It’s time to drop your Dropbox and park your work files on OneDrive for Business, the file storage and sharing service that is now available to all faculty, staff and students at Queen’s. OneDrive is part of Microsoft’s Office 365 cloud-based collaborative suite.

“We are really excited to be rolling out OneDrive for Business to the Queen's community, especially from a security and privacy perspective,” says Bo Wandschneider, Chief Information Officer and Associate Vice-Principal (Information Technology Services). “It’s a tool that provides a huge storage space and enables easier collaboration. It’s a secure service and can be used for all Queen’s files, instead of other cloud-based services like iCloud or Dropbox.”

When people sign up individually with other cloud-based services, they enter into a personal agreement with the provider that may not provide the necessary protections for Queen’s information.

“We know many people are storing institutional information on cloud services and, in many of those cases, they have personal agreements with the vendor that may never have been vetted for privacy and security and likely never really read,” says Mr. Wandschneider. “With OneDrive for Business, the university has spent a great deal of time developing a privacy risk assessment and a contract with Microsoft that helps us ensure that we retain ownership and protect the information that is put there.”

OneDrive for Business provides all Queen’s users with a terabyte of storage in a secure, web-based platform. That’s enough to hold a million pictures, for example. It allows syncing of files across devices and the ability to share documents with other Queen’s users, who can even edit them at the same time without having to create multiple versions.

"With OneDrive for Business, the university has spent a great deal of time developing a privacy risk assessment and a contract with Microsoft that helps us ensure that we retain ownership and protect the information that is put there."

- Bo Wandschneider, Chief Information Officer and Associate Vice-Principal (Information Technology Services)

Tim Almeida, Assistant Director, Budget, in the Office of Planning and Budgeting says the new service will improve collaboration.

“I am thrilled that a university-wide service like OneDrive for Business is now available,” says Mr. Almeida. “It will make workflows and sharing files with colleagues much easier, eliminating the need to have several versions of a document on the go.”

Staff, faculty and students also have access to Office Online, which works with OneDrive for Business to allow the creation and editing of documents right from the web.

To get more information about OneDrive for Business and to activate your account, simply visit the ITS OneDrive for Business webpage. You can also view a tutorial on how to move your files from Dropbox to OneDrive for Business. To read more about the benefits and security of OneDrive for Business, read a recent blog by Mr. Wandschneider.

ITS will roll out other features of Office 365 in the new year, including the migration of faculty and staff email and calendaring to the cloud-based platform.