OneDrive Message Center Updates February 1 to 28

Last Updated on April 28, 2019 by Mathew Diekhake

Hi everyone,

Here are the latest updates to the OneDrive service that shipped in February 2019 or coming soon in March 2019!

We have some great improvements coming to the product in February 2019 and early March 2019 including:

OneDrive desktop client sync behavior

Updates to the Shared with me experience on OneDrive mobile

A new sharing settings page for the SharePoint admin center in Office 365 and

A new ability to customize the help message that users see when they are blocked from sharing externally by policy.

As always, feel free to share your feedback in the comments below.

New settings to control OneDrive desktop client’s auto-pause behavior

Available Now

You can now control the OneDrive sync client’s auto-pause behavior on your PC when your device is connected to a metered network or if your device is in battery saver mode. New controls are located in OneDrive sync client settings under the “Settings” tab.

OneDrive desktop client settings

By default, the OneDrive sync client will automatically pause whenever a device connects to a metered network or switches to a battery saver mode*. You can override this behavior by un-checking the corresponding checkboxes in the Settings tab. These settings are respected across your personal OneDrive and OneDrive for Business instances.

*Note that the option to enable/disable auto-pause when the device is in battery saver mode will not be visible if the device does not use a battery as a power source (plugged-in desktop PC, etc.)

Administrators can manage these settings globally through provided group policies. Read about them here.

Shared With Me on OneDrive Mobile Updates

Starting rollout in February 2019

We are rolling out updates to the Shared with Me experience in mobile to include new metadata including who shared the file with you and when. In addition, new sorting options around this additional metadata will be available. Finally, you’ll be able to group content in this view by who shared content with you and when so it is as easy as possible for you to find the content you are collaborating on.

Shared With Me on OneDrive mobile

Updated sharing page for the SharePoint admin center in Office 365

Rolling out in early March 2019

As part of our efforts to update the SharePoint admin center in Office 365, we are proud to announce that the sharing page is now available! This page has been re-designed from the ground up to be easier to use and understand and we’ve made some fantastic performance improvements as well. We’ll continue to improve this page (including introducing the last few settings that are still available only in classic).

New sharing admin page

Custom Sharing Help Link

Now Available

We’re introducing a new IT administrator feature that allows you to provide a custom link to end users when they are blocked from sharing externally by policy. For example, this can be used if you want to direct users to explain why external sharing is disable or if you want to direct them to an internal portal where they can request a policy change. This feature is only available via the latest version of SharePoint Online Management Shell with the command Set-SPOTenant -CustomizedExternalSharingServiceUrl http://<your url>.com.

Example error message in the OneDrive sharing dialog

Thanks again for your time and eyeballs to learn about what available and coming for OneDrive in Office 365.

Thanks,

Stephen Rice – Program Manager – OneDrive engineering