For those of us who are not SharePoint admins or IT Pros, (like me), it was easy to miss that part of the documentation written about it because when an upgrade is available, many of us just click the ‘update’ button and it’s taken care of in the background. Microsoft pushed publish on this new Next Gen OneDrive sync client knowing that it would sync only Office 365 OneDrive for Business files and folders and not SharePoint Sites. The solution was the ‘Next Gen Sync Client’ that came out earlier this year. They were getting overwhelmed with support calls and emails from people whose SharePoint sites had sync errors.

Microsoft has been working (diligently, we know), on a solution. It became apparent that the Groove sync engine was not going to work well with the more corporate-like O365. Demise of Groove Sync Client and Start of Next Gen Sync ClientĪs O365 progressed and became increasingly popular, the SharePoint and OneDrive for Business (ODFB) sync engine was constantly refined and developed. If you want to really know the history, check out this excellent presentation by John White called ‘OneDrive, TwoDrive, White Drive, BlueDrive’. When Microsoft instituted Office 365, some 4-5 years ago now, they brought this sync engine into use with this product. It’s been revised and worked on for years by Microsoft and used in the consumer OneDrive originally.

The original sync engine was built on Groove – a decades old product that was used for syncing and sharing way back when. Microsoft is aiming for an update to solve all these problems in the December, 2016/ January, 2017 time frame. Office 365 SharePoint Sites When Will I Be Able to Sync My SharePoint Sites? They say it should work, but sometimes it doesn’t. *does NOT sync with your SharePoint Sites – you will need to get the old ‘Groove’ sync client and have both co-exist together. Here’s the quick and dirty… Next Gen Sync Client works with:

if they use both OneDrive (consumer) and ODFB.

There are multiple sync engines (Next Gen and Groove) that are used – depending on :

The Microsoft Office 365 OneDrive For Business Sync engine has created a lot of confusion.

Groove microsoft onedrive for business