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K-State Research and Extension
123 Umberger Hall
Manhattan, KS 66506-3401
785-532-5820
extadmin@ksu.edu

April 27, 2015

Office 365: OneDrive for Sharing and Storage

Submitted by Joe Lear

OneDrive for Business is now available for faculty and staff use. With 1TB of file space, OneDrive can be used as a file sharing and storage solution for class assignments, homework, departmental and committee documents, public research data, and other project information. With OneDrive, you can securely share files with specific individuals.

Before choosing to share and store information on OneDrive consider:

Sensitivity and confidential nature of the information;
Applicable policies, laws, regulations or other restrictions (FERPA, HIPAA, etc.);
Agreements with outside entities that restrict your ability to share the information, such as sharing confidential intellectual property;
Other laws or restrictions (e.g., human subjects, confidentiality, granters, export control, etc.) prevent you from sharing information.

Best practices for sharing files:

Don’ts:

Never store confidential data, including but not limited to Personally Identifiable Information (information about an individual that contains a unique identifier);
Do not share with “everyone” or the “public” (Note: Using the “everyone” space in OneDrive would share a document with the entire campus);
Do not store non-university files on OneDrive because these could be obtained by others through a subpoena or other legal process.

Do’s:

Only share files with specific individuals;
Remove individuals’ access when they no longer require access to files or folders;
Create a new folder when you need to store groups of files.

Information Technology Services is working on a solution for sharing files for the promotion and tenure process, search committee documents, proprietary manuscripts, etc. A recommendation for these types of files will be available fall 2015. Until that time, faculty and staff can use K-State Online Classic or K-State Online powered by Canvas for these sensitive and confidential documents.

To access OneDrive, click the Office 365 app launcher and then click OneDrive.
OneDrive is also available as a mobile app and allows you to easily sync your documents across all your devices. See the following articles on how to configure the OneDrive app on your mobile devices:

Working with files on your Android phone
Working with files on your iPhone or iPad
Working with files on your Windows phone

If you have questions about OneDrive for Business, please contact the ITS Help Desk at helpdesk@ksu.edu or by phone at 785-532-7722 or 800-865-6143. You can also find more information about Office 365 at the ITS Office 365 web site. --Joe Lear