The year 2016 ends.  And I haven’t written a wish list for this year. My last wish list (written in German language) was written 12/14. And as a result: All wishes are done. Now it’s time to write a new one. For the upcoming year 2017:

My Wish list for year 2017

Documentation

Most of the implementation of the Next Generation Sync Client is done. What’s missing is a complete technical description. There is no description of all the parameters of the client. Also no description about the change of the client himself, Automatic Updates, Error handling, Group Policies and restrictions. If you find the idea of a complete description a good idea, feel free to vote for my entry in UserVoice of OneDrive.

 

Encryption

In the old days I always talk about Encryption. And the old “Groove” Sync Client which was implemented in SharePoint Workspace 2010, and this was Part of the Office 2010 Suite, are able to handle such files. So that was perfect, to encrypt your SharePoint document libraries with RMS. But the Next Generation Sync Client does not handle RMS encrypted files. I think, that would be a good idea, that the NGSC may handle RMS encrypted files.

 

Move To

Yes, you may copy in a web-Browser files and folders from OneDrive for Business to Team sites and / or Groups. But only copy. No Move. But if you copy a file, you now have it twice, and Users are confused, because there are two identical files on two different locations.

 

Reintroduction of Smart Files

During development of The Next Generation Sync Client, Microsoft has to go back some steps. But Then you may able, not to implement the old Errors of the Groove client. Even the much more advanced SkyDrive Client had to be integrated. This caused, that Microsoft let die the Smart Files technology. And told us, that most of the users have not have understand the concept od Smart Files. The following Links will explain the concept of Smart Files, but at this time I only blog in German language.

SkyDrive | Smart Files für Windows 8.1
OneDrive – SkyDrive | Online – Offline – Smart Files | Windows 8.1
OneDrive und Windows 10 Preview | Ende der Smart Files?

We now have with the Next Generation Sync Client a robust Sync client, running in more then one Instance. The NGSC is available for many Microsoft OS and I hope, Microsoft will reintroduce the Smart Drive technology.  And not just for OneDrive (Personal), but also for OneDrive for Business, and all other SharePoint document libraries.

 

Access to SharePoint on Premise

I Know, many administrators wait for this feature. Yes Microsoft, we are syncing with your Office 365 cloud, but keep in mind, that there a so many SharePoint on Premise versions in the field, and these users want to let die the old Groove client. Yes, I know, that would not possible for the old versions. But I think such admins would sing Hallelujah…

Cancellation of the characters  # and %

Microsoft should also give us a time slot, that there are working on a solution, not only post an error, if a filename has these two restricted characters.

 

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I know, it’s easy to write such a wish list. It does not take much time. The MAC world in now almost completely integrated and I know too, that’s not such a few lines of code. There is a lot of work on the server and client side. But let’s wait, which feature we will see first in the year 2017