On this episode, we hear from Gaia Carini and Katy Erlandson from the OneDrive engineering team. We dig into OneDrive to distinguish the value between the "Add to OneDrive" feature and general sync of team site document libraries - sometimes referred to as "Shared libraries". You’ll hear more about what each capability does, the path forward by design to make it easy for you, plus guidance for today and going forward. The whole of this episode spawned from a Twitter thread request, and we think you'll like this audible response. Click here for this episode's corresponding blog post. Full transcript below. Gaia Carini (Principal GPM) | Twitter | LinkedIn Katy Erlandson (Senior product manager) | LinkedIn Mark Kashman |@mkashman [co-host] Chris McNulty |@cmcnulty2000 [co-host] OneDrive | Website | Help and learning | @OneDrive | OneDrive community blog | Feedback SharePoint Facebook | @SharePoint | SharePoint community blog | Feedback Resources: "Sync in SharePoint and OneDrive" includes info + PowerShell script if you want to remove the Sync button from all the SharePoint libraries in your organization | Set-SPOTenant -HideSyncButtonOnTeamSite $true The @RippedOrange tweet thread that started it all: "Sync vs Add Shortcut to OneDrive" "Add shortcuts to shared folders in OneDrive for work or school" (support article) Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. Microsoft Tech Community Home Stay on top of Office 365 changes Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts Upcoming Events: European SharePoint Conference 2022 (Nov.28 - Dec. 1) Copenhagen, Denmark at the Bella Center Microsoft 365 Conference (Dec.6-8.2022) Las Vegas, NV Follow The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone TRANSCRIPT MARK KASHMAN: Welcome to the Intrazone, a show about the Microsoft 365 Intelligent Intranet. I’m Mark Kashman, Senior Product Manager on the Microsoft 365 marketing team. And on today’s episode, we hear from Gaia Carini, Principal Group Product Manager, and Katy Erlandson, Senior Product Manager, both from the OneDrive engineering team, here to dig in to distinguish the value between Add to OneDrive, the feature, and general sync of Teams Site Document Libraries. There’s a lot that you can do, and there’s some best practices. And just so you know, document libraries in this case are sometimes referred to as shared libraries, those that you share with your, or in a shared space, effectively outside of your OneDrive, your own personal work OneDrive, but you want to bring in all of those files and folders even if they’re shared. So you’re going to hear about each of these capabilities, the Add to OneDrive and the common notion of sync, and the path forward—by design—to make it easier for you and pervasive. You’ll hear guidance today and going forward, plus a few favorite tips and tricks—direct from the team—that designs the overall user experience of OneDrive. And the of the whole of this episode kicked off by request from our audience on a unique platform discussion, and we will share that as we kick off the episode with Gaia and Katy. Just a fun way where we heard some great feedback that turned into a great episode. So I just have a few thoughts to share. When you actually think about the Add to OneDrive feature, it’s really easy. You just locate the folder that you want to add to your OneDrive, select the circle of the Folders tile, so that you can take an action on it, and then select Add Shortcut to My Files—effectively Add to OneDrive at the top of the menu—or you just right-click a folder and select that same notion, Add Shortcut to My Files. So this is a feature that I use, the Add to OneDrive, for all of the files in this podcast, really forever – for wherever I am in my OneDrive. Most commonly, here at my desk at home, I go into the Windows Explorer, I find the Mark-Microsoft OneDrive icon, I click into the Documents-The Intrazone folder, and there it is, even though this comes from a document library in a SharePoint site that’s connected to a Teams’ team that we use to help manage this podcast. It’s really just a one-or-two-click-away action for me to get to those show notes and the folders, and all of the things we do per each episode across the various Microsoft Teams channel, effectively a folder in a document library. I have access to all of that. No matter where I look across OneDrive, once I’ve added it to OneDrive, created that shortcut for my common My Files experience, and it takes me to wherever those files are located, without moving them, but it’s a great reference with some real ease of access. So I do this for the Intrazone, I do it for the Microsoft Lists product management that I help manage here at Microsoft, and of course with various conferences, some of which are managed by other people, which I think is one of the best possible use cases where somebody else is managing files and folders, and I go in and I add those that are most relevant to me, during that event, to my OneDrive, by just clicking on their folders and files and add to my OneDrive. I have access, so I can do that, and then I will have access, more directly, without having to navigate to that site or that team. It’s just right there in Windows Explorer, same experience, document/name of event, even if it’s managed by somebody else who’s invited me into that team, and then we all work on a variety of files, but then I have access to all of that, with fewer clicks and more in my own domain so I know which files are mine and which files are coming from a shared location. That’s a little bit of how it works, how I use it. I think the best thing, though, is to get clarity of what we’re really here to answer, which is, how do I distinguish that Add to OneDrive feature with Team Site sync when I’m using OneDrive? And no better people to help answer that than from the product team, so let’s bring in Gaia and Katy to address this and much more. (Music.) All right, it is enough of you hearing Chris and I speculating what this OneDrive sync and all the things you can do in this modern era of files experiences everywhere. We are here talking with Gaia and Katy from the OneDrive team, joining us on the Intrazone. Gaia and Katy, welcome. GAIA CARINI: Thanks, Mark, we’re excited to be here. MARK KASHMAN: And I’m excited that you’re here. Before we get into the why we’re here, which might be obvious to everybody, but we have a really particular reason that’s kind of a fun reason of the way this episode came about. But if you don’t mind, both of you sharing just a little bit about what you do on the OneDrive team, and of course there – if there’s more that you do here at Microsoft, people would love to know a little bit more about you. So I thought, Katy, we would start with you. KATY ERLANDSON: I’m a PM on the OneDrive sync team. I’ve been working primarily on our enterprise features, the last few years, and Add to OneDrive being one of them, so I’m happy to be here today and talk more about that. MARK KASHMAN: Very nice, and Gaia. GAIA CARINI: Hi, everyone. I’m Gaia. I am the Group Product Manager of the OneDrive sync team. So my team, including Katy, works on OneDrive for Windows and macOS across consumer and commercial users and scenarios. And yeah, I’ve been working on sync for several years now, and I love being on the OneDrive team, and it’s been really fun. MARK KASHMAN: What I thought was fun about this episode, I know you both know, but for our audience, you should know that the impetus of this episode truly came from our audience in the broadest way. There was a Twitter discussion that was going on, and the focus of that was "when do I use the Add to OneDrive feature versus sync?" And of course, you can imagine somebody out there was thinking about who they should pull into this conversation, and we now have Gaia and Katy who are about as close to the source of answering that question, which we will address it in the exact way that you’d imagine, the OneDrive team as the accurate way. You know, when you first saw that Twitter discussion, there was that twee threat. A. I was really happy that you said yes to joining us on the Intrazone to provide the answer. Is that a common thing that you see people asking, or as they’re trying to navigate some of the feature sets and capabilities of OneDrive? GAIA CARINI: Yeah, it is a question that we have been getting, and so I was looking forward to us coming here on the Intrazone to talk more about the two different ways to sync files from either shared libraries in SharePoint, or just a folder someone has shared with you in – from their OneDrive, or files from Teams. Since it is a common question, we’re really excited to go more into the differences and what our recommendations are, and what we see the long-term plan to be. MARK KASHMAN: So where do we start? We come off this thread and we start to stare at – you know, what is a great way to answer that, which I know you both have some nice thoughts around that. I thought Gaia, just to start with you, let’s set some ground foundational elements of, when we talk about sync, maybe at the Teams Site level, you know, what is that, syncing the Teams Site and then answering in that same vein of thought, what is Add to OneDrive. GAIA CARINI: So first, starting with just OneDrive sync as the app, OneDrive sync lets you access and edit and share files from Windows and macOS, no matter where they are, in your own OneDrive, in someone else’s OneDrive or in a Teams Site, you know, or in – you know, from a channel in Teams, including if you are offline. And to sync the files that are in those shared locations, we have two models th
