Tag: SkyDrive

Some perspective on SkyDrive storage

I’m starting to see people get a little agitated about SkyDrive Pro storage so I thought I’d answer some of the most common queries to provide a little balance to what seems to be a bit of unfair ‘Microsoft bashing’ in my opinion.
1. Some seem to think that SkyDrive consumer (i.e. http://live.skydrive.com) is 25GB of storage. If you sign up today it is actually 7GB, just like SkyDrive Pro. Those that current have 25GB where probably grandfathered when SkyDrive consumer was upgraded a number of years ago. However, if you sign up for SkyDrive consumer today you will only receive 7GB for free.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-au/skydrive/compare
2. Unlike SkyDrive consumer, SkyDrive Pro does not allow you to purchase additional storage. However, you can purchase additional shared storage for all SharePoint Online plans which you never used to be able to. For example, in in the previous version of Office 365 P plans you couldn’t add storage to SharePoint Online but now you can. Again, and improvement Microsoft has enabled after feedback. I will however point out that although you CAN purchase additional storage for all plans now on some plans it still remains unavailable as I detailed in an earlier blog post:
https://blog.ciaops.com/2013/04/additional-sharepoint-space-for-m-and-p.html
However, I am sure it isn’t far away for those plans.
3. When Microsoft upgraded SkyDrive consumer they looked at how much storage existing users were using and found that 99.94% used less than 7GB:

You’ll find information about the reasoning on this blog post:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/04/23/the-next-chapter-for-skydrive-personal-cloud-storage-for-windows-available-anywhere.aspx
It is therefore totally reasonable in my mind that SkyDrive Pro should initially be set at the same free limit (i.e. 7GB), given they are also looking to make then consistent under the same brand.
4. In the previous version of SharePoint Online users had 500MB (yes MB!) of personal storage for only the Enterprise plans. The version of Office 365 increased that to 7GB for EVERY user on EVERY plan. That is and increase of 1,400% in one upgrade!
5. Microsoft is still in the process of upgrading existing users from the previous version of Office 365. This a HUGE under taking across large numbers of users in large numbers of countries. I am sure they are going to offer the ability to upgrade storage capacity for SkyDrive Pro but please allow them to at least get everyone on the same platform!
6. It is hard for me to understand how multiple users in an organization can have > 7GB of personal files unless they are large images or videos. In that case I would be saying that should that information REALLY be saved into SkyDrive Pro? if such users REALLY needed to have everything in the cloud I would be suggesting using SkyDrive consumer for things like large static images and videos and SkyDrive Pro for Office documents. You can run both quite happily together on a desktop and have information syncing to both locations if desired.
7. To me the biggest limitation of SkyDrive Pro and SharePoint Online is the current 250MB maximum file size rather than the 7GB SkyDrive Pro limit. SkyDrive Pro consumer is 2GB per file in comparison, however I expect Microsoft to raise the limit for SkyDrive Pro and SharePoint Online in the very near future.
Again, remember, if needed you can generally add to SharePoint Online shared storage so if you REALLY wanted those large files in SharePoint Online, and users already have 7GB in SkyDrive Pro, simply purchase additional shared storage and secure it with standard SharePoint security so only required users can access.
Conclusion
So in summary, yes having the option for additional SkyDrive Pro storage, beyond 7GB, would be nice but I’m sure it isn’t too far away. However, this is not really a limiting factor when looking at SharePoint Online as there are alternatives and work-arounds.

SkyDrive Pro client now available for free

In an not unexpected move Microsoft has just release the SkyDrive Pro client as a free download. You can find it here:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=39050
Previously, as I have detailed in this blog, the only way that you could obtain the client app was by installing Office 2013 Pro Plus.
This is GREAT news as it makes SharePoint SkyDrive so much easier and available for all users! The SkyDrive Pro client app although now free is still only available for current Windows PC’s but I would expect you’ll see versions for other platforms available very, very soon. So stay tuned to this blog for updates!
Thank you Microsoft.

SkyDrive Pro Primer webinar–preview

I have uploaded a 10 minute preview of the webinar I did today on SkyDrive.

 

SkyDrive Channel

One of the great cloud services I use regularly is If This Then That. Basically it allows you to create ‘recipes’ that automate functions between web apps. They have just added a ‘channel’ for SkyDrive!

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So what can you do with this?

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Here are some examples of what others have created. You can copy these or create your own.

Remember If This Then That has a huge amount of other channels that you can do all sorts of automated process with.

Don’t forget my all time favourite ‘recipes’.

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A bit more on Skydrive Pro

if you haven’t seen my previous post (Skydrive Pro Primer) then I suggest you have a look so you know what I have discovered so far.

 

I fired up a new Windows 8 machine and installed Office 2013 Professional on it. When I selected the option to customize the installation I see:

 

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As previously suspected, SkyDrive Pro is part of Office 2013.

 

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Now if I look at my desktop I see a SkyDrive Pro 2013 icon.

 

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Selecting the icon bring up the above window that asks which SharePoint Library I want to sync.

 

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If I select the change button I can now select a new location on my local machine where the library will be sync’ed.

Skydrive Pro primer

There is a lot of confusion around about exactly what SkyDrive Pro is. Here’s what I’ve been able to deduce.

 

– Skydrive Pro is part of SharePoint 2013.

– It allows synch’ing of nominated files in SharePoint 2013 to the desktop.

– It is designed as a per user solution, it not designed to bulk sync information from SharePoint 2013 to a network share (a al Dropbox).

– It requires you to have Office 2013 installed to work.

– It is completely different from SkyDrive Live consumer product.

 

So how does it work? Here’s the experience with the latest Office 365 beta.

 

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Login to the Office 365 beta portal and select SkyDrive from the menu across the top.

 

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Select Sync in the top right of the page.

 

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When you do you might get the above inability to display the page with a URL starting with grvopen://https. This is because there is no local app that can do the sync’ing. I would have thought that this piece of software would simply download automatically if it wasn’t found on the local machine. Unfortunately it doesn’t appear so. To use SkyDrive Pro sync’ing you need to have Office 2013 installed. Thus, the SkyDrive Pro sync’ing desktop app appears to be part of Office 2013.

 

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If you now install Office 2013 and repeat the attempt to sync after the install has completed you will see:

 

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Allow this.

 

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Allow again if prompted.

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You should now see the address of the document library in the library to sync as shown above. Press the Sync Now button.

 

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If you are using Office 365, as I am in this case, you may be prompted to login to Office 365.

 

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You should now see any files being sync’ed as shown above.

 

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Once complete, if you press the Show my files button you should see

 

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So any files copied here will be sync’ed with the location in SharePoint and any new files that get loaded into that SharePoint location will be sync’ed locally in this location.

 

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Now, if you go to any document library in SharePoint 2013 you will again see the option to Sync. Selecting that will prompt you, as above, as to what you want to sync. Make the selection and press Sync selected button.

 

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You will now see that new sync’ed location added under favourites. Interestingly it will be given a new name as shown above.

 

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If you look in the system tray you will find a SkyDrive Pro icon. Right mouse clicking will display the above menu. One would expect that if this icon is shown in the system tray sync’ing to SharePoint 2013 will not happen.

 

If instead of Office 2013 you have Office 2010 Professional Plus installed, when you attempt to sync it will use SharePoint 2010 Workspace. Thus, if you have Office 2010 Professional Plus you won’t get the SkyDrive app.

 

The main question I have now is, can I download just the SkyDrive Pro app somewhere and use it without Office 2013? One kinda thinks that this is what will happen as most people won’t have SharePoint Workspace and, at least initially not Office 2013 either. With sync’ing of documents from the cloud to the desktop being very important I certainly hope the provide this SkyDrive Pro Desktop app for free as they do with the consumer grade SkyDrive Live local app.

 

If I find more information I’ll post it, but don’t forget this is still beta software, yet to be released.