Workspace setup on Microsoft OneDrive?

Greetings,

I will be assisting a startup design firm nearby to get up and running with MicroStaion/ProjectWise (PW) - most likely only one license of each. 

Their filestorage is all in Microsoft OneDrive, a component of Sharepoint. For any projects on PW, they should be able to pull files, references, symbology, etc from the PW managed workspace. But for projects they may have not hosted on someone's PW, they will need a local workspace. How would one setup a local workspace for their use using OneDrive? I know it's possible to map OneDrive as a drive letter but it's also not advised (never mind having to log into every single PC with the credentials to map the drive letter). Has anyone got any experience setting up a Workpsace using OneDrive?  One can open files from One Drive with no issue - but getting the correct symbology and such is another matter. 

Any advice is appreciated!

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  • Interesting and totally cool if you can pull it off!!

    I have not tested this in any way shape or form but here would be how I would approach it based on a single user. I am not sure how to share this easily between users, I have never seen a OneDrive Organization share, I would think that storing it in SharePoint maybe easier to do and share out to many. This is based on MSTNCE12.

    1. Install the program.
    2. I would copy the Configuration to the OneDrive location which by default is;
      1. c:\users\(%username)\onedrive\
      2. So you would have something like; c:\users\(%username)\onedrive\Bentley_Configuration\
        This would have the folders Organization and WorkSpaces in it.
    3. I would then configure the application to look there by editing the ConfigurationSetup.cfg. Something like this;
      _USTN_CUSTOM_CONFIGURATION=c:/users/%username/onedrive/Bentley_Configuration/
      [SetConfiguration]
      %if !defined (_USTN_USER_CONFIGURATION)
      %if defined (_USTN_CUSTOM_CONFIGURATION) && ($(_USTN_CUSTOM_CONFIGURATION) != "") && exists ($(_USTN_CUSTOM_CONFIGURATION))
      _USTN_CONFIGURATION = c:/users/%username/onedrive/Bentley_Configuration/
      %endif
      %endif
    4. I would then do sometesting making sure it created workspaces and worksets correctly and read the files correctly from there. I would also move the Organiztions data into the structure so it is all good to go before moving on to the next part
    5. Unistall the application.
    6. Install the application building a Layout with it installing and pointing to the OneDrive configuration.
    7. Install the layout to a new PC and test.

    Good Luck with this! I am interested in how it works for you. Also how it works with regards to editing files such as DGNlib and any conflicts in file editing that may occur. Please report back any findings.

    ~HTH

    John.

    yep

  • One Drive creates an environment variable that points to the users one drive. You can use that in the _USTN_CUSTOM_CONFIGURATION. Note that One Drive for Business creates a different environment variable than regular One Drive (OneDriveCommercial is the Environment variable for One Drive for Business). So for John's example you can instead use:

    [General]
    %if defined (OneDrive) && ($(OneDrive) != "") && exists ($(OneDrive))
    	_USTN_CUSTOM_CONFIGURATION=$(OneDrive)
    %elif defined (OneDriveCommerical) && ($(OneDriveCommercial) != "") && exists ($(OneDriveCommercial))
    	_USTN_CUSTOM_CONFIGURATION=$(OneDriveCommercial)
    %else
    	_USTN_CUSTOM_CONFIGURATION=
    %endif
    

    Couple of things you'll probably want to test:

    • what happens when you update files that are locked open on the local machine. MicroStation retains locks on many of the files in a workspace (notably .rsc files, by default vba's as well, not sure on mdls).  If you update the master version of a file, if the local copy is locked by microstation what does One Drive do? Does it wait 'til the file unlocks or does it create a conflict copy.
    • In your configuration will any user be able to update the workspace that is then sync'd to everybody else or will the sync be one way. If any user can change the workspace then be prepared for a breaking change that gets replicated to everyone's computer and locks them out of MicroStation.

     

  • I couldn't figure out how to do it in OneDrive so I used SharePoint to sync it to the local machine. I used SharePoint so I could control some read write access, have a central repository that is sync'd to the local user.  A concern is that each user on a machine will have a copy.

    %if defined $(USERPROFILE) && ($(USERPROFILE) != "") && exists ($(USERPROFILE))
    _USTN_CUSTOM_CONFIGURATION = $(USERPROFILE)\SharePoint\BCE_Configuration/
    %else
    _USTN_CUSTOM_CONFIGURATION = //$(server)/BCE_Configuration/
    %endif

    ~HTH

    John.

    yep

Reply
  • I couldn't figure out how to do it in OneDrive so I used SharePoint to sync it to the local machine. I used SharePoint so I could control some read write access, have a central repository that is sync'd to the local user.  A concern is that each user on a machine will have a copy.

    %if defined $(USERPROFILE) && ($(USERPROFILE) != "") && exists ($(USERPROFILE))
    _USTN_CUSTOM_CONFIGURATION = $(USERPROFILE)\SharePoint\BCE_Configuration/
    %else
    _USTN_CUSTOM_CONFIGURATION = //$(server)/BCE_Configuration/
    %endif

    ~HTH

    John.

    yep

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