OneDrive setup without user intervention

Help and Support
1

What is the problem you are having with rclone?

I am looking for advice on how to configure Rclone to connect to individual OneDrive accounts for a group of users who are not technically savvy. The goal is to set up everything in advance so that users can start using Rclone with their personal OneDrive accounts without needing to handle the configuration process themselves.

Which cloud storage system are you using? (eg Google Drive)

OneDrive

Challenges:

  1. Each user has their own OneDrive account that they will need to access through Rclone.
  2. Users are not technically skilled and we aim to simplify their experience by pre-configuring as much as possible.
  3. We need a secure way to handle authentication without direct user interaction.

Questions:

  1. Is there a method to pre-authenticate each user's OneDrive account with Rclone, perhaps by generating and deploying OAuth tokens in a secure manner?

thanks in advance

2

One way or another the rclone software is going to need to be granted permission to each individual person's OneDrive account and that happens during the normal configuration process and I don't see any way to avoid that.

If you had each person's Microsoft OneDrive credentials on hand you could configure everything yourself and then distribute to each person the appropriate rclone.conf file. This is highly unusual though.

Another option would be a free program called rust desk which will let you temporarily take remote control of each person's computer and assist them one by one remotely in setting up the software.

Rust desk is similar to programs like TeamViewer and can go through routers without opening ports and connect to anybody's computer with their permission of course. The software is open source.

3

One way or another the rclone software is going to need to be granted permission to each individual person's OneDrive account and that happens during the normal configuration process and I don't see any way to avoid that.

I completely agree that this needs to happen. The Question is if i am an admin can i register for members in the firm ? I can't get everyones credentials and do this manually (as there are over 300+ users). I am looking for a programatic / easier way todo this.

4

You really can't as that is the whole point of an oAuth flow as you have to interact with it to authorize a user.

I'm not sure if OneDrive does service accounts or anything like that as I'm more familiar with Google Drive but from a quick glance, I don't see anything offhand.

5

I don't know how to do any programmatic methods or know anything about administrator access over individual OneDrive accounts.

My recommendation would be to make a 5 or 10 minute self-help video tutorial such as people follow on YouTube in order to learn how to install and configure a piece of software.

If the employees are using personal OneDrive accounts and not business accounts I don't see any way for you to do it programmatically.

6

if the accounts were business, not personal, then might use sharepoint over webdav.

i think you are going to need to script it, maybe using something like
https://github.com/O365/python-o365

7

it is OneDrive for business.

8

"if the accounts were business, not personal, then might use sharepoint over webdav."

Yes you can use SharePoint as a webdav server.

That would be much easier monumentally less complicated than having everybody use onedrive.

9

Not sure i understand this. >

Yes you can use SharePoint as a webdav server.

are u suggesting that we use shrepoint rather than OneDrive? the rusers already have a lot of data on OneDrive.

10

Perhaps I am a little over tired and am not being accurate with regard to what you're trying to accomplish.

Your users are actively using their OneDrive now using I presume regular windows OneDrive software? I have both a personal and a business OneDrive account on my pc.

What is the goal you are trying to achieve by having them use rclone rather than accessing the server the way they are presently? I guess that's what I don't understand first.

WebDAV has the advantage of being able to map a drive letter to the server using only Microsoft Windows. You wouldn't need to configure rclone for anyone. You simply set up the user accounts with passwords and let each person map a drive to the URL providing their personal user ID and password.

Basically what do you want to have when you're done deploying?

11

then sharepoint over webdav could work for you, did you check the rclone docs?
"you'll most likely want to add "/Documents". That subdirectory contains the actual data stored on your OneDrive"

12

My users can't use the OneDrive official app as on our current os (Windows server 2016) on-demand files are not supported. Hence i am looking for alternatives.

13

OK,

So your situation is unique. My best understanding of what you need to accomplish can probably best be accomplished with a self-help training video that each employee can watch and follow.

14

Thanks.

I was hoping for a mechanism were I would make it super simple for the users.

15

it was suggested a few times to try sharepoint over webdav?
zero effort by the users.

16

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