Handling files in SharePoint Online

While migration Procore (see Microsoft site for case study), one of our BPOS TAP clients, we ran into some interesting issues with SharePoint Online. Procore has phased out all their file servers. All data is moved to BPOS.

The first problem we ran into was the 50GB Site Collection limit within SharePoint online. The 50GB Site Collection limit is by design. The first time we tried to create a Site Collection which exceeded the 50GB limit we immediately ran into an error stating this was not possible. Please don't mix up Subsites with Site Collections. One Site Collection can contain as much Subsites as a company needs. However the 50GB site limit is cannot be superseded.

The second problem we ran into was that a Site Collection cannot contain any managed paths. While implementing SharePoint Online all sites are created as a root site without the possibility of creating either managed paths or using the Managed Paths which is generated by default in a SharePoint Server Standard implementation (the Sites Managed Path). If you need to create an environment which needs more than 50GB of data you should keep this in mind while architecting the solution. The only way the creation of a new site collection works is by creating a new Top level site within MOCP.

The third problem is the 50MB file size limit. People using SharePoint Online cannot upload documents of more than 50MB per file. Currently there is no solution or workaround. The SharePoint Online Product Managers today however told us that there might be a possibility that the 50MB size limit will be changed.

From a practical point of view of course there is a fourth problem. If a company is used to working with locally installed file servers, they are used to speed. Opening a file will only take a few seconds (this of course is dependent on file size). If the company stores all its data in a SharePoint Online environment their experience will change a lot. They'll need to transfer files between their computer and the online environment which inevitably will take a long time. In order to solve this problem we decided to use Colligo Reader (free), which allows them to have a copy of all SharePoint data offline. For power user we use Colligo Contributor which allows for synchronization of data.

Comments

[Danny Burlage]

Somebody just mailed me the question how much extra file storage would cost. Although this is not jet available in Holland (or the Western Europe countries for that matter) it will cost 2,13 per EXTRA gb.

[Anthony Yates]

We used Colligo and in many aspects were really dissatisfied, week user interface and istability was among few, scynaptic was a better option but still not the best