Configure hybrid Microsoft OneDrive
APPLIES TO: 2013 2016 2019 Subscription Edition SharePoint in Microsoft 365
This article is part of a roadmap of procedures for configuring SharePoint in Microsoft 365 hybrid solutions. Be sure you're following a roadmap when you do the procedures in this article.
You can redirect users to Microsoft OneDrive, on the navigation bar or the app launcher, when they select OneDrive or Sites. This article provides the steps to configure your on-premises environment to connect with OneDrive. You can find an overview of the process in Plan for hybrid OneDrive.
Video demonstration
This video shows a walkthrough of configuring hybrid OneDrive.
Video: Configure hybrid OneDrive
Note
The SharePoint Migration Tool demonstrated in the video is currently in preview. It is only supported for SharePoint Server 2013. Download the SharePoint Migration Tool.
Configure user permissions
To use OneDrive, your users must have Create Personal Site and Follow People and Edit Profile permissions. Both are controlled by the user permissions in the User Profile service application.
Verify that the user account that is performing this procedure is a member of the Farm Admins group.
In your on-premises SharePoint Server environment, go to Central Administration > Manage Service Applications.
Click the User Profile Service Application.
On the Manage Profile Service page, under People, select Manage User Permissions.
In the Permissions for User Profile Service Application dialog, select All Authenticated Users (or a specific audience that you intend to use as a pilot group of users).
Verify that the Create Personal Site and Follow People and Edit Profile permission check boxes are selected.
Configure hybrid OneDrive
To configure hybrid OneDrive, you must be both a SharePoint Server farm administrator and a Microsoft 365 global admin. Perform these steps on a server in your SharePoint Server farm.
To configure hybrid OneDrive
Go to More features in the SharePoint admin center, and sign in with an account that has admin permissions for your organization.
Under Hybrid picker, select Open.
Click Go to Hybrid Picker Download Page.
On the SharePoint in Microsoft 365 Hybrid Configuration Wizard page, select click here.
Accept the security prompts to install and run the wizard.
On the SharePoint Hybrid Configuration Wizard page, select Next.
On the Credentials page, verify your on-premises credentials and enter your global admin credentials. Select Validate credentials, and then select Next.
On the Checking prerequisites page, select Next.
On the Select the features you want to use in your hybrid environment page, select the Hybrid OneDrive check box and deselect any other check boxes. Select Next.
When the configuration completes, select Next.
Add a rating and comments if desired, and then select Close.
Create an audience (if necessary)
If you want to redirect only a specific set of your users from your on-premises environment to OneDrive, you need to use an audience to identify that set of users. If you have an audience set up already that contains just those users, you can use that. Otherwise, you need to create an audience in SharePoint Server. See Create an audience for SharePoint Server for information about how to create an audience for SharePoint. You can also use Microsoft PowerShell cmdlets to create an audience.
To configure a OneDrive redirection audience
On the Central Administration website, select Microsoft 365 > Configure hybrid OneDrive and Sites features.
Select Use a specific audience, and for the audience that contains your Microsoft 365 users, enter the audience name.
Select OK.
Verify that then OneDrive links work as expected
It can take up to a minute for the changes to be updated in the User Profile service application for your on-premises farm. Because the link may be stored in the user's browser cache, we recommend you wait 24 hours and then verify the links are working.
To check that the links are working as expected, have one of the users in the audience that is using the Microsoft 365 option for OneDrive sign in to your on-premises environment. From the user's personal site, and from the navigation bar or app launcher, have the user select OneDrive.
If the user is redirected to Microsoft 365 for OneDrive, everything is working as expected.
If users want to browse to their OneDrive directory directly, they can go to https:// <yourtenant name>.onedrive.com in the browser. For example, https://contoso.onedrive.com will take users of Contoso tenancy to their OneDrive document library. This is a simple way to bookmark the link for users of OneDrive. Rich clients might not recognize this short URL.
(Optional) Create a search vertical
You can set up a search vertical so that you can search content stored in OneDrive. The specific steps to set up the search vertical are in the article Set up Search of OneDrive from SharePoint Server.
(Optional) Customize the Microsoft 365 navigation experience (SharePoint Server 2013)
Now that your users are set up to be redirected to Office 365, you can customize what they see on the navigation bar there. By default, the navigation bar contains the following links: SkyDrive, Viva Engage or Newsfeed, and Sites. If you intend for your users to use only OneDrive, you can remove the other links. If you want to allow your users to interact with Viva Engage or the SharePoint Newsfeed features or to create team sites in Office 365, you can leave those links on the nav bar.
Note
Turn on the appropriate navigation bar links for the set of SharePoint in Microsoft 365 service features that you have purchased. For example, if you have OneDrive with Office on the web, then you would turn on only the OneDrive link, and not the Sites or Newsfeed links. OneDrive with Office on the web does not include the Sites and Newsfeed features and users would see Access Denied messages if they selected the links. You can, however, still choose to turn on Viva Engage as your social network and then turn on the Viva Engage/Newsfeed navigation link.
To customize the navigation bar
Log on to Office 365 with an organization administrator account.
On the Admin tab, select SharePoint.
On the left, select Settings.
In the Top Navigation Bar User Experience section, specify the links to show or hide on the nav bar.
To save the settings and update the navigation bar, select OK.