Stop syncing a library with the OneDrive for Business app
If you’ve synced OneDrive for Business or a SharePoint site library to folders on your computer, you can stop syncing these folders at any time. When you stop syncing a folder, you disconnect the folder on your computer from the library on the server. You can always sync the library to your computer again.
Why stop syncing a library?
Usually, you stop syncing when you no longer need to sync updates between the folder and the library on the server, or because you’ve completed a project. If something goes wrong with the connection between the folder and the library on the server, you can often fix the problem by stopping the current sync relationship, and start syncing the library again, as if for the first time.
Note: If you’re having sync problems, you can also run Repair. Repair disconnects and reconnects all libraries you’re currently syncing.
You can also pause syncing a folder. This allows you to temporarily stop syncing a folder without disconnecting it from the library on the server. You might pause syncing if you don’t want to use your system resources for syncing at the present time. You can resume syncing at any time.
Syncing a OneDrive for Business library is a function of Windows and the OneDrive for Business app, and is specific to your computer. You can only pause and stop syncing from your local computer, not from the online app.
Once you've stopped syncing a set of files, you can delete them from either your local computer, or from OneDrive for Business. If you delete a file from OneDrive for Business online, and then sync again, that file will be deleted from your local computer.
You can stop syncing a library, but not individual files or folders under that library.
Learn more about syncing libraries on OneDrive for Business here.
Data and analytics are reshaping organizations and business processes, giving organizations the capability to interrogate internal and external data to better understand their customers and drive transformative efficiencies.
Worldwide revenues for big data and business analytics clocked in at nearly $122 billion in 2015 and will grow to $187 billion in 2019, according to a five-year forecast from research firm IDC.
“Organizations able to take advantage of the new generation of business analytics solutions can leverage digital transformation to adapt to disruptive changes and create competitive differentiation in their markets,” said IDC analyst Dan Vesset in a statement issued in conjunction with the release of IDC’s Worldwide Semiannual Big Data and Analytics Spending Guide earlier this year. “These organizations don’t just automate existing processes — they treat data as they would any valued asset by using a focused approach to extracting and developing the value of information.”
Additionally, a recent Forrester Research study, commissioned by the global data and analytics team at KPMG, found that 50 percent of businesses now use data and analytics tools to analyze their existing customers, while 48 percent use them to find new customers and 47 percent use them to develop new products and services.
The picture isn’t entirely rosy, however. That same Forrester study found that many organizations are struggling to adjust their cultures to a world in which data and analytics play a central role, and many business executives mistrust the insights generated by data and analytics.
Other organizations, however, have taken naturally to data and analytics and are using new tools to better understand customers, develop new products and optimize business processes.
To honor those organizations, CIO.com and Drexel University’s LeBow College of Business recently announced the first Analytics 50 awards. The winners represent a broad spectrum of industries, from pharmaceuticals and healthcare to sports and media.
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Bumble is launching video stories to show more of your match
Bumble will soon release BumbleVID, which will allow users from across the dating platform to create a story with unlimited 10-second videos, which will each delete after 24 hours.
Here’s how it will work. Users record 10-second videos from directly within Bumble. These videos then post to their profile, and can be viewed by anyone who comes across their profile while swiping. You can also draw on these video, and eventually the dating app will introduce features to add additional depth to your video – like filters, location tagging, etc.
You can also add pre-recorded videos, but only ones taken in the last 24 hours, and they will be marked with an indicator saying they weren’t added “live”. And just like on Instagram and Snapchat, you’ll be able to see how many people saw your videos and who the people were.
In addition to being shown on each person’s profile when you’re swiping, the videos will be shown on the connections and conversations page – so you can see the video stories of anyone you are talking to, as well as the stories of people who you’ve connected with but haven’t started talking to.
The feature will launch in the next few weeks, and be available for everyone who is photo verified on the platform. The company had a bit of a setback with photo verification, mainly due to a response that exceeded their ability to verify every picture by hand. But they are now re-rolling out the feature on a limited scale, and expect it to be fully available soon.
Whitney Wolfe, cofounder and CEO of Bumble, explained that video had been on the company’s radar for a long time – but that the foray into video is much riskier for a company that connects strangers, instead of a company that connects friends (like Instagram and Snapchat). Nevertheless, Wolfe explained that after 2 years it was time for Bumble to add video, especially when video has become a part of every other major social platform.
Don’t Reinvent the Wheel
Pioneered by Snapchat, a video story consisting of 10-second clips that delete in 24 hours is now the de-facto way to share stories on the internet. Even Instagram’s CEO admitted that their hot new feature was inspired by Snapchat, saying “they deserve all the credit”. And in a similar vein, Wolfe explained that there’s no need to have an ego and try to reinvent the way short-form video is done on mobile. She said Bumble’s main focus is providing value to users, and making them relearn a new way of sharing video instead of adopting the hyper popular “story” method would just be a disservice.
A Stronger Incentive to Create Content
Swipe-based dating apps are currently pretty static. You work hard to create a profile, then essentially sit around (and swipe) while waiting for someone to swipe on you. There’s just not much more you can do to make your profile more interesting. Until now.
What’s a better incentive to create content than an opportunity to score a date with a guy or girl that you wouldn’t have otherwise matched with?
Take this example: You’re out with your friends on Friday night and want to share a short clip on one of your stories, but the moment won’t last to capture video in each platform individually. So which one do you pick? Instagram, Snapchat, or….Bumble?
Typically you’d just pick the platform where you have the biggest following or group of friends – for me that’s Instagram. But what if there’s a girl or guy you just matched with on Bumble who hasn’t started a conversation yet, and you really want to get their attention. It’s a no brainer that you’re going to eschew your friends on Instagram for the chance to impress a potential date.
BumbleVID will also help engagement – more people will spend more time on the platform, since they now will want to watch a video on each profile they swipe.
Adds Reality to Dating
A side effect of being static is that profiles on dating apps are still pretty perfect. Notice I’m not saying fake – it’s hard to succeed long term on Bumble or Tinder if you have straight-up fake pictures and information, especially with Bumble’s new photo verification features.
However, there is certainly a tightly-curated aesthetic that most people try to maintain on social platforms. And this isn’t necessarily a good thing. Sure it’s important to look pretty and sound cool, but you don’t want to come off as a person that is totally different from who you will be in person.
So BumbleVID could fix this. If enough people start creating video content on a regular basis, it could actually become weird to not have un-polished, ephemeral video always on your profile.
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The latest Windows Insider build will help you sleep better
Launch of Microsoft's Windows 10 in Sydney on July 29, 2015 in Sydney, Australia.
Microsoft launched one of its larger Insider Builds for Windows 10 today. The new version (15002) includes a plethora of new features that touch everything from the Start menu to the Edge browser, Windows Ink, Cortana, Defender and Windows’ built-in accessibility features. All of those are great, but the one new feature that may make the biggest difference in your day-to-day use of Windows 10 (and the night after) may be the new blue light settings that allow you to automatically show warmer colors at night (and reduce the amount of blue light).
If you’re already using f.lux, Night Light on Android Nougat (probably not), Night Shift on iOS, or a similar tool, then this isn’t anything new for you, but the vast majority of Windows 10 users are probably unaware of these third-party tools. The idea here is to reduce eye strain and to help you sleep better if you do have to work on your desktop at night. Blue light, research has shown, inhibits the release of melatonin and hence makes it harder to fall asleep after you’ve been sitting in front of a screen.
Microsoft is also making another change related to the color blue: the good old Blue Screen of Death is turning green in the Insider builds. Microsoft says it made this change “in an effort to more easily distinguish Windows Insider reports vs the reports of those on production builds.”
As for other new features, the new tab preview bar for the Edge browser looks very useful (though it’s something that other browsers have also long offered as a built-in feature). Edge now also lets you set tabs aside for later use, which should be useful for those of us who often have 20+ tabs open. With this update, Edge now also features a preview of Microsoft’s previously announced payment API.
In the Start menu, Windows 10 is finally getting support for folders to help you organize your tiles. In addition, users with 4k+ screens will surely appreciate the improved support for their monitors thanks to improved high-DPI support for desktop apps (which is still a bit of an issue for Windows users).
This is only a very small sample of what’s new in this build. You can find a full rundown of all of the new features in Microsoft’s announcement.
New Windows 10 devices at CES, Microsoft Connected Vehicle Platform, summiting the highest peaks in 50 states (in under 50 days) – Weekend Reading: Jan. 6 edition
Happy New Year, and welcome to the first Weekend Reading of 2017. We know many of you are still climbing your mountain of post-vacation emails or getting re-acquainted with commuting schedules, but please allow us to distract you with our top news from an exciting first week back in the office.
VR-ready gaming PCs, increased power and performance, lighter hardware with longer battery life, OLED and 4K screens, infrared cameras and fingerprint readers that unlock Windows Hello all featured heavily in this CES lineup.
Microsoft made some of it’s own announcements at CES this week including the Microsoft Connected Vehicle Platform that will help automakers build the future of intelligent vehicles.
The set of services is built on the Microsoft Azure cloud and will enable auto manufacturers to create custom connected driving experiences that are in-line with their brand. The living, agile platform aims to address predictive maintenance, improved in-car productivity, advanced navigation, customer insights and autonomous driving capabilities.
The certification distinguishes Azure as an organization that patients and health providers can count on to store their private information. The accreditation incorporates industry-specific security, privacy and regulatory requirements. It also provides a single framework for health organizations to evaluate the Azure environment.
While we enjoy dependable health services as much as anyone, we also enjoy really fast cars (at least on Xbox) and “Forza Horizon 3” Rockstar Car Pack just delivered seven new high-speed vehicle options.
This pack features everything from classic Japanese power to a Ford trophy truck to the hybrid styling of the 2015 BMW i8. The Rockstar Car Pack is included in the “Forza Horizon 3” Car Pass, which is available for separate purchase or as part of the Ultimate Edition of “Forza Horizon 3.” Players can also get the car pack standalone for $6.99 in the Xbox Store.
In the spirit of New Year’s Resolutions, we featured experienced mountain climbers Melissa and Maddie on our Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram pages. The two achieved their goal of summiting the highest peak in all 50 states in less than 50 days, using Microsoft technology to help along the way.
Thanks for joining us for another Weekend Reading. We hope to see you again next Friday as we pick up even more steam into 2017.
Renault-Nissan is first auto manufacturer to commit to platform to build connected cars
Traditional automakers, many of whom ushered in an era of incredible disruption nearly a century ago, now face disruption themselves from four modern forces — connected, autonomous, shared and electric cars. The infrastructure and scale required to build a connected car is incredibly complicated, expensive and resource intensive. At its core, it’s a software challenge, and a chief obstacle for these brands is integrating the complex cloud technology required to deliver next-generation driving experiences.
Today at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, we announced the Microsoft Connected Vehicle Platform, a set of services built on the Microsoft Azure cloud and designed to empower auto manufacturers to create custom connected driving experiences. This is not an in-car operating system or a “finished product;” it’s a living, agile platform that starts with the cloud as the foundation and aims to address five core scenarios that our partners have told us are key priorities: predictive maintenance, improved in-car productivity, advanced navigation, customer insights and help building autonomous driving capabilities.
Microsoft’s cloud will do the heavy lifting by ingesting huge volumes of sensor and usage data from connected vehicles, and then helping automakers apply that data in powerful ways.
Available as a public preview later this year, it brings Microsoft’s intelligent services from across the company right into the car, including virtual assistants, business applications, office services and productivity tools like Cortana, Dynamics, Office 365, Power BI and Skype for Business.
Today, the car is more than just a ride between two places — it is a hub of activity for daily life. People are looking to have truly connected experiences in their cars so that they can get more done, save time and make life easier. While safety and security are baseline requirements, our services can help make a person’s work day more efficient. For instance, imagine that Cortana seamlessly connects you whether you’re at home or in your car. Let’s say you’re on your phone at home and tell Cortana to set up a meeting for you and your colleague the next morning at a coffee shop. The next time you get in your car, Cortana reminds you of the morning meeting and starts navigation to get you to that coffee shop.
Check out our video below to hear more about how the platform works and the benefits it offers to automakers and drivers.
Auto manufacturers embrace Microsoft’s technology
Our strength in building a global cloud at scale is the primary reason the Renault-Nissan Alliance chose to work with Microsoft, becoming the first auto manufacturer to commit to the Microsoft Connected Vehicle Platform. Today in Nissan’s CES keynote, the company announced that through our partnership with the Renault-Nissan Alliance, our platform will power next-generation, connected vehicles with advanced navigation, predictive maintenance, remote monitoring of car features and more. Nissan also demonstrated on stage how Cortana can enhance a driver’s experience. In addition, Azure offers the flexibility and choice to build a common platform for Renault-Nissan to deploy services to both Alliance brands by supporting devices and vehicles that run on multiple operating systems, programming languages and tools.
This partnership builds on our recent momentum with other automotive companies, such as our announcement this past week with Volvo to integrate Skype for Business in Volvo’s 90 Series cars, which will enhance productivity and make joining conference calls from the car a cinch. And we’ve partnered with BMW on BMW Connected, the automaker’s personal mobility companion service, to develop a scalable platform based on Microsoft Azure technologies to deliver in-car productivity services through Office 365, as well as intelligent personal assistance for drivers.
Microsoft a partner instead of a competitor
As you may have gathered, Microsoft is not building its own connected car. Instead, we want to help automakers create connected car solutions that fit seamlessly with their brands, address their customers’ unique needs, competitively differentiate their products and generate new and sustainable revenue streams. Our customers have shared that they want to work with a partner that not only offers the right tools, but also allows them to keep their data, has a secure and compliant cloud platform, and operates at a truly global scale (given that most automotive brands operate in more than one country). In fact, 85 percent of Fortune 500 companies already rely on Microsoft’s cloud for these reasons.
Using our platform, automakers and suppliers can benefit from the billions of dollars we’ve already invested in the cloud. Azure offers more than 200 services available in 38 worldwide datacenter regions, with robust measures for security and the global compliance and privacy regulations that are required to support connected cars, letting automakers focus on innovation rather than building out their own cloud-based infrastructure.
Ultimately, Microsoft aspires to empower automakers in their goals for fully autonomous driving, with sophisticated machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities, as well as advanced mapping services. In fact, just last month we announced that through new and existing relationships with TomTom, HERE and Esri, together we will create more intelligent location-based services across Microsoft.
As a company, it’s our mission to empower all industries and businesses not only to survive disruption, but to seize it as an opportunity. The investments we’re making in the automotive space extend to countless other industries, such as financial services, manufacturing and smart cities. Wherever there’s a “connected signal,” Microsoft wants to be the partner that can help its customers improve people’s lives — on the road, in the cloud and everywhere in between.
Research shows that IT executives are challenged to build IT departments that are more strategic, serviced-oriented and engaged with the business, but they’re dealing with employees who lack the skills to make the transformation. By using a blended IT workforce, you can leverage the abilities and expertise of a much larger and technologically-diverse team to tackle issues that your full-time staff may not be equipped to handle. Finding in demand technology skill sets can be challenging, so explore a blended IT solution that involves using a mix of full-time employees, independent contractors and temporary workers.
Every company is a technology company, but most don’t behave like one
In 2011, Marc Andreesen famously wrote a Wall Street Journal essay declaring that “software is eating the world.” Five years later, the five largest companies in the world by market capitalization are all software companies.
However, in today’s information economy, Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook are not the only important large technology companies.
As technology becomes more and more pervasive across industries and functions, companies like Exxon, GE, Citi, and Walmart are all racing to become technology companies as well.
Today, we are less interested in the distinction between technology and non-technology companies (because there are very few successful companies that are not technology companies). Instead, it’s more interesting to ask questions like – Tesla is a technology company rapidly learning to become an automobile company, and Ford is an automobile company rapidly learning to become a technology company – which one is going to get there first?
In short, software is eating the world, but software companies aren’t the only ones taking a bite.
How do companies in real estate, finance, healthcare, manufacturing, or other industries that have traditionally not been recognized as technology industries become technology companies? What are some of the key learnings that we see from startups and companies that are successfully making this transition?
It starts at the highest level of leadership
Leading a transformation to become a successful technology company is not a job that can simply be tasked to the CTO or CIO. The level of engagement and investment to lead a successful transformation requires the CEO and board of directors to not only be fully bought in but to be the main drivers of the change.
Goldman Sachs has known for many years that technology is a key competitive advantage in financial services. In one recent WSJ article, a top Goldman executive valued a license for their risk measurement system at well over $1 billion, and possibly even up to $5 billion. They have since open-sourced the system in a move to attempt to drum up new business.
More importantly, however, Goldman Sachs’ Chairman and CEO Lloyd Blankfein has repeatedly stated that “Goldman Sachs is a technology firm” and highlights the fact that Goldman Sachs actually employs more engineers than companies like Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn and often competes for talent and wins against top internet companies.
Talent is the most important asset of a technology company
One of the key drivers for the rapid growth of new technology companies is the low capital requirement to build a company today. New companies no longer need to buy hundreds of thousands of dollars of servers and equipment; instead, they can pay for servers on demand from cloud providers when needed.
This dynamic makes it more important than ever for companies to hire great people. In fact, a recent survey Madrona conducted in conjunction with its annual CIO Summit found that 89% of Fortune 500 CIOs say hiring top talent is their number one concern today.
GE has likely made the largest investment in this space to change the story that young engineers and college graduates hear about the company with a series of Youtube videos and television ads. Though it remains to be seen whether these videos work, GE has recognized that filling its talent pipeline with young engineers and technologists is critical and is investing accordingly.
Technology needs to be at the core of company culture, not an afterthought
At a company like Microsoft or Facebook, engineering positions are the most prestigious, highest status roles at the company. The founders and CEOs of technology companies are often engineers and may have even built early version of the products themselves.
For companies to successfully make the transition and become a technology company, cultures need to change to take into account the unique way that software development works and to highlight the importance of technology and the people who manage and build it.
One example of a move towards a developer friendly culture is happening at Walmart. WalmartLabs recently open sourced Electrode, the application platform that powers Walmart.com. Electrode is a modular platform that helps improve application performance, and Walmart is open sourcing the software to give back to the open source world and benefit from additional contributions from the community.
It is important to keep in mind that building a technology-driven culture is not just about free lunches and massages. As Joel Spolsky CEO of Stack Overflow said in a recent interview, “If you want to attract and keep developers, don’t emphasize ping-pong tables, lounges, fire pits and chocolate fountains. Give them private offices or let them work from home because this uninterrupted time to concentrate is the most important and scarcest commodity.
Companies need to move fast and adopt agile practices
The pace of technology adoption is getting faster and faster every year. For example, it took decades for electricity and telephones to reach 50% of US households, but today it takes only years for new technologies like smartphones and tablets to reach a majority of the population. This underscores the importance for companies to continuously adopt new technologies that can enhance productivity and also to continuously experiment with new technologies that have the potential to be disruptive to the business.
An interesting anecdote from The Lean Startup, one of the manifestos for startup founders, is that Intuit holds themselves accountable to being innovative and agile by using two key metrics: (1) the number of customers using products that didn’t exist three years ago and (2) the percentage of revenue coming from offerings that did not exist three years ago. Historically for Intuit, it took a new product an average of 5.5 years to reach $50 million in revenue; at the time the book was written, they had multiple products generating $50 million in revenue that were less than a year old.
Particularly, as the world is moving towards cloud computing, continuous development, and continuous updates are the name of the game. Agile development practices enable you to continuously deliver better experiences for your customers and waterfall development methodology is a relic of the past.
Companies need to look forward and avoid getting caught in the innovator’s dilemma
The classic case for why legacy competitors can do everything “right” and fail is the force of disruptive innovation described in Clayton Christensen’s The Innovator’s Dilemma. Businesses can reject innovations based on customers’ current needs while innovative upstarts develop products in a way that meets customers’ future needs.
Recently, we have seen automakers take very innovative approaches to automotive technology as autonomous vehicles move to the front and center of the startup world with the acquisitions of companies like Otto and Cruise and public pilots of new technologies like Uber’s self-driving cars in Pittsburgh or Tesla’s Autopilot feature.
Ford, in particular, has been very vocal about the autonomous future and the importance of working differently in the context of today’s technology-driven world. Ford’s CEO, Mark Fields, has written that “As little as four years ago, our approach was aligned with the thinking of most automakers today, which is taking incremental steps to achieve full autonomy by advancing driver assist technology. This is not how we look at it today. We learned that to achieve full autonomy, we’d have to take a completely different pathway.”
Conclusion
The race to become the market leader across a variety of sectors and geographies is speeding up amongst older incumbents and promising, young startups. Startups have a lot to learn from the established management and financial practices of incumbents, but incumbents have a lot to learn from startups as well. The companies, young or old, that use technology to best create competitive advantages for themselves will win.
Technology needs to be a fundamental fabric of the company’s DNA and culture as companies truly internalize that “Every company is a technology company”.
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