You can see in the graphic that it is now becoming a little more complicated. In the last part, the OneDrive Basiscs 04, I wrote about Windows 10 and the integration of the sync client.

And if you just joined now, you should start reading at OneDrive Basics 01.

 

OneDrive Basiscs 05

The OneDrive Basics 05 is again about Windows 10. Yes, dear reader, it continues with Windows 10, so it happens from time to time that companies that are in some way connected to their own company provide some employees with an additional Office 365 license. This is the easiest way, and now gives us, No, not a second Word, Excel or PowerPoint, but access to a second SharePoint Online. So to the above picture:

The user has access to his own OneDrive for Business and one or more document libraries as well as the personal OneDrive staff (if allowed) from the middle section. This is the right part of the figure. In the notification line we now have two clouds: A grey/white one for OneDrive Personal and a blue shaded one for OneDrive for Business of the own organization.

And now we come to the left part of the picture. Another organization has donated me an Office 365. And with a few actions I can connect to OneDrive for Business of this organization. The way is via the browser. There I go into private mode. Because if Sngle Sign On was implemented correctly, the inheritance of the first organization would only be a hindrance. In the private browser I enter https://login.microsoftonline.com/ and can then log in with the email data of the second organization. Then click on OneDrive. And as soon as OneDrive (for Business) is displayed in the browser, I can click on Sync in the upper menu. Afterwards, this OneDrive for Business and all folders / files will be synchronized to my local device.

Then the files of the second organization are available to us in the file explorer of Windows 10. There is one small thing to note. If I have configured PC-Backup in my own organization as a backup of desktop, documents and pictures, I cannot configure another backup. I have to resolve the original one first. And the first data backup may have been prescribed to me by my organization via group policy.

The question remains: how many other organizations can I connect to? Or how many cloud symbols do I get in the notification line?

 

9+1

Yes, nine blue/shaded cloud symbols and one grey/white. Those are the limitations. So with OneDrive Personal, Microsoft is consistent from the beginning: You can set up several OneDrive Personal (with different logins) but only synchronize one account.

And the number 9 is the end of the line for business accounts. Background are some restrictions, which have already caused problems in the past. There is performance of each sync-clinets (i.e. each independent instance), which consumes CPU power. Depending on what the system itself has to do at the moment (by an action of the user), a synchronization must be performed or data must be synchronized. And of course, you may be synchronizing too many files. Here Microsoft is talking about 100000 files. In the various libraries of SharePoint Online (including) OneDrive for Business there is another limit. Although SharePoint can manage 30 million documents per library, the Sync Client is unfortunately only able to synchronize 300000 documents. Not for one library, no across all libraries. You didn’t? I have several customers who have reached the limit. However, these limits have nothing to do with whether the function “files on demand” is turned on or off.

 

Summary

However, there is one drawback to the whole thing. Because the other organization must provide a license. However, due to the number of documents and the CPU power required by each instance, the restrictions make sense. But the first part, the license, can be avoided. No, this is not a call for license deception. But this is described in the next part of the basics, again Windows 10, then I describe the king discipline of synchronization: B2B Synch or Cross Tenant Synchronization.

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OneDrive Basics 01 (Server and Services)
OneDrive Basics 02 (Clients and Apps)
OneDrive Basics 03 (Outlook and Outlook on the Web, Web Browser)
OneDrive Basics 04 (Windows 10)
OneDrive Basics 05 (Windows 10, more than one tenant)
OneDrive Basics 06 (Windows 10, B2B Sync)
OneDrive Basics 07 (Office Integration)
OneDrive Basics 08 (Synchronisation  Shared with me)
OneDrive Basics 09 (mobile Sync with iOS and Android)
OneDrive Basics 10 (Teams)

for those who want to read it in german language