Dealing with OneDrive for Business Is Challenging, Disabling it isn’t the Answer
I was intrigued by a post by Tony Redmond this morning:
No Practical Way to Disable OneDrive for Business
I clicked through because I wanted to know why someone was asking for this, and Tony listed a number of actual challenges. He also pointed out the difficulty of not having access to many of the M365 tools that integrate with OneDrive. (He mentioned Whiteboard, meeting recording, etc., but even the basics of sharing files in a chat or opening an email attachment in Outlook on the web don’t work without OneDrive.)
I would argue that you’re better off figuring out how to deal with OneDrive than disabling it. It’ll be less painful.
I’ve also seen one topic he covered: what to do with departed employees.
The truth of this becomes evident when employees leave the organization and colleagues suddenly discover that much of the knowledge that they depend on is located in shared files in the OneDrive account of the now-departed employee. The problem is compounded by the need for someone to find the valuable data amongst all the personal information (likely including PII data) in the account before SharePoint Online removes the account.
In the past, the usual solution was to extend the OneDrive for Business account retention period to the maximum (3650 days) to allow people to continue to access the shared files. Over time, the information stored in the account aged and became less valuable so that it didn’t matter when the retention period expired to allow SharePoint to delete the account. That tactic is still viable, but Microsoft’s plan to charge for unlicensed OneDrive accounts from January 2025 means that cost is now a consideration.
Specifically, we discovered that other users commonly use files shared by departed users from OneDrive. They have accessed them through their recent file menu without realizing where they are located until the OneDrive account is deleted. Then, the link no longer works, and they call IT, who discovers it pointed to a OneDrive location that is gone.
So, we made OneDrive part of our offboarding process. Specifically, we checked the OneDrive account on the last day and stopped sharing anything. This causes the shortcut to break and gives everyone time to notice that the files they are working on exist in the OneDrive of the departed user, and it’s a simple task to relocate them. We also have the opportunity to review the files for anything that should be kept longer or confirm that the information that should be a record is available where we keep records. (For example, it’s not uncommon for someone to temporarily share a document from OneDrive that already exists in our document management system or collaborate on a document in OneDrive and then copy the finished product to the DMS but forget to remove the OneDrive copy.)
Does that require effort on our part? Sure.
Is it better than having multiple users update a document or lose necessary historical documentation from a location set to auto-delete? Yes, and it’s not even close.
Turning off OneDrive would eliminate this risk and all collaboration opportunities in Teams and OneDrive. Is it really worth it?
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