Microsoft Overhauls OneDrive With a Big New Design, AI Copilot Integration (theverge.com) 48
Tom Warren writes via The Verge: Microsoft is announcing the third generation of its OneDrive cloud storage today, complete with the company's AI-powered Copilot system, a Fluent design refresh, and big improvements to the way businesses share and use cloud documents. [...] Microsoft is overhauling the main OneDrive web app with a new Fluent design. It more closely matches the Windows 11 interface and recent changes to Office apps, and it also fits in with the latest File Explorer design updates. There is now an AI-powered file recommendations "For you" section up the top, much like File Explorer. Files that matter to your workday are surfaced here immediately and can appear here whether they're in your OneDrive, Teams, or elsewhere. [...] You can also now choose the colors of your folders, and when you share with co-workers, they will also see the color choice. [...]
One thing many OneDrive business users have been asking for is the ability to open any document from OneDrive on the web into the native desktop apps. Microsoft is adding this feature in December, with the ability to open things like CAD files or PDFs. Microsoft is also adding a new media view that includes all photos and video assets in a single location. This new OneDrive experience will also soon be available in the files section of Microsoft Teams and the file navigation part of Outlook. Microsoft expects the new OneDrive in Outlook view to be available in December.
Microsoft is also planning to integrate its Copilot AI system into OneDrive in December for everyone with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license. Copilot will offer up a daily digest of files, like a catch-up feature for documents you and your colleagues are working on. This will include a list of important changes to files and a summarized look at new comments. Microsoft says it will intelligently organize these summaries based on context and relevance. Most of the interface changes can be experienced now at onedrive.com, with more arriving in early 2024. You can view the full list of changes here.
One thing many OneDrive business users have been asking for is the ability to open any document from OneDrive on the web into the native desktop apps. Microsoft is adding this feature in December, with the ability to open things like CAD files or PDFs. Microsoft is also adding a new media view that includes all photos and video assets in a single location. This new OneDrive experience will also soon be available in the files section of Microsoft Teams and the file navigation part of Outlook. Microsoft expects the new OneDrive in Outlook view to be available in December.
Microsoft is also planning to integrate its Copilot AI system into OneDrive in December for everyone with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license. Copilot will offer up a daily digest of files, like a catch-up feature for documents you and your colleagues are working on. This will include a list of important changes to files and a summarized look at new comments. Microsoft says it will intelligently organize these summaries based on context and relevance. Most of the interface changes can be experienced now at onedrive.com, with more arriving in early 2024. You can view the full list of changes here.
In other words, shit (Score:5, Insightful)
It more closely matches the Windows 11 interface
As usual, Microsoft continues its decades-long consistency of downgrading, obfuscating, and making things less usable with each iteration.
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That is the sad truth.
Of course not all the changes are to the worse, but such a large % of them are that it is just silly.
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"Based on your feedback around the deletion experience, weâ(TM)ve made improvements to Add to OneDrive feature. In the past when you deleted a shortcut to a file that was created with the Add to OneDrive feature, it deleted both the shortcut and the file in SharePoint.
An update to this formerly frustrating experience is rolling out now. Moving forward, when you delete a file or folder shortcut to shared content, OneDrive will only remove the shortcut from your OneDrive, keeping the shared files intact
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yeah, right [slashdot.org]
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Pointing to one feature that the majority of people don't use isn't a counter to the fact that many people consider the change positive. I'm sorry your favourite killer UI element isn't working for you. Actually I'm not, I don't care because I don't use it.
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So what you're saying is your entire UI experience hangs on where they put an option that you only ever toggle once when you first install your system? Shit if *that* is your complaint then Windows 11 must be damn near fucking perfection, either that or your full time job is to sit turning the widget on and off again in which case I recommend getting professional help.
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Show your privates, get useless AI (Score:4, Informative)
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"Big improvements" (Score:2)
It's amazing how often I see that particular phrase used, yet somehow end up finding my actual experience as an end user just went further into the toilet.
When will the AI Copilot feature be removed again? (Score:2)
Just asking for a friend who's missing the Skype features in his Outlook program.
By the time you get used to it, Microsoft rips the feature out of its product again.
Swamp castle (Score:2)
All your data are belong to us (Score:2)
MS is now copying the playbook from Google, what a surprise! /s
Lol (Score:2)
I'm so glad I don't do M$ support anymore. I feel bad for everyone who must continue to get the carpet ripped out from underneath them, with no recourse or straightforward way to keep it the same, just so they can use their PC.
Here M$, here's a freebie: My #1 complaint in over 25 years of Microsoft product support from customers was, 'Why can't it just stay the same?'
Just want a place to store files (Score:5, Insightful)
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Somebody (or somebodies) is making Platinum Club this year for working on that feature, which means a huge bonus, a red jacket to walk around Ready in (never mind it's in Vegas in the summer...) and a trip somewhere expensive.
The presumption being that the feature lock-in associated with the unneeded functionality will earn them revenue AND make the whole Azure thing seem worthwhile.
Re:Just want a place to store files (Score:4, Informative)
I can't be the only person who just wants to use the cloud as a file system that is mirrored, secure, encrypted, backed-up and efficient.
Get an account with Wasabi or Backblaze, then use a piece of software like MountainDuck or TnT Drive to make that cloud storage function as a locally mounted network volume.
Storage will run you about $7/TB, the software is $30 or something like that. Some things can get wonky (Access/Filemaker/Paradox/Base databases are bad news bears), good luck using that storage on a mobile device, and in the case of Wasabi, you have other pseudo-charges like retention parameters (you'll be billed for file uploads for three months even if you delete them after a day) and bandwidth usage fees (Backblaze starts charging after you download twice your storage)...but if you want boring and predictable, that's probably your best bet.
If you're adventurous enough to roll your own, Synology and QNAP have good options. They require you to have your own internet and buy drives, but there's no recurring fee for them. Similarly, Nextcloud is a pretty good alternative to the Google ecosystem as a whole, handling most of the same things a Google account does (Maps, Wallet/Pay, Youtube, and a few other relatively-obvious things absent). Again, roll-your-own, but depending on your needs and acumen, you can run an instance in AWS fairly inexpensively.
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AFAIK Backblaze dropped their egress fees for B2 completely on October 3rd. Citation needed, because I can't seem to load their Blog page right now...
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Why is it every cloud storage platform feels the need to provide extra functionality.
OneDrive is not a cloud storage functionality. It's a service provided for MS's groupware products and windows features. There's a reason it was first launched with an Office Subscription.
If you want dumb cloud storage there are countless other companies that produce a product to suit your needs. OneDrive isn't even trying to be that.
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It wasn't first launched with an Office subscription. It was originally Skydrive and was simply cloud storage. None of the new "features" prevents it from still simply being used for cloud storage.
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It was originally Skydrive
i.e. a different product with different branding. By saying back when it was a simple storage service it had a different name entirely you're actively making my point for me.
None of the new "features" prevents it from still simply being used for cloud storage.
No one said it did. But if you don't want the new features then it's not the right product for you.
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I gave up on cloud providers and just rolled my own with a nas.
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OneDrive would to better to:
* Not randomly overwrite files with older revisions when one innocently tells it to "sync"
* Not randomly fork multiple copies of files
* In general work worth a damn on macOS
How about a real upgrade? (Score:5, Funny)
Make it easy to uninstall it.
Dafuq? (Score:2)
Why the f*** would I need AI for a cloud storage system?
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You don't. OneDrive is not a cloud storage system. It's a backend service for Office and Windows that happens to store files. If you want a cloud storage system there are many options out there on the market to suit you.
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Nope. Back when it was a cloud storage service it had a different name. OneDrive was created specifically when functionality was expanded. I'm not re-writing anything, you just don't know the history.
Slashdot FUD is best FUD... (Score:1, Flamebait)
Spewing ignorance and vitriol all over the place, one can truly rely on the /. regulars to take it to the next level!
The one improvement I was secretly hoping for never made it in... Extended paths. Mainly because end users are mouth-breathing nutjobs.
Despite that, mostly a slew of welcome changes.
I hate the new interfaces (Score:2)
But I applaud MS for at least moving towards consistency. It is quite infuriating to switch between Sharepoint and Onedrive and find a completely different interface. It is quite infuriating to open a document on OneDrive only to find the "Open in Desktop App" button missing, despite that same button being present if you open the same document on Sharepoint via a library link.
Honestly Sharepoint/Onedrive is like Google's chat options. You don't know why there's multiple. You don't know what their strategy i
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It's all Sharepoint. Every Microsoft cloud service is just Sharepoint. Everything is Sharepoint. You think it's a distinct product but then you look behind the curtain and, yep, it's Sharepoint.
The one and only feature I want from OneDrive is not to choke and break completely when syncing 200000+ files. The more files you add, the worse it becomes until it's literally unusable, stuck in a perma-syncing state.
(Yes, I know, the company I work for is doing it wrong and we're using OneDrive and Sharepoint wrong
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Every Microsoft cloud service is just Sharepoint.
Whut? You cannot possibly believe this. If you *do* believe this... get educated asap.
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I think wildstoo is referring to the fact that microsoft makes Sharepoint Server, which is an on-prem solution, and Sharepoint online, which has OneDrive behind it. Both Sharepoint products share the same REST Api and the Sharepoint Javascript object model. Sometimes at work people tell me "Oh, it's on the sharepoint" and they really mean the OneDrive that is branded as Sharepoint, not our local Sharepoint server. It's confusing.
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It's all Sharepoint. Every Microsoft cloud service is just Sharepoint. Everything is Sharepoint. You think it's a distinct product but then you look behind the curtain and, yep, it's Sharepoint.
Except its not. Just because something shared a part of a codebase doesn't mean it's the same product or service. Case in point: They are different, look different, and don't have feature parity and this is my literal complaint.
The one and only feature I want from OneDrive is not to choke and break completely when syncing 200000+ files.
Not sure what your company's IT problem is, but I have no choking and am syncing way more than 200000 files thanks to the software I use generating a shitton of small working files.
I didn't know they could make it worse. (Score:1)
I was encouraged to use OneDrive at work for backups. I ignored the advice until about 2 months ago. Finally I turned it on and it immediately got stuck. Apparently OneDrive doesn't allow characters in filenames that just about every other filesystem in active use does. I turned it back off. Now I have even less reason to bother with it. I thought M$ was being less parochial, but that's just not the case.
If M$ vanished tomorrow and all its software became abandonware, I wouldn't care. I've been done
Google Photos competitor? (Score:2)
I am excited about this feature (Score:3)
I see everyone hating on it, but I'm excited about this. I work for an engineering company that uses Microsoft everything: Office, OneDrive, Teams, etc. We have many teams, each with lots of documentation stored on OneDrive. An AI-enable OneDrive woudl be awesome. "What documents explain feature X?" or "I just got the error where the web site just displays a white screen with a spinner on it, and I know that Bob chatted with someone about this problem with a customer in Australia. What did they do?" and have it search the OneNote folder, Teams chat histories, and go "Oh yeah, Jane told Bob to change foo.config." -- HOLY HECK that would be amazing. Copilot would be sooo useful: How about "Update all the documents in the Release\12.60 folder that say we support up to SQL Server 2019, to say that we support up to SQL Server 2022."
There's tons and tons of people working on this use case, and lots of plug-ins for ChatGPT and 3rd-party tools that do it. But if Microsoft integrates an AI-enabled Bing it into OneDrive, it's a game changer for a lot of companies.
The mote and the beam (Score:2)
Ah, Microsoft... Who else would decide that what a file-sync service that chokes on files with a '?' in their name really needs is a reincarnated Clippy?
Nothing I wanted. (Score:2)
Improved, with AI Spying! (Score:2)
Wow, this is insane (Score:1)
This isn't just indexing/search. The model built to drive CoPilot is more than that. Do you really trust that MS will keep your info secure; that it won't merge at least some of that info back to its own models? If so, I have a bridge to sell you, if you are interested. Maybe some land in Florida? Cryptocurrency? Prime real estate in the Metaverse?
If there's one thing that [insert name of any big tech comp