Microsoft teases a new OneDrive Experience for work and school

Microsoft has announced the new OneDrive for work and school today. A news post on Microsoft's Tech Community website offers a preview of some of the upcoming features.

At the core of the changes are a new OneDrive homepage and new file experiences across Microsoft 365. The "visual and functional update" was designed to help users "get to files quickly" and to keep "content organized in multiple ways" automatically.

The updated OneDrive homepage features a new "For you" area at the top. It is powered by an AI to display file recommendations to users. Microsoft hopes that it helps users find files that they require faster.

The new feature pulls files from all supported sources and all types, including Office documents, PDF files, meeting recordings, media files and other content the AI considers relevant at the time the homepage is opened by a user.

Microsoft added new views to help users find specific files quicker than before. These new views may show recent or shared files, those favorited by the user, or files from meetings.

Another new feature is called inline activity, which adds an option to files to "chat up on files at a glance or jump right to comments in files". The new Home experience is available for OneDrive for work and school accounts already. AI recommendations are coming soon, according to Microsoft.

Tip: check out OneDrive 101 here.

New OneDrive Views

Microsoft introduces several new Views in OneDrive. These allow users of the application to filter content by activity or other data.

The new shared view, for instance, displays all files shared with the user in OneDrive. It contains all shared files, sorted chronologically by default. Options to filter files, for instance by type, or to find specific files by name or person are also provided.

There is also the new People View, which works a bit different from the shared view. People focuses on people that a user has collaborated with. It lists the names of these users and some of the documents and files that they are linked to. The view offers another option to find specific files on OneDrive.

Another new view displays files from all meetings on a single page. The meetings page lists upcoming meetings, along with participants and files, and past meetings, also with the information attached. Shared files may also be accessed, as well as all files linked to a particular meeting.

The three new views are not the only changes that Microsoft announced today. OneDrive users may use new filters to display Word, Excel, PowerPoint or PDF files exclusively, and they may add a splash of color to folders to customize these further.

Microsoft is also adding two new options to manage and find important files. The new "star" option allows users to add files to the favorites with a single click or tap. The new file Shortcuts feature allows users to link to shared content from within existing OneDrive folders.

Sharing is a simpler experience now on OneDrive, according to Microsoft. The new sharing dialog is "less cluttered and simpler to use" according to Microsoft. Copy Link is improved and there is now a clear confirmation that a link has been copied.

Microsoft notes that all of the changes will also find their ways into the Files app in Teams. Offline use is getting an improvement as well. The new "available when offline" option allows OneDrive users to go offline and continue working on files in the browser. The changes will be synced with OneDrive automatically once back online.

There is also a new open in app option to open non-Office files in desktop apps. Changes made to the files will be synced to OneDrive.

Some of the listed changes are available already, others will become available later this year.

Now You: do you use OneDrive?

Advertisement