File Storage and Sharing

Network Share - Home Drive:

Every employee at USI is given a home network drive- commonly referred to as the H: drive. This disk space is located on-premise, and is backed up regularly. This IS a secure location for sensitive data*. Your home drive is located at \\docxfs\home\u\username (where u is the first letter of your first name). You cannot share your home drive. The only people with access to the H: drive are you and the Network Admins. You can access your H: drive when off campus (home), but you will need to use the VPN.

Network Share - Departmental Drive:

A shared drive is a service offered by IT that allows multiple users to share and save their files. This file space is commonly known as an L: drive or R: drive (or some letter).  This service is provided as file storage for a department, college, or subset of department members. 

This disk space is located on-premise.  These files are backed-up regularly.  This IS a secure location for sensitive data*. A Departmental share will be located in a path similar to \\docxfs\departmental\ or \\docsdept\.  This data is accessible from on campus or remotely. The VPN is necessary to access these files from off campus. 

Each department is responsible for letting the IT Department know who is to have permission to the shared folder. The department lead will specify the level of permission (read only, read/write) that each person should have. We suggest an annual review of user permissions to shared drives. The IT Department will work to make the Departmental drive map automatically on start-up for the person(s) with permissions.  

OneDrive:

Need to save or share your documents and files? OneDrive for Business is a secure and reliable cloud storage solution for your file sharing and collaboration needs. You can set your computer to automatically sync specified OneDrive folders with your hard drive. This way you can work off-line (no internet access) and the files with sync when you have internet access. You can also download OneDrive for mobile devices, so that your files can be accessed anytime, or anywhere (online and offline).

This disk space is NOT located on premise (campus) and is NOT a location for sensitive data*.

You can create a folder on your OneDrive and share it with another USI employee or student(s). You can also share a OneDrive folder with someone outside the University. However, this other person will have to establish a user account w/ password. This is an excellent way to share very large files. You can grant the read only permissions or read/write permissions to the shares. It is up to the owner of the OneDrive folder to manage their shares. 

Advantages of using OneDrive for Business:

• 1 TB of storage (10GB per file size limitation)
• Microsoft Office Online
• Real-time collaboration with students and colleagues
• Access from anywhere

Login to Your OneDrive for Business Account:

• Faculty, Staff, and Students: Login to OneDrive for Business through Office 365 (https://login.microsoftonline.com).

SharePoint

SharePoint is a web-based file collaboration service that utilizes Microsoft's SharePoint technology to enable teams and communities to create a shared location for documents, newsfeed (conversation), calendars, tasks, OneNote folders for team organization. SharePoint can be considered by colleges, departments or groups for project management.  We suggest the annual review by the group-lead of user permissions to the Sharepoint location.

• Groups: Groups in Outlook give your team space for conversations, shared files, scheduling events, and more.

File Storage and Sharing

• OneDrive: Allows users to store files on servers hosted by Microsoft, sync files in between computers, and integrates with both Office online and the Office Suite on your computer.
• Sharepoint: Allows users to collaborate and share documents with others.
• Network drives: Shared drives for department use.

*Sensitive Data: Student / HR /Financial data / HIPPA