it took a long time. But on the first day of the Ignite conference in Atlanta, Microsoft has published a Preview version of the Next Generation Sync Client (NGSC). Now you may sync all document libraries in Office 365 to your local machine. The days of the old OneDrive for Business client called “Groove.exe) are counted.

The Next Generation Sync client version number of the Preview is  17.3.6642.0922

First, here is the Link of all News, which are arrived and will come in the next weeks and month. Inside this article, you will find another Link, that directly points to the instructions. Please read them carefully and also the known issues, before you start the installation. And do the installation one point after the other.

I myself have had problems with Windows 8.1 and IE11 as a browser. Initiate with Google Chrome (53.0.2785.116) solved the issue. With OS Windows 10 and Edge as a browser I have had no issues so far, syncing team sites and document libraries of groups.

Also you may watch the video of Reuben Krippner,Microsoft Director Management for OneDrive, what will come now and the near future.

Why Preview?

The Setup of the preview version of the Next Generation Sync client does not install one registry key, this must be done manually. In the final version you will not do this anymore.

 

Under the reg key section [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\OneDrive] you have to insert a new Key "TeamSiteSyncPreview"=dword:0000000 , but there is also a download for the Key.

You see the different Arrows for starting the first sync: The yellow arrow shows, that you start the syncing for OneDrive Personal and OneDrive for Business from the client.

The blue arrow shows, that you have to go to the time site or Group and initiate the sync from there. That’s the same procedure, we know with the old “Groove” client. The different with the NGSC is, that now you have the choice to select folders for selective sync.

So I have done to sync two team sites in Office 365 and if I open my explorer, you see the result:

	1) Synced folder and files from  OneDrive for Business Synced folder and files from team site Finance 3) Synced folder and files from team site Marketing 4) Synced folder and files from  OneDrive for Business (additional Tenant)
	So you see here , that’s a preview. The German words in the translation are still too long

Conclusion

Finally Microsoft has managed, to publish this preview. You have to do install it manually and with your own risk. We will see during the next days and weeks, where we we will have issues.