OneDrive for Business is the Microsoft cloud service that lets you store your individual files, share them with others, and access them on all your devices. Files you store in OneDrive are private until you share them, compared to files stored in a SharePoint document library, which are meant to be shared with other users. You can think of OneDrive for Business as your personal repository or an online version of your My Documents folder. OneDrive files are always kept in sync and can be accessed even when you’re offline.
OneDrive is the starting point when you begin the process of creating a document. You can create a new Office365 document directly from OneDrive, with the security of knowing it will be saved and accessible from any device. OneDrive is a great place for drafts or a work in progress. It’s a private location for your files before they are ready for other users.
Here are some other examples of when to use OneDrive:
- You want to share individual files with only a few users, not the whole team.
- You need to work on Office documents with others at the same time.
- You want to create a draft before sharing widely via a Team or SharePoint Site document library.
OneDrive for Business is the general replacement for Box at Penn State and can safely store your files in the cloud. You can share OneDrive files with colleagues outside of the University and store level 1 and 2 data. If you are unsure what level of security your data requires, please see Penn State’s data classification guide.