Once Upon a Time in the Automount of OneDrive Team Sites

In this blog, we’ll explore how to ensure your Team Sites are synced automatically to all your devices and will show up in your OneDrive. While Microsoft offers a solution, it can take up to 8 hours. Today, I’ll show you how to speed up this process significantly.

Table of Contents

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1. Configure Team Site libraries to sync automatically

For anyone who wants to sync the team site libraries automatically, you can easily configure it in Intune. You can search for “configure team site” in the administrative templates.

Please Note: It’s not the best practice to sync all those sites to your device; the OneDrive app has its limits even when using the x64 version.

OneDrive 64 Bits and the 300.000 files sync issue (call4cloud.nl)

Looking at the picture above, you only need to have the Sharepoint Site ID. In the past, you could simply click on sync in SharePoint and press “Copy Library ID”

But that prompt could not be shown! If that’s the case, we need to create it manually. You could do so by pressing F12 to open the developer pane, clicking on the Network tab, and clicking the clear button to clear previous requests.

Now we have everything in place, press the sync button

We need to add the above settings to this line of text (except the tenant ID, but I hope you know how to find that one!).

tenantId=[TENANTID]&siteId=[SITEID]&webId=[WEBID]&listId=[LISTID]&webUrl=[WEBURL]

Here is an example:

tenantId=02ad5f9c-3696-477b-8cb3-9ba4e0a9ac9c&siteId={87a9f4b2-757b-4663-b19e-d58398f0f1e4}&webId={d1135130-a5e3-41d2-a8f1-a547508eaf04}&listId={265BA069-9F1C-4065-83AC-B7C7A0CE4C28}&webUrl=https://wvdcloud901026.sharepoint.com/sites/Office%5FTemplates&version=1

2. The Eight-hour delay

Okay, that’s not my cup of tea. Users should be able to decide which team sites are important to them. Also, it’s very user-friendly to set up.

Back to the issue at hand, when you configure the sync through Intune, the whole process could take up to 8 hours. While users often need access to a file or folder within minutes, this is an unacceptable timeframe for most businesses.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/onedrive/use-group-policy#AutoMountTeamSites

Now there’s an easy way to make your ever-loving customers very happy: They’ll have access to their files and folders in Explorer within minutes!

3. The TimerAutoMount

All we have to do is change the following “Timerautomount” registry key through PowerShell and nothing more!

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\OneDrive\Accounts\Business1

Option 1: Using Reg.exe in the User Context

You can push a PowerShell script in Intune to make sure this registry key is changed. But this will only change the key one time!. After a successful Onedrive startup and checking for sites to mount this key will be reset. So you will need to make sure the timerautomount will be changed on each login

PowerShell Script Content:

reg add "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\OneDrive\Accounts\Business1" /v Timerautomount /t REG_QWORD /d 1 /f

Please Note: A way better option would be to simply create a scheduled task to make sure this setting is configured on each login. But let’s take a look at some other options!

Option 2: ProActive Remediations User Context

You could use Proactive remediations in the user context to change those settings.

You will need to run this script using the logged-on credentials because it needs to be deployed in the HKCU, so running it in the system context is not going to do what we want.

Detection Script



$Path = "HKCU:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\OneDrive\Accounts\Business1"
$Name = "Timerautomount"
$Type = "QWORD"
$Value = 1

Try {
    $Registry = Get-ItemProperty -Path $Path -Name $Name -ErrorAction Stop | Select-Object -ExpandProperty $Name
    If ($Registry -eq $Value){
        Write-Output "Timer Automount Set to zero"
        Exit 0
    } 
    Write-Warning "Timer Automount Not configured to zero"
    Exit 1
} 
Catch {
    Write-Warning "Another Issue Occured"
    Exit 1
}

Remediation Script

$Path = "HKCU:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\OneDrive\Accounts\Business1"
$Name = "Timerautomount"
$Type = "QWORD"
$Value = 1

Set-ItemProperty -Path $Path -Name $Name -Type $Type -Value $Value

Option 3: Proactive Remediations System Context

If like me, you’re blocking PowerShell for your regular users… Here’s a quick and easy way to push HKCU changes in the registry while blocking PowerShell. Isn’t that nice

https://call4cloud.nl/2020/03/how-to-deploy-hkcu-changes-while-blocking-powershell

This option above is way better because it will ensure that the “Timerautomount” is reset each hour and can even run in the system context!

Conclusion

Many users value having easy access to files and folders through Explorer. Microsoft’s solution simply takes an unacceptable amount of time for most businesses. If, like me, you don’t want to wait 8 hours before having access to your files in Explorer, simply look at the abovementioned options and decide what best fits your business.

Next Read: Back to the Passwordless sign in. »