Based on my search, it’s not feasible to map SharePoint Online site as network drive on Mac. To learn more, see Mapping a drive to a SharePoint library (Connect to Server) from Mac OSX Finder does not allow drag and drop of files into a SharePoint document Library. We can use this same feature to trick the PC into connecting to a Document Library in SharePoint online and mapping it to a drive letter on your PC. Step-by-Step Instructions 1. Launch Internet Explorer. This is a very important step, as this system won’t work in other browsers, not even the new Windows 10 browser, Edge.

Map Sharepoint Document Library As Network Drive Mac Software
Map Sharepoint Online Library As Network Drive

Reviewing the latest OneDrive features I wanted to try the new AutoMountTeamSites setting which lets you preconfigure SharePoint online sites to sync automatically for defined users and devices.

Updated on 12.07.2019: Included the Intune administrative template configuration

The setting is officially described as follow:

This setting lets you specify SharePoint team site libraries to sync automatically the next time users sign in to the OneDrive sync client. (Microsoft)

If you enable this setting, the OneDrive sync client will automatically download the contents of the libraries you specified as online-only files the next time the user signs in. The user won’t be able to stop syncing the libraries. (Microsoft)

Prerequisites

In order to get things up an running we need at least:

OneDrive sync client version 19.012.0121.0011 or newer
Windows 10 Version 1709 or newer
OneDrive Files On-Demand enabled (described below)

Be aware that this feature is not supported with on-premises SharePoint sites and not recommended to enable this setting for more than 1’000 devices. The device limit is related to the Windows Push Notification Service which tells the OneDrive clients when a file change occurs on a server side. When you exceed that limit clients will find themselves in a polling mode. Hans Brender explains this behavior well on his blog.

Gathering the SharePoint library ID

We need to gather the SharePoint library ID which is an encoded HTML URL of your SharePoint library. To get the library ID navigate to your SharePoint site, click Sync and then Copy library ID.

Intune Administrative Template configuration

Create a new device configuration profile in Intune and select Administrative Template as type:

To find all OneDrive policies enter “OneDrive” as search criteria
Look for the “Use OneDrive Files On-Demand” setting and enable it
Look for the “configure team site libraries to sync automatically” setting which is available in the machine and user context
Enter a friendly Name for your library and paste-in the copied SharePoint library ID from above
Please note that the Name property is only used for better recognition of the setting and has no impact on your end devices - where the original name of the SharePoint library will be displayed.

Additional policies

Map Sharepoint Document Library As Network Drive Mac Software

For a better user experience I recommend you to configure the: “Silently sign in users to the OneDrive sync client with their Windows credentials” as well, assuming your devices are Hybrid Azure AD Joined or Azure AD Joined then OneDrive get’s automatically provisioned.

Intune ADMX ingestion (superseded)

Normally I’m a fan of Intune OMA-URI and ADMX Backend Policies to deploy GPO settings with Intune. Unfortunately I had a lot of issues for this setting and kept testing for a long time. I was able to write values into the registry with URL’s like “tech.nicolonsky.ch” but not with encoded SharePoint library ID’s. This resolves to a problem with the Windows 10 client side MDM extension because it cannot process the encoded SharePoint Library ID string.

Registry configuration

Enabling the feature with the Windows registry is quite easy and may be suitable if you cannot use device management capabilities like Intune MDM or Group Policy. We simply need to set a registry key under the following location:

HKLM:SOFTWAREPoliciesMicrosoftOneDriveTenantAutoMount

Choose a suitable name (this has no technical impact as the original SharePoint library name is used) as value use the copied SharePoint library ID from above.

PowerShell snippet

To set the registry key with an (Intune) PowerShell script you can use the following snippet and update it with your values:

Map Sharepoint Online Library As Network Drive

End user experience

After the next sign-in it took a few minutes and the SharePoint library was visible on my lab-machine:

Please note that it can take up to 8 hours to apply the setting, as documented by Microsoft.

10/05/2018
Posted by: Sheryl Newman
Categories:

Most of our conversations with prospective clients go like this… we’ve got Office 365 and we have mapped our network drives to SharePoint…

Many of the companies we talk to are migrating their documentation from existing network drives into SharePoint. So what often happens is the IT provider or internal resource will transfer their documentation from the network drive into a single document library or sub sites which are then mapped as a network drive.

Most of us have grown up with folders, we are comfortable using the File Explorer interface and it’s just easy, right?

But what if there was a way that could work and gets everyone happy moving to a new way of working?

Connecting network shares to a platform like Office 365 without detailed planning is the potential equivalent of having a root canal without an anaesthetic, painful and often doesn’t offer the best long-term results. This isn’t how SharePoint was designed to be used. Here are 5 some reasons we think why:

1. TECHNICAL ISSUES

Planning from the start is really important. There are a few issues within SharePoint that if you don’t know the product well you wont be aware of:

5,000 item limit on a document library which needs to be taken into consideration for your end users. We will provide more information on this in another post.
URL length.
If you have a very deep folder hierarchy this can cause quite a lot of issues. Microsoft have written an article on it and you can find out more here
As your libraries grow larger degraded performance will become an issue.

Modern lists finally address the dreaded “5,000 item view limit” that has frustrated SharePoint users for years. It does this by automatically creating indexes as they’re needed, based on user interaction. It’s not perfect, but for most situations it removes this pain point.

2. USER EXPERIENCE AND ADOPTION

The best practice in SharePoint is to create many sites and many libraries as you split content by function and security. You also have ability to utilise some great features such as views, version history, email alerts etc.

The initial change management aspect of making that change for some organisations can be too difficult. Using the file explorer for day to day operations is an easy first step but our recommendation would be to move into the browser, especially if you work between different devices the libraries won’t be mapped. This creates a change from a shared network drive type environment to a SharePoint centred environment.

For easy user adoption when being introduced to SharePoint, If a library is mapped as a drive, for day to day operational activities having a mapped drive, allows easy immediate access to open and save your field directly in the open/save Explorer window that opens up. Then for more advanced activities such as versioning and assigning metadata this can then be done in SharePoint. There is also the option to sync which works with both OneDrive and SharePoint which makes a library of certain files and folders available on your desktop. Do remember, if you have low space on your PC you won’t have the capacity to work offline. The official guidance is to sync no more than 300,000 files across all document libraries. Additionally, the same performance issues can occur if you have 300,000 items or more across all libraries you are syncing, even if you are not synching all items in those libraries.

The introduction of the modern document library in SharePoint online also provides a good user experience wi