Using OneDrive for Business to work smarter and more effectively

OneDrive for Business is a platform from Microsoft that provides space in the cloud for you to store your work files so you can access it from anywhere using internet connection. You can also share the files easily to your peers within your organization or 3^rd parties, and in addition to that, you can manage the required access to modify Microsoft Office files (like Microsoft Word documents, Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, Microsoft PowerPoint presentation slides, etc) or other files, and changes that are made will be synchronized in a real-time manner.

OneDrive for Business opens up the possibility to work in collaboration with your team without having to physically meet.

OneDrive for Business gives you a huge space in the cloud (up to 1 Terabytes of storage) to keep your work files and folders. 1 TB equals to 17000 hours of music, 1000 hours of HD video, or 240000 high-resolution photos.

More than just a big storage, OneDrive for business has a lot of useful features that you can use to enhance your remote collaboration experience.

For example:

1. Powerful sharing management, even to other users outside the organization

OneDrive for Business gives you the total control of sharing files either to internal organization or 3^rd parties. This management function includes managing who has access to the documents, define the permission (read-only, modify, etc), set expiry dates on the shared link, etc.

2. Mobility experience

It’s a common thing these days that a program should have both of the PC version and the mobile version. The rapid development of mobile technology has made more tasks can now be done within the mobile device. Microsoft provides the mobile version of OneDrive for Business on the two most popular mobile platforms, iOS and Android. Using this mobile app, users can choose to work offline with the documents then easily manage (delete, copy, move, etc) or share it.

3. Synchronization management

OneDrive for Business also gives you the control to select which files and folders that you want to sync to a specific device. The selection can be different for each device. This is a very great function as now we don’t have to worry that synchronized files and folders will consume space more than the device’s hard disk can handle.

4. PDF annotation

It’s easier to mark the important points in the document by giving it a highlight, underline, or any other attracting space. OneDrive for Business has annotation feature for PDF documents that enables you to freely draw your own annotations and make your note everywhere within the document, as easy as writing on a paper.

5. Better interaction with email attachments

It’s very easy to save an email attachment to OneDrive for Business. With a simple right click in OWA (Outlook Web App) you can choose to save attachments to OneDrive for Business. Otherwise, when you want to add an attachment while composing a new email message, you will be given an option to add and share the files on your OneDrive for Business storage instead of attaching it to the email like in a conventional way.

6. Backup files and folders to OneDrive for Business

Iperius Backup has released its new feature that enables integration with OneDrive for Business. You can easily set the schedule for an automated backup task and have your important documents backed up to your OneDrive for Business storage.

7. Storage management

As stated in the beginning of the article, OneDrive for Business accounts can have up to 1 TB of storage capacity in the cloud. It such a big amount; however, you can always free up some storage space by deleting unnecessary files and folders. OneDrive for Business lets you monitor how much storage space that you have left and how much space usage per users. With this feature, you can always find out which users need to clean up their unnecessary files.

That was some of the great things about OneDrive for Business. Please note that OneDrive for Business is different from OneDrive (which comes freely when you sign up for Microsoft account or Outlook.com account, and it is intended for personal usage like save documents, photos, or other files in the cloud to easily share them with others) and Office 365 Team site (which is intended to store project related documents).