MICROSOFT 365 DEPLOYMENT: AVOIDING ISSUES

#Microsoft365, #MicrosoftTeams, #SharePoint, #Office365, #OneDrive

Author: Jonathan Stuckey

Audience: SharePoint solution designer, Microsoft 365 solution architect, Project manager

In this article we identify why deploying OneDrive for Business is a foundational component in adopting Microsoft 365 with a minimum of re-factoring and user-impact. Specifically, why trying to avoid OneDrive is likely to cause you more heat-ache and grief to remediate than just applying effort to understand and put right management and controls in up-front.

Avoid deployment and adoption disasters

Your (M365) house will feel like this without proper foundations

At Spoke we spend our working lives enabling customers to take on and adopt Microsoft 365 platform services. 5 years ago I (re)released an article about Microsoft 365 deployment and adoption principles. Over the years since that article, we encountered many instances where the practice has not followed principle, and where a lack of understanding has cost organisations dearly.

There are two core principles we see repeatedly questioned or misunderstood by consultants and implementors alike:

#1 Use the services as designed

In the article on Principles this was #1 thing to do. Sounds ridiculous right, but we still get organisations and consultants trying to avoid using a key service or platform pre-requisites when deploying Microsoft 365. The biggie is people trying to piece-meal deploy Microsoft Teams, without OneDrive. Don't. It breaks usability.

Remember why you bought in to M365 "as-a-service"? You did not want to be continually upgrading, patching and deploying software. So don't make your own life hard by trying to dismantle core functionality without understanding what you are doing.

Do not over-ride core functionality or try to disable foundation capabilities, if you are actually going to make use of other functionality like: Device Management, Compliance policies or Copilot in Meetings.

#2 Consistency of user experience

The #2 Principle was around User Experience. The UX carries equal weight to information management controls and security configuration. If you make something too-hard to use, people will work-around you and you'll end-up back where you started with shadow-IT. Its the same with dismantling core elements in the M365 suite. The apps and services are designed to use specific and associated user(s) profile and role-based identity. These are intrinsic to how you create, store, edit and share.

Disabling the primary store for the user, removes a key pillar in content management and governance. The dependencies between the 365 applications are not just a 'file save-as' option. These services are designed to enable user access to documents, data and applications anywhere, from any device via OneDrive.

Explore what different applications, services and management tools do and don't do before you remove components from deployment. Randomly disabling functionality without testing the full (integrated) user-experience should be kept to a minimum.

What about Microsoft 365 services dependencies on OneDrive?

Microsoft 365 applications and services rely heavily on OneDrive for Business for storage and management of various artifacts - but just how-much is "heavily"? Which bits do people not know about or understand the effects on the user's experience?

Below is a list of all the integrations we are aware of, their purposes, and the impact of disabling OneDrive for Business...

Microsoft 365 integrations with OneDrive for Business

App or service	Stores	Impact if disabled
Microsoft Teams	Private meeting recordings and transcripts  Files shared in Teams chats ("Microsoft Teams Chat Files" folder)  Loop components (notes, tasks) created in Teams chats	Inability to share files in chats Inability to store meeting recordings, or use for Copilot Loss of collaborative editing for Loop components
Office Apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint)	AutoSave functionality for documents  Version history and co-authoring metadata	AutoSave fails, risking data loss Lose app list in recent documents Real-time collaboration breaks (limited co-authoring)
Whiteboard	Whiteboard content (stored as *.whiteboard files)	Users cannot save or retrieve whiteboards
Microsoft Stream	User-generated video recordings (private meetings) Transcripts from meeting recordings	Recordings don’t save, disrupting compliance and retention Transcript extraction fails as recording is not captured
Microsoft Forms	Form attachments (e.g., images, documents)	Attachments cannot be stored, rendering forms incomplete
Power Automate	Files used in email connectors (e.g., SharePoint/OneDrive triggers)	Workflows relying on OneDrive file interactions break
Known Folder Move (KFM)	Synced Windows folders (Documents, Desktop, Pictures) available anywhere (via browser)	Loss of automatic backup for user profiles, increasing data loss risk
OneDrive Sync Client	Files synced from SharePoint/Teams libraries  Offline-accessible content	Syncing stops, disrupting access to cloud files on devices SharePoint Library sync options fail
Compliance and Retention Policies	Legal holds, eDiscovery search targets	Retention policies fail to preserve user data, complicating audits
Administrative Policies and Controls	Storage Quotas: Managed via Microsoft 365 admin center Bandwidth Throttling: Policies in Microsoft Endpoint Manager control upload rates External Sharing Restrictions: Granular permissions for links and expiration dates	Performance management and data-sync from client is not available SPO site external link sharing constraints are not applied.

or to show it another way:

OneDrive stores documents, media, polices, user properties and device management details.

The impact is more in-your-face

The key thing to understand is what the user experiences when these different bits of functionality stop. Some-times there are seemingly random error messages present which do not relate to fact that 'save' location is not available, often the user just gets a failed action on a button, link or workflow action or just a blank screen within the chrome of the app.

Microsoft Teams - OneDrive tab blank-screen when no Save location

In the case of apps like:

• Microsoft Forms or Loop, the Form or component simply fails to save and it doesn't tell you why;

• with services like Microsoft 365 Copilot - the meeting summaries, recap, and action generation won't do anything - but the option is still visible,

• from Outlook in web (or mobile) - save an attachment gives you a glorious error screen - with no reference to OneDrive location and therefore the attachments folder, not being available as a destination

...and the list goes on.

Conclusion

OneDrive for Business is deeply embedded in Microsoft 365’s ecosystem, serving as the default storage backbone for user-generated content, collaboration, and compliance. Disabling it cripples core functionality across Microsoft Teams, Office apps, Stream integration and automation tools, while escalating your data management risks.

The alternative? Using principles, understanding interdependencies and some rigorous testing wll uncover the truth in deployment and adoption with Microsoft 365.

Organisations should plan to optimise their policies e.g. storage quotas, retention etc, and get controls embedded, rather than attempting to remove OneDrive from the mix.

Want to deploy and adopt Microsoft 365 successfully?

Microsoft's storage platform of choice for the individual is OneDrive. All new apps and services which create content, are going to store them there first, then SharePoint after.

If you want to use anything more than just Outlook and desktop apps (saving to the desktop) you will need to deploy OneDrive for Business. To get the best from your investment, you need to understand the foundations and build appropriately.

Want to know what we know? Give us a call

If you want to talk about deploying Microsoft 365 with solid foundation, drop us a line: hi@timewespoke.com

About this article: Generative AI was not used in the creation of this article. All content was created by author, based on released information from Microsoft. Any errors or issues with the content in this article are entirely the authors responsibility.

About the author: Jonathan Stuckey