3.2 SkyDrive and SkyDrive Pro
SkyDrive is Microsoft’s answer to
synchronized files in the cloud, and part of the Live.com suite of
services. SkyDrive is a free service with a limited amount of disk
space (7GB at the time of writing), but it offers users the ability to
increase the storage with a paid subscription.
SkyDrive requires software installed to your local computer, which then
handles the task of keeping local folders on your computer in sync with
the storage account in the cloud. Users can synchronize as many computers as they wish with a single account, meaning multiple computers retain the most recent version of files.
Note For more information on SkyDrive, visit http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/skydrive/download .
Similar to the experience with Office 365
SharePoint, Microsoft has integrated SkyDrive into the Office 2013
suite of applications. Opening and saving documents to your SkyDrive is
as easy as opening and saving documents from the synchronized folder on
your local computer. The Office 2013 applications also have the option
to open and save to SkyDrive if you have previously configured a SkyDrive account within Windows 8. Figure 9
shows a screenshot from Excel 2013. I have configured my SkyDrive
account as part of my Live.com identity in Windows 8, so Office 2013
understands that I have a SkyDrive location to save and open my files.
There appears to be some confusion in the
marketplace regarding the existence of SkyDrive Pro with on-premise and
O365 SharePoint. SkyDrive Pro is a version of SkyDrive that ships with
Office 2013 and allows synchronization of files with on-premise and
0365 SharePoint. SkyDrive Pro caters to business and enterprise users.
For many of those who are not developers or
prerelease software advocates, Office 2013 is out of mind until it
releases to the general populous, whereas SkyDrive and Live.com
are very much mainstream, which may have contributed to confusion on
the role played by SkyDrive Pro. Some thought that SkyDrive Pro was the
paid subscription service of SkyDrive. SkyDrive Pro is very different
from SkyDrive on Live.com, but both offer similar functionality for
management and synchronization of Office files in the cloud and
enterprise. For the remainder of this section, I shall concentrate on
how SkyDrive Pro relates to SharePoint.
Figure 10 shows the SkyDrive and SkyDrive Pro tiles
that I have installed in my Windows 8. I included this figure to
illustrate that SkyDrive and SkyDrive Pro are very different
applications. For the following examples, I assume that you have
SkyDrive Pro installed on your Windows 7 or Windows 8 computer.
- 1. Click the tile to launch SkyDrive Pro on your local computer (Figure 10).
- 2. When launching SkyDrive Pro for the first time, you should see a dialog like that in Figure 11.
- 3. Provide the URL of a SharePoint (on-premise or O365) document library in the text box.
- 4. Optionally, change the local sync folder location on disk (click the Change link).
- 5. Click the Sync Now button when ready.
If you followed all the previous steps, you
should now have a synchronized folder on your computer, which
synchronizes with the document library in SharePoint. You can open,
edit, and save documents on the local computer and SkyDrive Pro will
synchronize the changes to SharePoint. Similarly, you (or someone else
on your team) can open, edit, and save documents via SharePoint, and
SkyDrive Pro ensures that all changes synchronize with those on the
local disk. By default (unless you changed the location), SkyDrive
creates sync locations in the profile folder for the current user (c:\users\username\SharePoint).
SkyDrive Pro is smart enough to handle multiple SharePoint locations. I created a sync location
for a document library in my O365 SharePoint team site, and a sync
location for a document library in my on-premise SharePoint. Looking in
the c:\user\username\SharePoint folder on my disk, I see the two locations, as in Figure 12.
Look at the screenshot in Figure 12;
if you cast your eyes to the favorites in the left pane, you can see
that SkyDrive Pro has created an entry for SharePoint, so you can get
at your files quickly from within Windows Explorer.
There is a more convenient method for adding sync locations via the SharePoint web interface.
- Open your SharePoint 2013 site.
- Navigate to any document library to which you have permissions.
- Click the Sync link in the top left of the page (Figure 13).
What do you think happens if you open a file
from SharePoint, via SkyDrive Pro, and another user on your team
performs the same action? The good news is that SharePoint and SkyDrive
Pro understand live co-authoring,
which is the topic in the next section. Both users can edit the same
document and save whenever they wish, and SharePoint will manage live
editing and keeping changes to the same file in sync. SharePoint 2010
and Office 2010 included the capability to live co-author, but
third-party disk sync tools did/do not support it.
