OneDrive File Collaboration

What is OneDrive file collaboration?
The file collaboration feature in the OneDrive application allows multiple users to work together on the same files and documents. It enables real-time collaboration and sharing within a team or across different individuals. Here are some key aspects of file collaboration in OneDrive:

File Sharing: With OneDrive, you can easily share files and folders with others. You can specify whether someone can view or edit the files, and you can invite people by email or generate a shareable link.

Real-time Co-authoring: Multiple users can collaborate in real time when they have access to a file. This means all participants can edit the document simultaneously, make changes, and see each other's updates instantly.

How does enabling OneDrive file collaboration impact Anchor?

File collaboration feature in OneDrive works by directly editing files on the cloud rather than on the workstation or PC. This means, when users are co-authoring a file Onedrive application makes real-time updates to a cloud copy of the file. This file is not located in the user’s regular Onedrive folders, rather they are in a temp location on the cloud. Since Anchor has no control/protections on these temp locations, the file will be converted to a plain text file. This means that the file will turn to a decrypted state once the collaboration session ends. Sometimes, there could be race conditions between Anchor and Onedrive applications that are caused due to active collaboration that can cause corruption. To eliminate these issues, Anchor disables the file collaboration feature on installation. Administrator can enable the ondrive collaboration from Dashboard.
Users will not be able to open an anchored file from OneDrive due to the above reasons when OneDrive collaboration is enabled from dashboard. User will see below error message when he/she tries to acceess an anchored file from OneDrive.

Behaviour for Anchor versions 5.3.1 and below
Anchor will disable the onedrive file collaboration feature on installation and enable file collaboration on uninstallation. User will not be able to collaborate on both anchored and unachored files on OneDrive when anchor is installed.

What happens when I disable Onedrive file collaboration?
Users will lose co-authoring capabilities for office files stored in Sharepoint and Onedrive locations in the workstation. This includes both Anchored and UnAnchored files.

How to enable one drive collaboration in dashboard
Please read this article to enable file collaboration in OneDrive

Known limitations

• The user will not see a notification to restart OneDrive while opening an unAnchored file if the user has ignored the previous notification to restart OneDrive and as a result, collaboration will not be enabled for unanchored files.

Known issues

• Anchored excel files can be open even when onedrive collaboration is enabled when using Excel as an AxP application. It is recommended to use Excel as whitelisted app if you intend to enable oneDrive collaboration.
• This issue only occurs while opening an unanchored Office file (from a local/OneDrive folder) and if collaboration is enabled and there is an anchored OneDrive/SharePoint file in the application's recent list. While opening unanchored files, the Agent displays a notification that shows the previously opened anchored file path. This issue occurs because the Office application opens recently opened Office files in the background, which triggers our policy and causes the notification to appear for recently opened anchored files in OneDrive/SharePoint folders.
• When a new OneDrive/SharePoint folder/site is synced by the user to the PC, the new folder is not added as part of the OneDrive folder list maintained by Anchor locally. Because of this reason, Anchor will not show a block message when user tries to open an Anchored file from the newly syned folder while OneDrive file collaboration is enabled for the user in the user role. Workaround for this issue is, to restart DatanchorSpyder service or Add protection to a folder locally.