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Faculty, staff, and students who were at UConn prior to 2023 are likely familiar with the P Drive and the Q Drive. These drives are different than SharePoint OneDrive because they existed on campus. In the UConn datacenters, there were specialized computers, full of hard drives, that acted as personal and shared storage (the P and Q Drives respectively). Whenever someone signed into a university computer on campus, that computer would reach out to the datacenter and link them with their files. This allowed users to begin their work on one computer, and then continue their work on another.
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OneDrive allows for multiple, simultaneous editors in Microsoft365 files (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.). Unlike the legacy P Drive system, OneDrive can recognize when multiple users have the same file open and will allow multiple users to edit the file at the same time. This means a user typing in a Word document will see their coworker typing along with them. This allows users to divide the work and to collaborate in real-time. If you have used Google Docs in the past, this is a familiar experience.
When you share/email a OneDrive file, you’re giving access to a file, you’re not sending the file itself. The recipient of the share will have a link that they use to access your file; the updates they type are saved to the file in your OneDrive. This, along with real-time collaboration, solves the issue of sending files and creating discrete copies in the process. When it is time to revoke access, their access link stops working, and they no longer have access to the file. In the past, when emailing a file to someone, they would have a copy on their own computer that would not update your original file. When it was time for them to send their updates back, you would then have two copies of the file. However, if needed, you can also include your file as an attachment and the recipient will receive a discrete copy that is not connected to your OneDrive.
OneDrive is a part of our university Microsoft accounts, which means your user-presence is tightly integrated with your UConn account that you use every day. Sharing files with another university member is as easy as knowing their name. If sharing with a university member, their name will appear in OneDrive share fields. However, if you’re sharing with someone outside of the university, you simply need to know their email address.
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*Depending on the computer system, the values above are expressed as either 1,000 or 1,024. This does not affect your usage of OneDrive or your computer.
Is my data safe?
SharePoint OneDrive offers an encrypted file storage solution. Your files are encrypted during travel (downloading / uploading) and while at rest (you’re not interacting with it). But what does it mean to be encrypted?
You can compare an encrypted file to a secret message you are sending to a friend. Beforehand, you both decided on a cypher that you will use to scramble your secret messages. Now, when you are finished writing your secret message to your friend, you scramble all the words using the cypher. When they receive the letter, they use that same cypher to decrypt the message. If anyone were to intercept the letter, they would have no idea what it says.
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On the other side of this coin, what if a user makes a mistake on a file? SharePoint OneDrive keeps up to 500 versions of each file. This is called Version History. Every time someone opens a file (for example), an invisible copy of the file is saved. If needed, you can restore the file to this invisible copy. Let's say the coworker opens the file and believes you want them to delete an entire column in Excel. They delete the column and then save the file. Next week you discover the mistake, however you do not worry because you know that you can go back into the file’s history (versions) and restore the file to a previous point in time. With the Q Drive, this was only possible with the help of ITS. To learn more about version history and when versions (restore points) are captured, view the guide below when you are done reading this page.
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