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APPLIES TO: 2013 2016 2019 SharePoint in Microsoft 365

Comparing SharePoint vs OneDrive: Complete Overview. Office 365 is a cloud service that is popular among services provided by Microsoft. SharePoint is a component of Microsoft Office and One Drive is a cloud storage service.

Feb 08, 2021 The OneDrive sync app creates the following folders on users' computers: OneDrive – Contoso (for syncing personal My Site files) Contoso (for syncing SharePoint team site files) In SharePoint in Microsoft 365, 'Contoso' is the tenant name that has been set for the SharePoint in Microsoft 365 instance. SharePoint and OneDrive are considered the best modern collaboration platforms or tools. These Microsoft solutions ensure that your team gets access to required data and information anytime, even from their work-from-home locations. To make that possible it is essential to migrate all your content to SharePoint and OneDrive. Mar 01, 2018 When setting up Microsoft OneDrive in your SharePoint Server on-premises environment, an IT-administrator will need to go through the following steps: Set up the required services Enable the Recently Shared Items (RSI) cache to quickly populate the Shared with Me view Verify that OneDrive is available to your users.

When you deploy SharePoint Server 2019 in your organization, your users can sync their OneDrive files as well as SharePoint team site files by using the new OneDrive sync app (OneDrive.exe) for Windows or Mac. Compared with the previous OneDrive sync app (Groove.exe), the new sync app provides:

• Improved performance and reliability
• Files On-Demand
• Support for larger files
• Higher sync limits
• The ability to silently deploy. If your Windows users are already syncing document libraries with the previous OneDrive sync app, they will transition to the new sync app automatically.
• Mac support

Requirements

1. Install SharePoint Server 2019.

2. Install the OneDrive sync app (download). For deployment info, see:

3. Configure OneDrive for SharePoint Server 2019.

Recommendations

1. Allow WNS Traffic

For the best user experience, SharePoint Server 2019 will send change notifications to sync apps via WNS web push notifications. This feature ensures sync users quickly have the latest copies of any SharePoint Server file updates. You may need to take steps to ensure outbound requests from your SharePoint Server and your users' computers can reach and properly interact with the WNS service.

For SharePoint Server:

• Allow outbound HTTPS connection to reach *.notify.windows.com

For computers running the OneDrive sync app:

• Allow outbound TLS encrypted TCP/IP socket connection to reach *.wns.windows.com
• Avoid HTTPS decryption for *.wns.windows.com on your proxy server as this likely will disconnect the socket connection.

If either the SharePoint Server or the OneDrive sync app is unable to communicate with the WNS service, then the sync app will fall back to polling the SharePoint Server roughly every two minutes looking for changes. As a result, your users may see delays of more than two minutes from the time of a server change to when the sync app downloads a changed file.

2. Opt in to Sharing Improvement Information

When configuring the SharePoint server, you can enable sharing of improvement information with Microsoft. Enabling this allows connected sync apps to send troubleshooting information. This allows the sync app team to proactively detect and correct problems, respond to customer reported problems, and improve the product over time. If this is disabled, customer escalations are harder to investigate and will require the customer to manually gather and provide logs from the impacted computers.

Configure OneDrive for SharePoint Server 2019

To set up OneDrive with SharePoint Server 2019, you can either use Group Policy or set the registry keys directly.

Note

For settings that require an organization ID, if you sync a single domain, you can use OP1. Do not use this if you sync multiple domains.

The Known Folder Move settings don't work for SharePoint Server.

Using Group Policy

Configure the following two Group Policy objects to configure OneDrive to be used with SharePoint 2019:

Specify SharePoint Server URL and organization name

The URL (SharePointOnPremFrontDoorUrl) is used by the sync app to authenticate the user and to set up syncing of the user's SharePoint Server hosted personal OneDrive site.The organization name (SharePointOnPremTenantName) lets you specify the name of the root folder that will be created in File Explorer. If you don't supply an organization name, the sync app will use the first segment of the URL as the name. For example, office.sharepoint.com would create the folder 'office'.

Specify the OneDrive location in a hybrid environment

This setting (SharePointOnPremPrioritization) lets you specify if the sync app should first set up a sync relationship with SharePoint in Microsoft 365 (the default) or the SharePoint on-premises server if the user identity exists in both identity providers. The sync application's Settings dialog can be used to 'Add Account' the same identity for the other SharePoint realm after the first has been configured (if the user identity exists in both).

You should be able to find these Group Policy objects using the Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc) when navigating to Computer ConfigurationAdministrative TemplatesOneDrive. If the OneDrive folder is not present, you can add the OneDrive Group Policy template by copying the following two files from the OneDrive installation folder after you have installed the latest OneDrive sync app on that computer:

• C:UsersusernameAppDataLocalMicrosoftOneDriveonedrivesyncclientversionadmOneDrive.admxtoC:WindowsPolicyDefinitionsOneDrive.admx
• C:UsersusernameAppDataLocalMicrosoftOneDriveonedrivesyncclientversionadmOneDrive.admltoC:WindowsPolicyDefinitionsen-USOneDrive.adml

To automate this copying using PowerShell, you could use:

More information:Learn how to manage OneDrive using Group Policy

By setting the registry keys

Alternatively, you can also directly configure the following underlying registry keys:

Key	Type	Value	Required
HKLM:SoftwarePoliciesMicrosoftOneDriveSharePointOnPremFrontDoorUrl	String	https://sharepoint.contoso.local	required
HKLM:SoftwarePoliciesMicrosoftOneDriveSharePointOnPremPrioritization	DWORD (32-bit)	1	optional
HKLM:SoftwarePoliciesMicrosoftOneDriveSharePointOnPremTenantName	String	Contoso	optional

Differences between syncing files in SharePoint Server and SharePoint in Microsoft 365

If your organization also uses the OneDrive sync app to sync files in Microsoft 365, here's what will be different for users who sync on-premises files.

Single Top-level URL

If you have deployed multiple on-premises SharePoint Server farms in your enterprise, on a given client computer, you will only specify a single 'SharePointOnPremFrontDoorUrl'. For a given user, you should configure their computer with the SharePoint Server URL that hosts their individual OneDrive site or if they don't have a OneDrive site, where the team sites they are most likely to sync are hosted. Your users will be able to start syncing team site content from any of your on-premises SharePoint Server farms by navigating to the web experience of the Team Site and clicking the Sync button on that site.

For example, you have a SharePoint Server farm for your Finance department and another for the rest of your organization. Users who are members of the Finance department have their individual OneDrive site hosted on the Finance department's SharePoint Server farm. For those Finance employees, you use your computer management system to set the SharePointOnPremFrontDoorUrl registry key policy on their computer to have your Finance specific farm's URL. For all other employees, you set the SharePointOnPremFrontDoorUrl to your other SharePoint Server farm URL. The sync app will look for and provision the user's OneDrive on the appropriate SharePoint Server farm as needed.

Folder names

The OneDrive sync app creates the following folders on users' computers:OneDrive – Contoso (for syncing personal My Site files)Contoso (for syncing SharePoint team site files)

In SharePoint in Microsoft 365, 'Contoso' is the tenant name that has been set for the SharePoint in Microsoft 365 instance. In SharePoint on-premises, there is no tenant name associated to the instance of SharePoint. You can set this with the 'Specify SharePoint Server URL and organization name' group policy, or the sync app will use the first segment of your SharePoint URL.

File thumbnails and previews

Thumbnails don't appear in File Explorer for files synced from SharePoint on-premises. If you enable Files On-Demand, and a file is online-only, a file preview won't be available. Image files and Office files will not have a thumbnail in File Explorer until the file is downloaded.

Sharing from File Explorer

When users share files and folders from File Explorer, the sharing option will open the browser instead of the Share dialog.

Privacy settings

When setting up SharePoint Server, you'll be prompted to select if clients should send error reports and usage statistics back to Microsoft. If you enable the setting, individual users can opt out by following these steps:

1. At the far right of the taskbar, in the notification area, right-click the OneDrive cloud icon.

2. Select Settings.

3. Select the Settings tab, and under Privacy, clear the option.

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Tip

Watch the following session to learn how Teams interacts with Azure Active Directory (AAD), Microsoft 365 Groups, Exchange, SharePoint and OneDrive for Business: Foundations of Microsoft Teams

Each team in Microsoft Teams has a team site in SharePoint Online, and each standard channel in a team gets a folder within the default team site document library. Files shared within a conversation are automatically added to the document library, and permissions and file security options set in SharePoint are automatically reflected within Teams. To see the impact of changing a site address in SharePoint, read Change a site address.

Note

When To Use Onedrive Vs Sharepoint

This article applies only to standard channels. The architecture for private channels is different from standard channels. Each private channel has its own SharePoint site collection that's separate from the parent team site. To learn more, see Private channels in Microsoft Teams.

Private chat files are stored in the sender's OneDrive for Business folder, and permissions are automatically granted to all participants as part of the file sharing process.

If users aren't assigned and enabled with SharePoint Online licenses, they don't have OneDrive for Business storage in Microsoft 365 or Office 365. File sharing will continue to work in standard channels, but users won't be able to share files in chats without OneDrive for Business storage in Microsoft 365 or Office 365.

By storing the files in the SharePoint Online document library and OneDrive for Business, all compliance rules configured at the tenant level will be followed.

Note

Integration with SharePoint On-premises is not supported for Microsoft Teams at this time.

The following is the example of relationships between team, standard channel, and document library.

For every team, a SharePoint site is created, and the Shared Documents folder is the default folder created for the team. Each standard channel, including the General channel (the default channel for each team) has a folder in Shared Documents.

Note

It's not currently possible to replace the default SharePoint site and document library with another one. We've heard from you that you want it, and we're considering it. Check the Teams Roadmap or Teams UserVoice to stay on top of upcoming features.

Note

Microsoft will be moving from UserVoice to our own customer feedback solution on a product-by-product basis during 2021. Learn more.

Tip

To add a tab to your team that links to an existing SharePoint site page or to your existing SharePoint document library:

1. Select the plus sign next to the tabs.
2. Select either SharePoint for an existing SharePoint site page or Document Library for an existing document library.
3. Select the appropriate page or document library.

For every user, the OneDrive folder Microsoft Teams Chat Files is used to store all files shared within private chats with other users (1:1 or 1:many), with permissions configured automatically to restrict access to the intended user only.

Note that for public teams, the SharePoint team site is provisioned with 'Everyone except external users' access. The public team isn't displayed in Teams for people who aren't members of that team. However, they can access content on the SharePoint team site using the URL of the SharePoint team site.

Channel Files tab

This feature hasn't yet been released. It's been announced, and is coming soon. If you're an admin, you can find out when this feature will be released in the Message Center (in the Microsoft 365 admin center).

The Files tab in Teams closely resembles the SharePoint documents view. On the Files tab, users can:

Onedrive Sharepoint Login

• See additional options in the New file menu.
• Sync files to their local drive.
• On the All Documents menu, switch from List view to Compact list to Tiles view.
• Identify files that need attention or have malware.
• Immediately see whether a file is read-only or checked out.
• Check out and check in files.
• Pin, unpin, and change the sort order of files.
• Identify which files need metadata
• Choose from many more filter options.
• Group files based on column headings.
• Modify column settings (move left or right, hide) and column width.

Default link type setting

SharePoint and OneDrive have an admin setting for specifying the default link type for links that are created for a file. Teams is adopting that same approach by reusing the settings that the admin sets for SharePoint and OneDrive. More details about this approach are described in Change the default link type when users get links for sharing.

More information

What Is Sharepoint Vs Onedrive

For more information about how SharePoint works with Teams, see SharePoint and Teams: better together.

Onedrive Sharepoint Access

To learn more about the guest experience in Teams, read What the guest experience is like.