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I made the mistake of deploying Onedrive For Business


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Its hard to put into words what id like to do to the developers of this product, Since its part of office 365 I decided to deploy it at a small site.

 

What followed was months of support calls trying to get this junk to work, First I uploaded the content to the team site since they already have an access application and a newsfeed there it got about half the files up and then stalled for hours doing nothing... No messages no warnings just endless syncing, A phone call to 365 support and we learn that only 5000 files can sync to a team site :argh:

 

So now we have to start from scratch again, Uploading the files to the onedrive section (confusing the hell out of the customer) and we finally got them all uploaded. What followed was three weeks of daily support calls with random files not syncing, the entire program crashing on start-up needing to completely re-sync everything again, Leading to another call to 365 support the agent askes to get the file count and says that we are "within the limit" what limit I ask? "the 20,000 limit" :|

 

Wait nothing like this was mentioned here, There was no fine print or mentions of limitations...

https://onedrive.live.com/about/en-us/business/

 

To make things worse we are told the reason why the sync process is braking randomly is because the file names have characters that are not allowed

 

 

Invalid characters SharePoint Online

The following characters in file or folder names aren't supported when you sync OneDrive for Business with SharePoint Online:

\
/
:
*
?
"
<
>
|
#
%

Additionally, a file or folder name that begins with a tilde (~) isn't supported.

 

SharePoint Server 2013

The following characters in file name aren't supported when you sync OneDrive for Business with SharePoint Server 2013:

\
/
:
*
?
"
<
>
|
#
{
}
%
~
&

 A file name that begins with a period (.) or a tilde (~) isn't supported.

 

How the hell are you meant to sell this to a customer ? So we followed their advice and used a BFR to get rid of he characters and the problems still persisted the only solution Microsoft had was "repair the library" or "clear the upload cache" which are simply ways of saying download everything again and hope this problem doesn't repeat itself.

 

After searching online I discovered that this problem has been around since day 1 and still hasn't been fixed.

 

http://community.office365.com/en-us/f/154/t/244515.aspx

 

So since the onedrive developers are completely incompetent and since I cant just get them to switch to another provider (The contract sold them one service for mail file and site hosting) I bypassed the sync functionality entirely

 

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2616712

 

And for a full week there wasn't a single support call for this junk :jump:  but it was shortlived.

 

xro2EuQ.gif

This message greeted the users at the site as they returned to work :argh:

 

So that's how far ive got with this junk, I just thought id ask here to see if anyone had any ideas what to try next since Microsoft support is utterly pathetic.

 

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xro2EuQ.gif

This message greeted the users at the site as they returned to work  :argh:

Make sure the webclient service is set to automatic and is started.

 

But yeah, I wholeheartedly agree with everything you've said. We're migrating Home Drives to OneDrive right now and our manager asked to have the client deployed to directors. Needless to say they weren't pleased. Constant problems with syncing, crashing. At one point the application kept filling a file somewhere on the HD to the point where it grew to 50GB filling the HD.

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I had heard about a 20,000 file limit but I guess that's just OneDrive for Business. My personal OneDrive has over 50,000 files and everything syncs fine.

 

If OneDrive for Business has more limitations than a personal OneDrive account, they need to reevaluate the product offering.

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Yeah its on more than one PC webclient service isnt the problem the sodding cookie has expired

The fact that the consumer version is better than the business version is hilarious

I thought id make a few of these to express my frustration.

RvA3T3u.png

ayujJWB.png

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Based on your statements seems to me you didn't do as much research into this as you should have, if the issues are widespread then finding about it should be a simple google search away

 

Also testing should NEVER be done in a live environment, make or use your testing environment first, really, common sense there 

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so you did not research limitations before you went live, but that is all MS fault?  Did you run a POC? Trial?

 

This article clearly shows the 20k and 5k limits and character restrictions you ran into

 

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2933738

 

I can understand your frustration - but without a poc or even a trail, or previous experience with the product why would you roll it out live to a customer, no matter how small?

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I take the blame for expecting this to work as good or better than the free version or at all even the latter is asking too much, The limitations though are all Microsofts fault.

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So you think you should be able to use * or / or : in a file name - and that is MS fault?  Those have been restricted from file names forever..

 

As to 20k and 5k file limits.. Those are clearly spelled out, its your fault for not researching them.. What a company puts as restrictions on its software usage is an arbitrary value be it 20k files or 2k or 200 or 2billion.. Before you paid for any sort of subscription to using such software not asking those questions is on you.  Now if you called or had email before purchase asking for limitations and got an answer of none for number of files, etc.. Then you might have a foot to stand on for your complaints.  Currently I just think your kicking yourself for not doing proper research and looking to blame someone other than yourself.

 

So you go bitching about MS product and then your avatar is Forefront TMG??

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So you think you should be able to use * or / or : in a file name - and that is MS fault?  Those have been restricted from file names forever..

< > { } [ ] etc and that's not even the full list on that site the debug tool lists those. And to make things worse if even one of these files is detected the entire folder is abandoned.

I was actually looking for a workaround as I said in the first post, I've abandoned the sync functionality entirely because its unusable for even small buisness's regardless of where you deploy it and how many pilots you do it dosnt work even when you remove everything that isn't a-z or 1-0 in the file name.

 

Currently I just think your kicking yourself for not doing proper research and looking to blame someone other than yourself.

Thanks for telling me what I already know though, That's right on par with how useful Microsoft has been.

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So you think you should be able to use * or / or : in a file name - and that is MS fault?  Those have been restricted from file names forever..

 

As to 20k and 5k file limits.. Those are clearly spelled out, its your fault for not researching them.. What a company puts as restrictions on its software usage is an arbitrary value be it 20k files or 2k or 200 or 2billion.. Before you paid for any sort of subscription to using such software not asking those questions is on you.  Now if you called or had email before purchase asking for limitations and got an answer of none for number of files, etc.. Then you might have a foot to stand on for your complaints.  Currently I just think your kicking yourself for not doing proper research and looking to blame someone other than yourself.

 

So you go bitching about MS product and then your avatar is Forefront TMG??

There are a lot of characters that are valid when naming files on your PC but aren't when synced with OneDrive for Business (_ and # just to name two). You just named the ones that are universally unusable.

 

He should have done his research beforehand but the fact that it's a rubbish unstable product still stands and that's the whole point of this thread.

 

Never had issues with the Google Drive client. On the other hand OneDrive for Business has been driving me and my team insane since day one.

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I'm quite surprised by underscore and hyphen being restricted characters, that would put me right off as 99% of my files use those characters for readability.

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While i could understand about characters that can't be used for file name, because such character has special meaning for the OS, i wonder what about other 'restricted characters' that aren't restricted by the OS?

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I'm quite surprised by underscore and hyphen being restricted characters, that would put me right off as 99% of my files use those characters for readability.

 

Yeah that's odd. I got _'s and -'s on my personal OneDrive no problem. Microsoft shouldn't be calling this OneDrive for Business if it's really a totally different product.

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so you did not research limitations before you went live, but that is all MS fault?  Did you run a POC? Trial?

 

This article clearly shows the 20k and 5k limits and character restrictions you ran into

 

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2933738

 

I can understand your frustration - but without a poc or even a trail, or previous experience with the product why would you roll it out live to a customer, no matter how small?

 

Yes sometimes we don't get a chance to POC we are just told to do it, that doesn't stop ODB being so bad that it's worst than Microsofts free offering. I've heard this from a client asking for support from us that the free version works fine so why can't you get the business version working.... my reply - ask Microsoft.

 

I'm also not sure how you trial limits you might not hit for months, even years. Especially when the same client uses Azure to back up two servers and is way past those limits and/or are way over the 2GB upload limits. So yes you're right it can be confusing even to professionals.

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Yeah that's odd. I got _'s and -'s on my personal OneDrive no problem. Microsoft shouldn't be calling this OneDrive for Business if it's really a totally different product.

 

Technically it is, there's Sharepoint hiding beneath the branding.

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It's a business cloud app from Microsoft, what were you expecting?  it to work properly?

I would expect it to work properly... unless businesses aren't their priority anymore, which would be a mistake.

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Its hard to put into words what id like to do to the developers of this product, Since its part of office 365 I decided to deploy it at a small site.

 

What followed was months of support calls trying to get this junk to work, First I uploaded the content to the team site since they already have an access application and a newsfeed there it got about half the files up and then stalled for hours doing nothing... No messages no warnings just endless syncing, A phone call to 365 support and we learn that only 5000 files can sync to a team site :argh:

 

So now we have to start from scratch again, Uploading the files to the onedrive section (confusing the hell out of the customer) and we finally got them all uploaded. What followed was three weeks of daily support calls with random files not syncing, the entire program crashing on start-up needing to completely re-sync everything again, Leading to another call to 365 support the agent askes to get the file count and says that we are "within the limit" what limit I ask? "the 20,000 limit" :|

 

Wait nothing like this was mentioned here, There was no fine print or mentions of limitations...

https://onedrive.live.com/about/en-us/business/

 

To make things worse we are told the reason why the sync process is braking randomly is because the file names have characters that are not allowed

 

 

How the hell are you meant to sell this to a customer ? So we followed their advice and used a BFR to get rid of he characters and the problems still persisted the only solution Microsoft had was "repair the library" or "clear the upload cache" which are simply ways of saying download everything again and hope this problem doesn't repeat itself.

 

After searching online I discovered that this problem has been around since day 1 and still hasn't been fixed.

 

http://community.office365.com/en-us/f/154/t/244515.aspx

 

So since the onedrive developers are completely incompetent and since I cant just get them to switch to another provider (The contract sold them one service for mail file and site hosting) I bypassed the sync functionality entirely

 

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2616712

 

And for a full week there wasn't a single support call for this junk :jump:  but it was shortlived.

 

xro2EuQ.gif

This message greeted the users at the site as they returned to work :argh:

 

So that's how far ive got with this junk, I just thought id ask here to see if anyone had any ideas what to try next since Microsoft support is utterly pathetic.

 

 

I pretty much resist any attempt to use cloud now because of the issues I've had with customers.  It's fine for a single person that is just using it like a online storage box between several computers but start sharing and creating groups etc and it all goes to hell.  It's really not ready for business use.  Also I've had issue where there was multiple versions due to offline issues.  Then we have to figure out which one they want to keep.  Syncing issues where folders decide to just not sync no matter what you do.  Honestly it's a mess.  I still love cloud backup for server for offline backups but that's one machine again and it generally works great.

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I looked at OneDrive for work and found it would not even allow me to select an entire folder to upload. Said ta hell with it at that point. Why can't this thing just behave like a local hard disk?

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OneDrive/SkyDrive has always been a disaster. The version built into Windows 8/10 has the same sync issues and more, its simply not reliable.

 

I've never had issues like this with Dropbox/Google Drive etc.

 

And to think this is the same company that had a rock solid Live Mesh sync platform, with much more, and they abandoned it all due to stupid internal politics.

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I found a workaround for the workaround of mapping the drive.

 

http://fabiocuneaz.blogspot.ie/2014/07/sharepoint-online-cookies-cookie365.html

 

You can create a logon script

 

Cookie365.exe -s https://something-my.sharepoint.com/SomeTeamSite/Shared%20Documents -u Somebody@something.com -p 123456 -mount o:
 

You have to store the password in plain text but at least it works.

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