built anti-virus and anti-malware protection.
– SkyDrive Pro is a personal SharePoint Document Library.
Why You Should Move from Dropbox to SkyDrive Pro
I have just done an article for the Box Free IT site on why SkyDrive Pro is much better option than file sharing services like Dropbox. You’ll find the full article at:
http://boxfreeit.com.au/2013/10/15/why-you-should-move-from-dropbox-to-skydrive-pro/
Let me know what you think!
SkyDrive Pro online storage gets better
Microsoft has just announce 3 improvements to SkyDrive Pro Online:
1. SkyDrive Storage for all users will be increased from the current 7GB standard to 25GB.
2. You can purchase additional storage for SkyDrive Pro beyond the new 25GB limit up to 100GB.
3. New Shared with Me view to located documents shared with you.
This is great news and another indication of how cheap online storage has become. I would expect to see this limit continue to increase over time.
The ability to add more storage to SkyDrive Pro was a limit for some users but now no more. 100GB of personal space is a HUGE amount of data for one person!
As I have mentioned many time here in this blog, the future of collaboration is all about sharing and anything that makes that easier is good.
Won’t be long one would think
Got an interesting question from someone recently that I thought I’d share in a post just to highlight what I don’t believe won’t be far away for Office 365.
If you have an Outlook.com (ex Hotmail) and SkyDrive account you can “attach” (really just share a link) a file from SkyDrive to an email sent from Outlook.com as you can see above.
Unfortunately, as you can see the above screen shot from Office 365 you don’t have the option to share from SkyDrive Pro say. That said, I don’t believe that option is far away. When you select the attachment option in Office 365 you are taken to your normal Windows Explorer file browser where you locate the file on your desktop. Of course if you are using the SkyDrive Pro client app then you could certainly ‘directly’ attach any file that you have sync’ed to your desktop from SharePoint. You just can’t do it directly within the browser.
That said, the actual ‘attach’ in Outlook.com is really just creating a shared link to the file from SkyDrive. You aren’t really ‘attaching’ to the email you are sending per se. Sending an attachment via Outlook.com means that the file you ‘attach’ is now publically available via the link that is created and will remain that way unless you go back into SkyDrive and remove the permissions. In theory that link could be on sent to others or used directly in a browser to view the file without you knowing.
Even though you surrender control of any file when you attach it and send with an email anyway, it is still important to remember that ‘attaching’ via a browser in Outlook.com is really creating and sending a public link to that document which remains shared by default with everyone. Makes you curious how Office 365 might handle this when implementation time comes?
OneNote app gets much, much better
As much as I love Evernote I love OneNote even more. I use it each and every day. I use it on each and every device I own. Yes, EVERY single one! And today OneNote got even BETTER!
How is that possible? Well the FREE OneNote app for iOS and Android has just been updated and now you can use it open OneNote files just about anywhere.
One of the biggest issues with the previous version on an iPad was that you could only open OneNote files from SkyDrive. That was great but most of my business OneNote files live on a hosted SharePoint site and thus I found the iPad app a bit limiting. To overcome this I used MobileNoter which sync’ed my OneNote files from a Windows PC to MobileNoter and then to the iPad.
However, the latest version of iPad for iOS now supports accessing OneNote notebooks on just about any SharePoint site as the above screen shot shows. Now I, can open not only my notebooks on SkyDrive but also from my hosted SharePoint site and any Office 365 site!
Don’t under estimate the increased level of functionality this now provides across common non Microsoft mobile platforms (i.e. iOS and Android). Best of all? The OneNote app for both of these platforms is TOTALLY FREE!
So if you aren’t using OneNote today you should be. It is probably already on your Windows PC and now you can access and update your notebooks from any device for free!
Again, well done Microsoft. Who says Microsoft isn’t embracing other mobile platforms? I can’t tell you how pleased I am to see the new features Microsoft have just delivered with the OneNote app.
CIAOPS 