SharePoint 2013 For Dummies
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The SkyDrive hub is designed as a place to store, organize, and share your personal documents in SharePoint. For example, you might have a carpool list that you’re working on or a potluck spreadsheet. You might also be working on business documents that don’t really fit into any specific app in SharePoint. Your personal SkyDrive is the catch-all place you can store it.

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Think of your SkyDrive as your personal Documents folder on your computer. The difference is that your personal Documents folder on your computer is only on that single computer. If you’re using a different computer, you can’t access those documents.

In addition, if your computer crashes and you have not backed up your Documents folder, then those files are lost. SkyDrive is designed to be a secure and safe place to store all your documents. What if your device crashes or is stolen? With your documents stored in SkyDrive, you just log in again from a different device and continue working on your documents.

Your SkyDrive files are only secure and backed up if your IT team sets up the infrastructure that way. If you’re using SharePoint Online, then you can be assured that Microsoft is doing this for you. If your local IT team is running SharePoint for you, then check with them to make sure they back up and secure your SkyDrive documents.

Your SkyDrive is designed to live in the cloud and be accessible by any device you happen to be working on. For example, you might start a document at work and then have to stop working on it when you leave to pick up your kids. When you get home, you might log in and continue working on the document.

Then you might have to take your mother-in-law to the doctor, so you take your tablet with you. You log in from your tablet while waiting in the doctor’s office. When you drop off your mother-in-law, you remember you have to run to the grocery store; while there, you get an e-mail on your smartphone asking about a detail in the document you have been working on.

You connect to your SkyDrive on your smartphone and view the document so you can respond to the inquiry. Being this connected isn’t always the best way to spend your off time, but SkyDrive enables you to decide when and where you want to work. The idea behind SkyDrive is that when you need your documents, you can access them as long as you can connect to the Internet.

About This Article

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About the book author:

Ken Withee is a longtime Microsoft SharePoint consultant. He currently writes for Microsoft's TechNet and MSDN sites and is president of Portal Integrators LLC, a software development and services company. Ken wrote Microsoft Business Intelligence For Dummies and is coauthor of Office 365 For Dummies.

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