Microsoft is rolling out a new feature to allow users to move OneDrive shortcuts to shared or private folders. Although a nice upgrade, being able to move shortcuts is not the biggest OneDrive issue. What stops me using shortcuts is the clash between them and the OneDrive sync client. It seems like it should be an easy fix for Microsoft to apply, and when they do, I’ll happily move OneDrive shortcuts around.
Two Microsoft 365 message center notifications covering Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) for OneDrive and Lists are interesting, but the news of the arrival of the new Nucleus synchronization engine within the OneDrive sync client (for Windows) is even more interesting. Together, the combination of PWAs and Nucleus make OneDrive and SharePoint data more accessible to users.
The OneDrive sync client is an important Microsoft 365 component which underpins features like autosave and coauthoring of Office documents. During the March 15 Azure AD outage, the client had a meltdown and removed all the local copies of files stored in a SharePoint Online folder, seemingly because it couldn’t authenticate. The problem was easily fixed, but it’s a bad example of handling what could be a transient authentication issue.
OneDrive clients have access to version history for files stored in SharePoint Online and OneDrive (business and consumer). Until they don’t, which is why I am grumpy today. As it turns out, the feature works on one PC but not another, and that’s super-frustrating.