‘OneDrive 3.0’ exhibits off sharing, Workplace, AI roadmaps

OneDrive is investing in improved sharing and organizational options for enterprise customers, however shoppers are being left behind: Microsoft will add media-centric search and AI capabilities, however that gained’t happen till subsequent 12 months. That may embody the power to go looking images by way of facial recognition, a characteristic Google debuted about seven years in the past.

Microsoft executives referred to the updates as “OneDrive 3.0,” a salt shaker of granular options being added to Microsoft’s cloud storage. For now, the largest adjustments are in group: You’ll have the ability to seek for OneDrive recordsdata in a individuals view, as Microsoft has tipped earlier than. OneDrive can be utilizing a few of the latest Home windows 11 22H2/23H2 updates to File Explorer as a mannequin to position really helpful recordsdata in a carousel view on the prime of the OneDrive web page.

Mainly, OneDrive is including a variety of views, so recordsdata might be organized by who shared them, in the event that they’re related to approaching conferences, and so forth. These adjustments can be found for enterprise customers, so in case you log in to OneDrive.com with your corporation credentials you need to see the brand new adjustments at this time.

Microsoft additionally outlined its roadmap for upcoming OneDrive options.

In December, OneDrive will extra intently combine with Phrase, Groups, Outlook, and extra. You’ll begin to see OneDrive seem within the left navigation bar of Groups and Outlook, for instance, so you’ll be able to soar proper to the relative recordsdata.

Mark Hachman / IDG

In early 2024, Microsoft is including offline entry to the online model of OneDrive. Put one other means, you’ll see Recordsdata on Demand (aka placeholders, which may make Home windows 11’s restore and backup course of worse) in your checklist of OneDrive recordsdata within the net app. The excellent news is that Microsoft is pairing this with an offline mode, so that you’ll have the ability to open an area copy of the file in your PC, edit and make adjustments to it, and people adjustments can be quietly synced as soon as you come on-line. By summer time, Microsoft will allow you to create recordsdata (similar to new Phrase paperwork) by launching them from OneDrive itself.

Sadly, you’ll even have to attend till mid-2024 to see the brand new “Media View” in OneDrive. This basically makes any images saved in OneDrive, similar to your Digital camera Roll, equal to the Pictures app on Home windows 11 — you’ll see an inventory of images as images, in graphical view. In accordance with Jason Moore, the vice-president accountable for product administration for OneDrive, that may even embody pure language seek for OneDrive: Looking for “images within the mountains with Katherine within the fall” will deliver up related pictures.

Mark Hachman / IDG

That’s a bit extra refined than what rivals supply, although it nonetheless arrives years late. Google started providing to index images by facial recognition in about 2016. Microsoft’s indexing might transcend that, however it’s nonetheless years late.

Naturally, the way forward for OneDrive is Copilot integration: Having the ability to question OneDrive, textually, for recordsdata and summaries, and all the things that Microsoft 365 Copilot may do. However executives mentioned within the Q&A chat fields in the course of the Groups 3.0 launch that they’re nonetheless understanding what number of recordsdata ought to be query-able by Copilot, and the way massive of a file could possibly be accessed, summarized, and queried. These questions must be tacked onto an even bigger one: When will Microsoft roll out Copilot for OneDrive? That’s the massive one, and one Microsoft declined to reply.

Storage, Home windows