Tech Talk: One Drive for Business

Published: May 8, 2015

The College of Western Idaho (CWI) Information Technology Department is presenting a series of articles that will highlight and provide tips for applications within Office365. CWI utilizes Office 365, which offers several applications along with online Email.

Employees may already be familiar with OneDrive, which is a free offering from Microsoft to store personal documents and other content in the cloud. This service is different from OneDrive for Business. OneDrive for Business is one of the applications available to CWI employees as part of the Office365 service and is online storage intended for business purposes. With this application, files can be updated and shared from anywhere. Office documents can also be worked on, simultaneously with colleagues, with enterprise grade security and compliance built in.  Each user gets 1TB of space in the cloud with OneDrive for Business.

All files stored in OneDrive for Business are private unless they are shared. Files can easily be shared with everyone in the organization by placing it in the Shared with Everyone folder, for example.  Please remember that sensitive or confidential information should not be included in a file that is placed in the Shared with Everyone folder. 

Files and/or folders can also be shared with specified co-workers to collaborate on projects;

  1. Go to OneDrive for Business online at Office365 and find the document or folder being shared.
  2. Select the file or folder and select Share from the option list.
  3. In the Share dialog box on the Invite People tab, type names or email addresses of people you want to share the document or folder with.
  4. Select a permission setting, such as Can Edit or Can View.
  5. A message can be included with an email that's sent to all invitees, if desired.  The email includes a link to the shared document.
  6. To skip sending an email, click Show Options and then uncheck Send an email invitation.

TIP: When an email is sent from the Outlook Web App in Office365, an OneDrive for Business file can be attached as a link instead of sending an attachment. When a file is attached as a link, the recipient is automatically granted permission to edit the file.  This saves space in everyone's mailbox, while also encouraging people to edit the same copy in OneDrive for Business.

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