Very basic question re small office network

Mulberry

Hi there, hope I'm in the right place, please refer me elsewhere if not.

I have a small business, just me, and have recently taken on one other person. I need to set up a shared folder so that we can work together on documents but this seems to be much trickier than it looks.

To date I use OneDrive to access my files wherever I am. I tried sharing folders with my colleague but it hasn't worked, and I recently read that OneDrive is not really intended for this.

I've been looking at Sharepoint today, and set up a free one month trial, but it's still very difficult to see if it will work, I can't figure it out in fact.

I'm connected to my office landlord's wired broadband, and my colleague's laptop is connected to the landlord's Wifi. All that is working fine.

I've actually been trying to sort this out for months now and getting nowhere. Would you advise getting a professional in, or is there something I can set up myself? Is Sharepoint the solution? (and I just can't see it yet?)

I'm adverse to using Google Drive, because of the different file formats, but maybe it is the way forward?

Cash is king of course, no surprise there, so if there's a DIY fix with a low cost payment to Microsoft or whoever that would be ideal.

Any help much appreciated, or a redirect if I'm in the wrong place. Thank you.

theteal

Do the files need to be accessed remotely or are you both in office all the time?



Just to note, Google Drive is just another online storage space much like One Drive, file formats don't come into it.

Mulberry

theteal wrote: »

Do the files need to be accessed remotely or are you both in office all the time?



Just to note, Google Drive is just another online storage space much like One Drive, file formats don't come into it.

We are in the office most of the time, but yes would still need remote access from time to time.

Re Google Drive, I produce Word doc reports for clients with lots of fancy formatting, tables, charts etc, and had thought this would get messed up if I opened it in google Docs - perhaps I should test this.

squawker

Gsuites would be ideal for you, I have been using it for the last couple of years

you can mount the drive to appear like a local drive on your PC and also create team drives separately

caff

Office 365 might be what you are looking for https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/admin/setup/set-up-file-storage-and-sharing?view=o365-worldwide

robarmstrong

OneDrive or OneDrive for business? I file share from both quite a lot with my colleagues with no issues, are you sure you’re using it correctly?

Why don’t you set up Office 365 the cheapest plan is I think €10 a month and it does include SharePoint.

More than happy to help out if needed.

Mulberry

squawker wrote: »

Gsuites would be ideal for you, I have been using it for the last couple of years

you can mount the drive to appear like a local drive on your PC and also create team drives separately

Sounds like just what I need, I will take a look now. Thanks.

Mulberry

I've set up Office 365 today (free one month trial) but I'm not sure sharepoint is what I need, it talks about sites etc. All I want is a basic File Manager type set up where we can have project folders and each go in and out of the folders to work on files...

If Sharepoint allows this for 10 euro a month then I'll do it, but just couldnt' see how it worked when I looked at it this morning. Tried youtube too for help but got nowhere.

Mulberry

robarmstrong wrote: »

OneDrive or OneDrive for business? I file share from both quite a lot with my colleagues with no issues, are you sure you’re using it correctly?

I think I have OneDrive (not for business). 50gb.

Yes it's OneDrive +50 and I pay €2 a month for it.

theteal

Mulberry wrote: »

We are in the office most of the time, but yes would still need remote access from time to time.

Re Google Drive, I produce Word doc reports for clients with lots of fancy formatting, tables, charts etc, and had thought this would get messed up if I opened it in google Docs - perhaps I should test this.

It seems the guys have provided plenty of options for you to try.

I'm just going to highlight the bolded above, Google Docs and Google Drive are not the same. Google Drive is simply cloud storage, the files will open with the same local apps that you already use.

Tbh I don't use Google Docs (no real experience of it either), there maybe file format issues with that but there's no reason to use it.

Mulberry

theteal wrote: »

It seems the guys have provided plenty of options for you to try.

I'm just going to highlight the bolded above, Google Docs and Google Drive are not the same. Google Drive is simply cloud storage, the files will open with the same local apps that you already use.

Tbh I don't use Google Docs (no real experience of it either), there maybe file format issues with that but there's no reason to use it.

Thanks very much for this. I'll take another look and hopefully get somewhere with it. At least I'm not missing something and the solutions I've been looking at are the right ones (although I hadn't known about G Suite, setting up a trial on that now).

Thanks all.

robarmstrong

Mulberry wrote: »

I think I have OneDrive (not for business). 50gb.

Yes it's OneDrive +50 and I pay €2 a month for it.

Get two office 365 subscriptions I think the business premium one is about €10 each then reach out to me I’ll help you go through Sharepoint and file sharing etc.

dubrov

Don't overthink it.

OneDrive is more than sufficient for cloud file storage and sharing of files between two users.
SharePoint is overkill for two users. It is difficult to properly setup and will require a lot of maintenance. It is also likely to be very pricey.

Why not try to troubleshoot your OneDrive issues here?
Just post the sharing steps you took and the results?

Mulberry

robarmstrong wrote: »

Get two office 365 subscriptions I think the business premium one is about €10 each then reach out to me I’ll help you go through Sharepoint and file sharing etc.

Thanks very much, very kind of you. I'm currently failing to get set up with G Suite, (installing txt on my Blacknight control panel), will keep going with that and then try Sharepoint. Much appreciated.

Johnboy1951

I expect I am misunderstanding the real requirements but .....


would it not be simpler to share a drive/folder in the office with regular backups offsite (cloud service of choice)?

Arrange secured access to the share for when out of office access is required.

I must be missing the obvious ....

pizzahead77

You could try something like Citrix Sharefile which is a cloud file server and costs $10 per month per user.

You install an app on your computer and it maps the cloud storage as a mapped network drive.

TheChizler

dubrov wrote: »

Why not try to troubleshoot your OneDrive issues here?
Just post the sharing steps you took and the results?

This. We could suggest 100s of options but it's likely there's only a small configuration change needed to get your existing setup (OneDrive) to do everything you want.

smuggler.ie

TheChizler wrote: »

This. We could suggest 100s of options but it's likely there's only a small configuration change needed to get your existing setup (OneDrive) to do everything you want.

Agree here.
It sounds that problem is not Cloud storage choice, but setup itself .
See if this helps:
1. https://support.office.com/en-us/article/share-onedrive-files-and-folders-9fcc2f7d-de0c-4cec-93b0-a82024800c07
2. https://support.office.com/en-us/article/add-and-sync-shared-folders-to-onedrive-8a63cd47-1526-4cd8-bd09-ee3f9bfc1504

Mulberry

Thanks all, I took the plunge last week and began the process of trialing G Suite.

While it looks like it could do the job, the process of switching over for a trial was very time consuming, as I had to move email hosting from my current provider. The whole process took hours, including setting up new emails, forwarding from the old ones, etc. etc. and it's not done yet.

I'm ok with technology, quite good I'd say, but obviously not a professional, so overall this process is taking a lot of my time (that I'd prefer to spend doing fee paying work!). Interesting really, I seem to have fallen through the gap of the painless set up for a personal user and a corporate set up where an IT pro is available to do it for me.

Your input has been very helpful though, thanks all.