In addition to announcing Bing for Business, three new machine learning products and new tools for cloud administrators at its Ignite conference in Orlando, Microsoft Corp. has also unveiled various new updates its OneDrive cloud storage.

The long list of enhancements for OneDrive will allow users to share and collaborate more easily and includes changes to the user interface. Here’s a look at some of the new updates coming to OneDrive over the next few months:

Cleaner and faster UI

The update to OneDrive will provide users with a cleaner web UI, as well as being faster and more responsive.

With the new “People Card” and “Info Pane,” users will also be able to see more easily what content is new, which files and folders have been shared with others and who has accessed the content.

Improved sharing options

Over the next few months, OneDrive will also be updated with new, standardized sharing options across Office, Windows and Mac. The new sharing pane will allow OneDrive users to share documents with specific people or those in an organization.

For mobile clients, OneDrive users will see what content has been shared with others and who has or hasn’t accessed it.

Microsoft will also be rolling out support for external sharing without the need for a Microsoft Service Account. Users will be able to use Azure to create a one-time-use passcode that will grant external users access to content.

Shared notifications between mobile and desktop will allow users to quickly see when shared files have been opened or changed by a team member.

File Restore

Without the assistance from the information technology department, OneDrive users will be able to use the new File Restore feature to restore file(s) from the last 30 days following mass deletes, ransomware, corruption and other data loss scenarios.

File On-Demand

Microsoft first introduced its File On-Demand feature at Build 2017 and it has been in beta testing with Windows Insiders since June.

On Oct. 17 when the new feature becomes generally available, the File On-Demand feature will sync all files from a user’s OneDrive account with certain files and folders stored on the hard drive.

Built-in functionality will also allow OneDrive users to see more than 270 different files types, both on the web and on the desktop, without having the actual application installed.

Additional updates

Included in the long list of OneDrive enhancements is support for zip files in the web view, allowing users to open a zip file in the web view and extract only the files that they need. As well as support for synchronization of libraries encrypted with Information Rights Management or Digital Rights Management.

Microsoft is also offering support for On-Premise customers on both the Windows and Android platforms.

The OneDrive Admin Center will also be updated with administrators able to see active accounts, file activity and view all OneDrive Message Center messages right from the OneDrive admin console.

Microsoft is also releasing a self-service migration toolkit that will allow users to migrate from share drives or other cloud-based services to OneDrive.

Check out Microsoft’s blog for a full list of enhancements.

Image: Microsoft