The cloud is something that most of us have grown to use and depend on more and more. For instance, most people these days use cloud-based email like Hotmail or Gmail. Likewise, other cloud services like cloud-based storage, have become common place. Personally, I know that I have come to rely on OneDrive (formerly known as SkyDrive) for not only sharing documents and photos between my various PCs and devices, but also for sharing them with friends, family, and colleagues. While OneDrive is a great personal tool, what if you have a group and you want to collaborate on a project where you’re not the exclusive owner? Guess what? OneDrive has an answer for that in one of its best kept secrets—OneDrive Groups.
Great Tool for Collaborating on Projects
OneDrive Groups enables you to create a document-centric store that can be accessed and even co-owned by multiple people, which makes it a great tool for collaborating on documents and other projects.
By default, a OneDrive Group has its own one GB of storage which is separate from any personal OneDrive storage you may have. If you’re looking at your own OneDrive, you may wonder where this Groups option is. The OneDrive navigation pane has links for Files, Recent docs, All photos, and Shared. The navigation pane lists the various devices that have connected to the OneDrive. There are also links for available storage, the Recycle bin, Get more storage, and Get OneDrive apps—but nothing about groups. That’s why OneDrive Groups is such a good secret.
How To Create A OneDrive Group
To create a new OneDrive Group, you first need to go to groups.live.com. Here, you will see the OneDrive Groups screen where you enter the name for the name for your new group and the group email. The email for the group ends in @groups.live.com. Then, click the Create Group button. This will create a new section called Groups in your OneDrive’s navigation pane and your new group will be displayed beneath it.
Related: OneDrive Replaces SkyDrive Overnight, Adds Nominal New Features
Now that you have the group, the next step is to add members to it. To add members you need to invite people to use the group. You send invites by using the new Group actions dropdown and then clicking the Invite people option. This will display a dialog where you enter the email address of the person you want to invite and then click Invite. This will send them an email message with a link. When they click on the link, they are added to the group and the group will appear in their OneDrive.
Various Levels of Member Authorizations
Groups have three levels of authorizations Owners, Co-Owners, and Members. Owners and Co-Owners can add, change, and delete documents. Members can be restricted from changing documents in the group. You can assign different co-owners by using the Group actions, View membership option. After you’ve created your group and added members, you can go ahead and add documents and photos and any other files you want to collaborate on—and it’s just like using your personal OneDrive.
So, that’s the secret to getting started with OneDrive Groups and making better use of the cloud for collaboration. To learn more about OneDrive Groups you might want to check out Use OneDrive Groups to Share Information Between Multiple Accounts.
