Microsoft is upgrading OneDrive with several new significant offline capabilities to boost productivity and collaboration.
The new features can be grouped into two categories: those that support users when they are offline and those that support them when they are online but wish to proactively prep for more effective offline working.
The former capabilities include opening and interacting with OneDrive’s “Home”, “My files”, “Shared”, “Favorites”, “People”, and “Meeting” views, as well as opening locally stored Office and non-Office files in their native app to make and save edits. The latter features users being able to designate specific files or folders for offline access directly from the OneDrive web interface.
Andrey Esipov, Principal Product Manager in OneDrive and Microsoft Lists Products at Microsoft, wrote in an accompanying blog post:
Last October we updated OneDrive for web with a number of new features and enhancements to help you swiftly retrieve your files and content no matter where they live in your organisation. Continuing with our ambition to give you simple and fast access to your files, we’re now launching offline mode, which brings both significant speed improvements and offline capabilities when using OneDrive in your favourite browser.”
Users must ensure they have the latest OneDrive sync app on their Windows or Mac computer to activate offline mode. Logging in to OneDrive for the web in Microsoft Edge or Google Chrome triggers a one-time setup. Once enabled, users can access OneDrive and perform tasks offline, like browsing, organising, and editing files. Changes made offline sync when they reconnect to the internet. They can toggle offline mode in OneDrive settings as needed.
Offline mode is rolling out now worldwide to OneDrive work and school users.
More Details On The New Features
Offline mode in OneDrive offers a range of capabilities when internet connectivity is unavailable. Users can access and engage with various views, including “Home”, “My files”, “Shared”, “Favourites”, “People”, and “Meeting”. Detailed metadata such as file owner, size, recent activity, and last open date are readily accessible.
Moreover, users can manage files efficiently by renaming, sorting, moving, or copying within the “My files” view of OneDrive for web, with changes syncing automatically upon reestablishing an internet connection.
The functionality extends to opening and editing locally stored Office and non-Office files in their native applications. Microsoft suggests this feature is invaluable for maintaining productivity in environments with erratic or absent internet access.
Offline mode in OneDrive also introduces new capabilities when users are online. They can designate files or folders for offline access directly from OneDrive for web and optimise local storage by converting files to online-only status.
Additionally, users can experience up to three times faster loading times when accessing files in OneDrive through browsers or the OneDrive app in Microsoft Teams and Outlook. Previously exclusive to PC or Mac, actions like designating files for offline access can now be performed within OneDrive for web. This easy functionality transforms OneDrive’s offline mode into a valuable asset for users, offering efficiency without task switching.
Files On-Demand is another compelling new feature, enabling access to all of a user’s OneDrive files via Windows File Explorer or Finder on Mac without downloading them, saving storage space. With offline mode, users can manage Files On-Demand directly in their browser. While online, users can select files always to be available locally or mark offline files as online-only to free up space on their computer.
Offline mode utilises a user’s device’s local storage to store file metadata like name, size, author, and last accessed date via the OneDrive Sync app. This speeds up OneDrive load times in your browser and interactions in apps like Microsoft Teams and Outlook. Accessing content from the local cache instead of the cloud server improves data retrieval speeds, ensuring a seamless experience even with slow connections.
Another Busy Week For Microsoft
Microsoft reported its latest earnings call late last week, with CEO Satya Nadella highlighting several significant milestones for Teams.
Notably, Teams surpassed one million Teams Rooms while Teams Phone saw substantial growth, with 20 million PSTN users, reflecting a nearly 30 percent increase compared to the previous year. Nadella emphasised the integration of AI-powered capabilities like automatic camera switching and speaker recognition to enhance hybrid meeting quality and efficiency.
Microsoft’s overall financial performance was robust, with total sales reaching $61.9bn and operating income rising by 23 percent.
In other Microsoft news, the vendor and the Coca-Cola Company unveiled a five-year strategic partnership to explore new technology avenues together. As part of the agreement, there will be a $1.1 billion investment in Microsoft Cloud and its Gen AI capabilities. The goal is to leverage their combined resources to develop GenAI applications across various business functions.
Lastly, Dropbox announced the release of new integrations with Microsoft, including real-time co-authoring of Microsoft files from within Dropbox.
Dropbox has introduced a beta version of Co-Authoring, enabling teams to make live edits to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files directly from the web and mobile. This feature, part of Dropbox’s ‘Spring Release’, is complemented by an enhanced integration with Microsoft Teams, facilitating seamless search, upload, sharing, and previewing of content in Dropbox directly from Microsoft 365.
from UC Today https://ift.tt/uqb6XFJ
0 Comments