Zee Drive for Office 365

Map OneDrive for Business & SharePoint to Network Drives

Are you replacing your file server with Office 365 and OneDrive for Business but don't want to lose the familiarity and ease of working with your files through mapped drives and file shares? Then take a look at Zee Drive to find out how it makes Office 365 work as your new file server.

Zee Drive maps OneDrive for Business, team sites, SharePoint Online document libraries, shared with me files and Office 365 group files to network drives giving you access to your files through the familiar interface of Windows File Explorer in a similar way as if you were accessing them from a local file server.

Mapped drives are persistent and available when users sign in to their PCs. The mapped drive configuration is managed centrally by Zee Drive so you can easily deploy changes to drive mappings to all users in your organisation.

Zee Drive can minimise disruption to end users and greatly reduce the need for training when transitioning to Office 365 because users work with their files in a familiar way. Users can also perform advanced actions such as viewing file version history and sharing their files with their colleagues directly from their Zee Drive mapped network drives in Windows File Explorer.

If you are considering deploying Zee Drive to your customers then find out about our Zee Drive partner subscriptions. With a partner subscription you can white label parts of Zee Drive and administer all your customer subscriptions from a single interface. With a partner subscription you can provide a "managed cloud file server" solution for your customers.

Features

Open, move, delete and manage your folders and files with Windows File Explorer
Drag & drop emails straight from Outlook to your OneDrive for Business and team sites
Overcomes the 300,000 file sync limitation of the Microsoft OneDrive sync tool
Uses less hard disk storage than synchronisation, only accessed files are retrieved
Caches frequently accessed files and directory structures to deliver fast response times
Network drives are persistent between reboots
Single Sign-On for Entra ID and ADFS joined devices, keeps users signed-in
Compatible with Entra ID conditional access token protection for better token security
Manage drive mappings centrally and roll out easily to all users on your subscription
Target mapped drives to specific groups of users
Ease transition to Office 365 by using the same drive letters used on-premises
Map to a specific user's OneDrive for Business to access their shared documents
Use Zee Drive virtual folders to connect multiple libraries under one network drive
Locks documents opened in Office to help prevent two people editing same document
Provides a summary of file activity across all users on your subscription
View report of all computers and users that are running Zee Drive on your subscription
Recovers failed file uploads, central reporting to view computers with unsaved files
Works on hot desk computers such as shared computers in offices and school libraries
View file and folder changes made by other users on-demand
Map to team sites, modern sites, group files and entire team site hierarchies
View and manage the version history of a file from the File Explorer context menu
Map a network drive to your shared with me files
Share your files with your colleagues directly from Windows File Explorer
Works on desktop servers such as RDS, RemoteApp, Citrix XenDesktop, XenApp, WVD
Supports long file and folder names with URL paths up to 400 characters in length
Restore deleted files directly from the File Explorer context menu
Supports copying files up to 15GB in size to netwok drives with Windows File Explorer
Works with Windows File Explorer progress bar to show accurate file copy progress
Search for files using SharePoint's fast search full text index directly from File Explorer
Customise the Windows File Explorer context menu to show or hide commands
Open Office documents for co-authoring from the File Explorer context menu
Supports automated installation, activation and upgrades for enterprise environments
Redirect Windows folders to OneDrive for Business through a central configuration
View recent editing activity from File Explorer to monitor your co-workers' changes
Supports multi-factor authentication with Azure AD Oauth2 modern authentication
Map to all modern team sites users have joined under a single network drive
Send a link to a file or folder directly from the File Explorer context menu
Create common document templates available to all users from the New menu
Restricts users to view files and folders where permissions are set to read only
Configure Microsoft Office documents to open for co-authoring by default
Open files and folders in a web browser for direct access to SharePoint Online
Automatically locks DWG drawing files opened in Autodesk® AutoCAD®
View, compare and manage your AutoCAD® DWG drawing version history
Choose the colour of your folders in File Explorer from a fixed palette of colours
Opens Office and AutoCAD® in the browser by default if the apps aren't installed
Map network drives for external (guest) users you have invited to your tenant
Connect network drives to hub sites and hub site hierarchies

Download Zee Drive and Start Your Free Trial

Try out Zee Drive with a free 7 day trial subscription for 5 users (also includes licences for trialling Zee Drive on hot desk computers and desktop servers). Click the button below to download Zee Drive. Once downloaded, run Zee Drive and follow the steps to setup your trial and activate Zee Drive on your computer.

The Zee Drive trial subscription limits the amount of data you can upload or download through your mapped drives in any given 24 hour period to 5,000 file uploads or 3GB of data and 10,000 file downloads or 5GB of data.

Zee Drive requires Microsoft .Net Framework 4.8 or above and Windows. Zee Drive is supported on Windows 10 and Windows 11 and Windows Server 2016 and above. Trouble running Zee Drive? Click here to contact us.

Download Zee Drive and Start Your Trial Now

Here is a walkthrough of your Zee Drive trial, from installation and activation, to creating a network drive, and then setting up other users on your subscription. View the Zee Drive subscription agreement here.

Download and run Zee Drive, click Next and you should see the screen below. As this is the first time you are running Zee Drive, click the blue link "then click here to set up your trial".

On clicking the blue link Zee Drive will guide you through the trial sign up process. First step is to sign in to the Office 365 tenant you want to associate with your subscription. The user you sign in with will become your Zee Drive subscription administrator.

On the next screen enter a contact email address. An email will be sent to you with your subscription details so be sure to enter the correct contact email address. Zee Drive will then set up your subscription, it shouldn't take long. Once your subscription has been set up click the Continue button to continue installing and activating Zee Drive on your computer.

When you click the Activate button Zee Drive will install and activate your subscription on your computer. Zee Drive will now start up each time you sign in to Windows.

Let's publish your first mapped network drive. We will connect it to your OneDrive for Business.

Click on the blue Z icon in the system notification area to open up Zee Drive.

As the Zee Drive subscription administrator you have the rights to add network drives and publish them for all users on your subscription.

Click the button to open up the action menu and choose "Add or manage your network drives".

On the next screen, choose the "Create a network drive" option from the action menu. Enter a name for your network drive. The name is a combination of server name and share name and will appear in Windows Explorer as a network drive.

Optionally choose a drive letter, here the letter Z has been chosen.

You may want to restrict your network drive to only appear for certain users. For example, you can ensure that only users from the finance department will see the finance mapped network drive.

Optionally use Zee Drive's group targeting feature to target your network drive at specific groups of users.

On the next screen choose where to map your network drive to in Office 365. You can connect your drive to OneDrive for Business or to a library or even a subfolder within a library.

There are several connection options supported by Zee Drive.

Let's connect our drive to OneDrive for Business of the signed in user. This means that the network drive will dynamically resolve to the OneDrive for Business of whomever is signed in.

Click the Create button to create your network drive. You can add more network drives if you like.

Here is the network drive that we just created.

The next step is to publish our drive to the Zee Drive service. This will make the network drives available to anyone that is on your Zee Drive subscription. It means you can manage the drives centrally and push them out to all users's computers easily.

From the manage network drives page, click the Publish button and then click Publish Now. After a short time your network drive configuration will be committed to the Zee Drive service and also applied to your local computer.

Open up Windows File Explorer to see your network drive. Your drive is ready to work with; drag and drop a file in, double click to open etc.

Now its time to set up other users on your Zee Drive subscription. From Zee Drive, click the Cancel button on the manage network drives page to take you back to the subscription status page.

Click the menu button then choose the "Setup or manage users on your subscription" option.

Enter an Office 365 username and click the Add button.

The user will be added to your subscription and an activation code generated for them. Provide the activation code to the user and the link to download Zee Drive.

When they install and activate Zee Drive (following the same steps above), the drive that you published will automatically be created on their computer ready for them to use.

How Office Document Locking Works in Zee Drive

When opening an Office document on a local file server through a mapped network drive, Office will report that the document is already locked for editing if another user has already opened the same document. The user has the option to open the file readonly or wait for the file to be available for editing.

This familiar user experience for locked Office documents is supported with Zee Drive mapped network drives. On opening a document in Office, a server side lock is taken out on the document preventing other users from opening the document for editing in Office.

When opening an Office document from a Zee Drive mapped network drive, if the document is already locked, Office informs the user and offers some options.

Zee Drive attempts to maintain the lock on the document for the duration the document is opened from Zee Drive. On closing the document, the lock is released, allowing another user to open the document for editing.

The specific Office applications supported are Excel, Word, and PowerPoint and the document types .doc, .docx, .xls, .xlsx, .xlsm, .ppt, and .pptx.

Zee Drive supports an alternative option for opening Office documents; open for co-authoring. When opened for co-authoring advanced Office features are available such as collaborative editing and autosave.

Reporting And Recovery Of Failed File Uploads

Zee Drive provides capabilities for end users to recover file uploads that have failed, for administrators to identify computers with recovered files, and a special recovery mode to save recovered files from computers where Zee Drive has been deactivated.

When a file fails to upload through a Zee Drive mapped drive Zee Drive recovers the file and notifies the user. The user can then save the recovered file to a location on their computer. Zee Drive limits how many files can be held in recovery; if the limits are breached Zee Drive will write-protect the drives temporarily until the user has saved the recovered files. Users have up to 4 weeks to save the recovered files before Zee Drive purges them.

Zee Drive notifies the user when files have failed to upload.

Users can select the recovered files and save them from Zee Drive to their computer.

Zee Drive subscription administrators can view reports tracking which computers have unsaved files. Even if a computer has since been deactivated administrators can still discover which computers had unsaved files at the time of deactivation.

Administrators can track computers with unsaved files.

If Zee Drive has been deactivated on a computer the recovered files can still be saved by running Zee Drive in recovery mode. To do this enter the following command from a command prompt in the same folder where the Zee Drive executable resides:

zeedrive.exe Command=Recover

Zee Drive will startup in recovery mode and list any unsaved files from subscriptions that have been deactivated by the user that is signed in to Windows.

Files that failed to save directly from Office (Word, PowerPoint, Excel) will not be recovered as Office prompts the user directly to save the file to another location.

Activating and Managing Hot Desk Computers

A hot desk computer is a type of computer that many people may use but only one person will be on the computer at a time. Examples include shared computers at the office used by temporary or travelling staff, lab computers or school library computers.

When Zee Drive is activated on a hot desk computer a shared computer licence will be assigned to it. A user subsequently signing in to the hot desk computer that has a Zee Drive user licence assigned to them (either a personal computer user licence or shared computer user licence) will have their network drives mapped by Zee Drive.

A computer can be activated as a hot desk computer manually using the Zee Drive wizard, or automatically through the Zee Drive command line. The command line is useful when you have many hot desk computers to install and activate Zee Drive on. Zee Drive provides a log you can access centrally to track the status of command line activation attempts.

To activate as a hot desk computer using the wizard, run Zee Drive (zeedrive.exe) on the computer and enter your Zee Drive administrator username and activation code then click the blue "hot desk computer or desktop server" link.

Enter a unique name to identify the hot desk computer on your subscription.

Follow the remaining steps to activate the computer as a hot desk computer. You may need to restart the computer after activation

When a licenced Zee Drive user next signs in to the hot desk computer Zee Drive will automatically start up for the user and map their drives.

Zee Drive will prompt the user for their Office 365 username if the hot desk computer is not domain joined. Their choice will be remembered so they will not be prompted again then next time they sign in.

For domain joined computers, the Office 365 username of the user signing in to the hot desk computer is looked up automatically from Active Directory - users are not be prompted for their Office 365 username. The Active Directory property from which the Office 365 username is looked up defaults to UserPrincipalName. This can be changed to another property such as Mail.

For Microsoft Entra ID joined computers, the Office 365 username is looked up automatically from Entra ID.

Zee Drive provides an alternative method of activation using the command line. This is useful when you have many hot desk computers to activate and want to do that automatically.

To activate hot desk computers using the Zee Drive command line choose the 'Manage hot desk computers and desktop servers' option from the menu.

From the action button now choose the "How to activate Zee Drive on hot desk computers" option.

Zee Drive will then walk you through the process of enabling activation with the command line. Command line activation first needs to be enabled. Once enabled you can click the how to use the command line link to view the command line and copy it to the clipboard.

Manage hot desk computer activation using the command line.

A log of all attempted activations by the command line can be accessed directly from Zee Drive by clicking the View Activation Log button from the above screen. This will help you to track the results of command line activation and troubleshoot those attempts that failed.

The activation log showing attempted activations from the command line.

To manage the hot desk computers you have activated choose the "Manage hot desk computers and desktop servers" option from the menu on the Zee Drive status screen.

From the management screen you can deactivate your hot desk computers or set the Active Directory username lookup attribute.

Zee Drive can be upgraded to a newer version by using the following command line on the hot desk computer (running as local administrator):

zeedrive.exe Command=UpdateShared

To upgrade a hot desk computer manually run Zee Drive on the hot desk computer and enter your administration username and activation code then click the blue 'hot desk computer' link. You can now choose to deactivate or upgrade Zee Drive.

If you are using Microsoft Intune, refer to our Microsoft Intune Deployment Guide for a full walkthrough on how to deploy Zee Drive on hot desk computers with Microsoft Intune.

Activating and Managing Desktop Servers

A desktop server is a type of computer that provides remote desktops, virtual desktops and remote apps to a community of users. Examples include Remote Desktop Services (RDS), Azure Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD), Citrix XenApp, Citrix XenDesktop and other virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI).

When activating Zee Drive on a desktop server, the desktop server will be associated with a shared computer licence pool. The pool should have as many shared computer licences assigned to it as you expect to have users signed on to the server concurrently.

A user subsequently signing in to the desktop server that has a Zee Drive user licence assigned to them (either a personal computer user licence or shared computer user licence) will have an available shared computer licence will taken from the pool and assigned to the user for the duration of their session. Zee Drive will then map the user's drives.

You can associate many desktop servers with a single shared computer licence pool. Therefore if you have multiple load balanced servers they can all use the same pool of shared computer licences.

If FSLogix is used on the server for user profile virtualisation then Zee Drive will require a Windows registry configuration change to run successfully. The registry path "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\I/O System" will need a new key created IoBlockLegacyFsFilters with the value set to 1.

To enable the Zee Drive system tray icon on RemoteApp and XenApp environments set the key RailShowAllNotifyIcons with a value of 1 at the registry path "HKLM/HKCU\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server".

To activate as a desktop server run Zee Drive (zeedrive.exe) on the computer and enter your Zee Drive administrator username and activation code then click the blue "hot desk computer or desktop server" link.

Click the Next button then enter a unique name to identify the desktop server on your subscription.

Click the Next button and choose to activate as a desktop server. If this is your first desktop server activation then choose to create a new licence pool. If you have a load balanced environment you could join this desktop sever to an existing licence pool.

If you choose to create a new licence pool you will need to choose how many shared computer licences to assign to the pool.

Follow the remaining wizard steps to complete activating the computer as a desktop server.

When a licenced Zee Drive user next signs in to the desktop server Zee Drive will automatically start up for the user and map their drives.

You can check which users are currently signed in to the desktop server and consuming a shared computer licence.

Choose the 'Manage hot desk computers and desktop servers' option from the administration menu.

Select your desktop server from the list then from the action button choose the option 'View users currently active on this desktop server'.

You can now view a list of users currently active on the desktop server and any related desktop servers from the same licence pool.

Zee Drive can be upgraded to a newer version by using the following command line on the desktop server (running as local administrator):

zeedrive.exe Command=UpdateShared

To upgrade a desktop server manually run Zee Drive on the desktop server and enter your administration username and activation code then click the blue 'desktop server' link. You can now choose to deactivate or upgrade Zee Drive.

View File And Folder Changes On-Demand

If a file or folder change is not yet showing in a user's mapped drive the user can download the latest changes on-demand. Click the F5 button (refresh button) on your keyboard whilst Windows File Explorer has the focus and Zee Drive will update the folder in real-time to show the latest changes.

In the example below a recently added document, "Myles Team Presentation.pptx", is not yet showing in Windows File Explorer so just click the F5 button on your keyboard.

After clicking F5 the new document will appear.

View Version History From File Explorer Context Menu

The version history of files in your Zee Drive mapped drives can be viewed and managed from the Windows File Explorer context menu. Zee Drive will show a list of the latest versions including the version number, modification date, file size and whom made the change.

A range of file version management functions are available to the user which can assist them in understanding which changes have been made to their document over the course of time. These functions include; opening a version in the associated application, saving one or more versions to the local computer, comparing two versions and viewing the differences (comparison supported for Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and AutoCAD® drawings), and restoring a version to make it the latest one.

Select a file in File Explorer, right click the mouse button to show the context menu then choose the version history command.

Zee Drive will then display the recent version history of the selected file.

File versions can be saved to your desktop to assist in discovering when a particular change was made to a file.

Select the file versions to save then choose the save command.

The files will be saved to your chosen location and appended with the version number.

Word and Excel document versions can be compared to view the differences between the versions. Word document differences are shown within Word whilst Excel document differences are shown in the Office 2016 Spreadsheet Compare tool.

Select the two versions of the document to compare then choose the compare command.

The versions will be downloaded and then compared to show the differences. Word itself is used to show differences between Word documents.

When comparing Excel document versions the Office 2016 Spreadsheet Compare tool is used.

AutoCAD® DWG drawing revisions can be compared if you have a supported version of AutoCAD® installed.

Zee Drive subscription administrators can choose whether or not to show the version history command on the File Explorer context menu.

Map A Network Drive To Shared With Me Files

When a user shares a file or folder with you from their OneDrive for Business the shared item will appear in your Shared With Me area in Office 365. Zee Drive can show these files and folders directly in a mapped network drive.

Zee Drive groups the shared items in folders named after the user that shared them. For example, if user "Myles Jeffery" shares a file with you then the shared file will appear in the folder "Myles Jeffery" in the mapped network drive.

Files and folders shared with you are grouped under folders bearing the name of the person that shared the item.

Share Your Files From Windows File Explorer

Users can share their OneDrive for Business files and folders directly from Windows File Explorer. When their file or folder has been shared it will then appear in the Shared With Me area of the user they shared with.

Select the folder you want to share from your OneDrive for Business and select the sharing command.

Zee Drive will then show the sharing wizard. You can see which users you are already sharing with. You can share with more users or stop sharing with users you have previously shared with.

Choose which users to share your folder with.

Once the folder has been shared it will then appear in the Shared With Me area of the user you have shared with. If a network drive has been mapped to Shared With Me then the user can access the shared folder directly from there.

Users can access shared files and folders directly from their mapped drive.

Zee Drive subscription administrators can choose whether or not to show the share your files command on the File Explorer context menu.

The share your files command will only appear on the Windows File Explorer context menu if a user selects a file or folder from their own OneDrive for Business mapped network drive. That is, they can only share their own files, they can't share files from team sites or groups.

Users can share files only with their colleagues; users from their own Office 365 tenant. They cannot share with external users with this command.

For users to see the files that have been shared with them, the Zee Drive subscription administrator should map a network drive to Shared With Me. Files and folders shared with a user will then show in their Shared With Me network drive.

Restore Deleted Files From Windows File Explorer

Users can restore files they have deleted from Zee Drive mapped drives by opening the File Explorer context menu on a folder then selecting the deleted files they want to restore.

Select the folder the files were deleted from and choose the restore command from the File Explorer context menu.

Zee Drive will show a list of deleted files from the SharePoint recycle bin that are in the selected folder and its subfolders. Only files deleted by the user will be shown; files deleted by other users will not be shown.

Select the deleted files that you want to restore and choose the restore command from the action button.

Click the Restore button to start the restoration process. Zee Drive will then restore the files you have selected. You can cancel out of the restoration process at any time.

Once the restore has completed the restored files will show in File Explorer.

If you have a lot of deleted files and having difficulty locating the one you want to restore, use the filter command from the action button. You can then specify a file name filter. Zee Drive will show only matching files.

Use a filter to show only matching files.

If users choose to permanently delete the files rather than restore them (by choosing the delete option from the action button) the files are removed from their SharePoint recycle bin and sent to the second stage SharePoint recycle bin which can be accessed by site collection administrators in SharePoint.

Zee Drive subscription administrators can choose whether or not to show the restore deleted files command on the File Explorer context menu.

The restore deleted files command will only show on the context menu if the folder selected is a document library or a folder in a document library. It will not show for folders that are connected to SharePoint sites.

Works With Windows File Explorer Progress Bar

When copying a file to a Zee Drive mapped network drive with Windows File Explorer the Windows File Explorer progress bar will show an accurate representation of the file copy progress made to SharePoint Online/OneDrive for Business.

The Windows File Explorer progress bar shows copy speed, copy progress and an estimate of time remaining.

Fast SharePoint Indexed Searches From File Explorer

Users can quickly search for files and folders directly from the Windows File Explorer context menu. Zee Drive leverages SharePoint's full text search index so that both file names and file contents can be searched very quickly without the need for a local search index on the computer.

Select a folder to search then choose the search option from the context menu.

The search window will open. Enter your search criteria and click the Search button.

Files that match your criteria are then shown. Select a file and choose either to open the file or locate it in File Explorer.

If you choose to locate in File Explorer, File Explorer will open up the folder containing the file and select it automatically.

To search for an exact phrase enclose your keywords in double quotes. To limit your search results to particular document types enter the document extension with a leading period character. For example to limit the search to Word documents only enter .docx in your query.

Searching for an exact phrase or limiting results to specific document types.

The search option on the context menu will only show if the drive or folder selected is a document library, a folder within a document library, or OneDrive for Business.

Zee Drive subscription administrators can choose whether or not to show the search command on the File Explorer context menu.

SharePoint Online does not index all file types. For example, application files (with the .exe file extension) will not appear in search results.

Customise The File Explorer Context Menu

Zee Drive supports context sensitive commands directly from the Windows File Explorer context menu for operations such as viewing file version history or searching a folder. You can choose which, if any, of these commands to show on the File Explorer context menu and how the command icons should be displayed.

The Zee Drive subscription administrator can customise the context menu using the context menu customisation page.

Choose the 'Customise the File Explorer context menu' item.

Now you can choose which commands should be shown on the Windows File Explorer context menu.

Your changes will take effect the next time users sign in to Windows. Depending upon whether a folder or file is selected the context menu will show the appropriate commands for that item.

This is how the context menu looks for a folder.

And this is how the context menu looks for a file.

You can choose to show only a single icon for the group of commands rather than showing an individual icon for each command.

Choose the option 'a single icon for all the commands' on the context menu customisation screen.

Zee Drive will now show only a single icon for the entire group of commands.

Note that the context menu commands will show only on 64 bit versions of Windows.

Open Office Documents For Co-Authoring

Office documents can be opened from Zee Drive mapped drives for co-authoring using the co-authoring command from the File Explorer context menu. When opened for co-authoring the Office application (Word, Excel and PowerPoint) will connect directly to SharePoint thereby enabling the Office co-authoring features.

The default behaviour for Zee Drive is to lock Office documents exclusively when opened from a Zee Drive mapped drive. The co-authoring command provides a means to by-pass the locking and collaborate with colleagues on a document when the need arises.

To open a document for co-authoring, select the Office document in File Explorer then open the context menu and choose the co-authoring command.

The associated Office application, in the above example, Word, will then startup and connect directly to SharePoint to open the document, by-passing Zee Drive.

Word may prompt the user to sign-in. After the first sign-in subsequent document openings should not require a sign-in.

If other users have the document opened for co-authoring you will be able to see their edits live directly in your document.

Zee Drive subscription administrators can choose whether or not to show the co-authoring command on the File Explorer context menu.

The co-authoring command will only show on the context menu for Word, Excel and PowerPoint document types that support co-authoring.

Co-authoring can be optionally set to be the default open action for Office documents.

Silently Install, Activate and Upgrade Zee Drive

Zee Drive has command line support and is also available as a Windows Installer package (MSI) for organisations that wish to silently install, activate and upgrade Zee Drive using software management and deployment tools like SCCM and Microsoft Intune. In the case of Microsoft Intune, a full guide/walkthrough is available to download from the available links below.

Click the button below to download the guide to the full list of commands supported by the ZeeDrive.exe executable.

Download the Command Line Usage Guide

Click this button to download the guide to the full list of commands supported by the Zee Drive MSI file. Note that the MSI is not currently compatible with Intune so the ZeeDrive.exe must be used instead. Refer to our specific guide to Intune below.

Download the MSI Usage Guide

Click the button below to download the latest version of Zee Drive available as an MSI.

Download the Zee Drive MSI

This is a complete guide for deploying, activating and upgrading Zee Drive with Microsoft Intune. The guide walks through the process step by step on how to set up and manage Zee Drive deployments from Microsoft Intune.

Download the Deployment Guide for Microsoft Intune

Silent activation is only supported for hot desk computers, not personal computers or desktop servers. The MSI only supports silent operation via the msiexec.exe program with the /qn parameter.

Redirect Windows Folders to OneDrive for Business

Zee Drive can redirect the standard Windows folders (Desktop, Documents, Images, Music and Videos) to OneDrive for Business automatically when a user signs in to Windows. If a user saves a file to a redirected folder such as Documents, the file will actually be saved to their OneDrive for Business instead.

Folders can be redirected to the root of OneDrive for Business or to a subfolder in OneDrive for Business. If the subfolder does not exist then Zee Drive will automatically create the subfolder in OneDrive for Business. For example, the Documents folder can be redirected to the subfolder Home\Documents within users' OneDrive for Business. If the Home\Documents subfolder does not exist Zee Drive will create it when the users sign in to Windows.

The Zee Drive subscription administrator configures the folder redirections centrally through the administration console. By default folder redirections will be applied to all users on all computers where Zee Drive is activated. Administrators can limit folder redirections to be applied to specific groups of users or only to hot desk computers and desktop servers (I.e. computers with non-persistent environments).

Note that Zee Drive folder redirection requires that a network drive or virtual folder is first mapped to the connection option 'OneDrive for Business of the signed in user'. If this has not been set up then folders will not be redirected when users sign in to Windows.

To set up a folder redirection, choose the 'Setup Windows folder redirections' option from the administrator menu.

Click the action button and choose the 'Set up a new folder redirection' option.

Choose a folder to redirect, in this example we will choose Documents, then click the Next button.

Now choose where to redirect the folder to. It can either be to the root of OneDrive for Business or to a subfolder (up to 3 folders deep) within OneDrive for Business.

Your new folder redirection will then be listed. Repeat this process for other folder redirections you want to set up.

You can choose to restrict the types of computers and the users (by group membership) that the folder redirections will be applied to by choosing one of the restrict options. Any restrictions you configure will apply to all the redirections.

After you have made your folder redirection changes click the 'Publish' button. The next time a user signs in to Windows, Zee Drive will apply the redirections you have set up.

When the desktop folder is redirected, the desktop will initially show as an empty folder until the Zee Drive startup process has completed. Once startup has completed the users will then be able to see their files on their desktop.

View Recent File Editing Activity

Recent file editing activity (creating, renaming, moving, editing and deleting) can be viewed directly from the Windows File Explorer context menu. When choosing the recent activity command from the context menu, Zee Drive will show the last 7 days of activity by you and your colleagues in the selected folder. This can be helpful to discover quickly who has changed or deleted particular documents.

You can extend the scope of the activity to the entire folder structure if you can't find what you are looking for directly in the folder selected. The activity can be exported to a CSV file which can allow you to filter and review the activity in more detail.

Right click a folder in Windows File Explorer and choose the recenty activity command.

Zee Drive will show the recent activity in the folder.

Click the More actions... button to export the results to a CSV file or view all activity in the folder hierarchy.

Zee Drive subscription administrators can choose whether or not to show the recent activity command on the File Explorer context menu.

Multi-Factor Authentication Support

Zee Drive supports users with multi-factor authentication enabled through the online sign-in form. This works through Zee Drive's support for the Azure AD Oauth2 modern authentication protocol.

When a user is prompted to enter their credentials by Zee Drive they should click the link 'authenticate with Office 365 via the online form'.

After clicking the link, the online sign-in form will pop up for the user to authenticate online.

After signing in, if the user has multi-factor authentication enabled they will be prompted for their second factor of authentication.

The online form will close and Zee Drive will complete the authentication.

Map To All Modern Team Sites Under a Single Drive

Zee Drive can map a network drive to all the modern team sites that users have joined, including Microsoft Teams. Changes to user membership of modern team sites will automatically be reflected in the network drive; if users create a new modern team site, or join an existing one, then the new modern team site will appear in the user's mapped network drive in File Explorer automatically. If users leave a modern team site then it will be removed from File Explorer automatically.

Create a new network drive and choose the 'Modern team sites' connection option.

Click the 'Choose...' button to change how Zee Drive connects to the modern team sites. You can choose to connect only to the default document library in each site or to the entire site hierarchy.

Choose the default document library connection option if you employ only a single document library per modern team site or want your Microsoft Teams channels to appear directly below the modern team sites in File Explorer.

In this example two Microsoft Teams, Accounts and New Product, have a number of channels.

The channels will be shown directly below the Teams in File Explorer if the default document library option is selected.

Send a Link From the File Explorer Context Menu

Users can send links to files and folders to their colleagues through the File Explorer context menu. Users can choose whether the linked file should open in its associated application, be highlighted in Windows File Explorer, or open in the web browser. For Office documents, users can choose to have the document opened read only or in presentation mode (for PowerPoint documents).

To send a link to a file, right click the file in File Explorer and choose the send link option.

The Zee Drive link dialog will open. There are different link options to choose from. Read only will ensure that your document cannot be overwritten when your link is clicked.

Click the Next button. Now choose whether to copy the link to the clipboard or to send via an email. Clicking the link will test it out before you send it.

Clicking the Open Email button will open a new email in Outlook with the link ready to send.

When a user clicks on a read only link, in this example it is a Word document, Word will open the document for read only as can be seen in the title bar of Word.

You can copy and paste the link in to documents such as Word or Excel.

For a user to successfully open the link in File Explorer or in the associated desktop application, they will need to be running Zee Drive and have the same network drive mapped. In the case of a link to a shared OneDrive for Business file or folder, Zee Drive will automatically resolve the path to the file or folder in the shared with me drive.

When Zee Drive is installed on a personal computer, Zee Drive creates an entry in the user's registry hive to indicate to Microsoft Office that the Zee Drive URI protocol is to be trusted. This means that when a user clicks a Zee Drive link (one starting with zeedrive:) in an Office application, Office will hand the link over to Zee Drive to open without warning the user.

For hot desk computers and desktop servers the Zee Drive URI protocol will not be trusted by Office by default so the appropriate registry entry will need to be created via Group Policy if you want to avoid the warning from Office when a link is clicked.

The registry key that will need to be created to trust the Zee Drive URI protocol is HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\Security\Trusted Protocols\All Applications\zeedrive:

Zee Drive provides two command line options that can be used to create or remove the trusted URI protocol entry in the registry. Refer to the Zee Drive command line usage document for more information.

In the case of a web link (https) that opens in the web browser, Zee Drive does not need to be running on the recipient's computer as the link will open in their default web browser.

Zee Drive subscription administrators can choose whether or not to show the send a link command on the File Explorer context menu. If the send a link command is not enabled then links will not work when clicked.

Create And Manage Document Templates From File Explorer

Zee Drive provides a New menu available from the File Explorer context menu for users to create new documents from standard templates. Users with appropriate permissions can add templates to the New menu or re-organise existing templates on the menu. The changes made to the menu will be available to all users.

The Zee Drive New menu is integrated with the New menu in SharePoint Online so changes made in Zee Drive are visible in SharePoint Online and vice-versa. Some SharePoint Online menu items such as Link will not show in Zee Drive.

Open the context menu on a folder in a Zee Drive mapped drive to access the New menu. The standard Office document templates are available by default.

Choose one of the templates from the menu to create it in the selected folder where it can be renamed and edited.

If the user has appropriate permissions on the associated SharePoint Online document library they can choose to customise the New menu. New templates can be added to the menu or existing ones can be hidden, removed or re-ordered.

Templates added to the menu are then available for users to select the next time they use the New menu.

The same templates are also available from SharePoint Online.

Zee Drive subscription administrators can choose whether or not to show the New menu on the File Explorer context menu. They can also choose to show the customise menu option for OneDrive for Business. By default the customise menu option is disabled from OneDrive for Business.

Works With Large Document Libraries

The Microsoft OneDrive sync tool has a documented sync limitation of 300,000 files. As a user approaches this sync limit, even around the 100,000 file mark, the OneDrive sync tool can slow down and show the message 'Processing changes' and fail to upload changes to files.

Zee Drive is not impacted by the Microsoft OneDrive sync tool limitation and has been successfully used on document libraries containing hundreds of thousands and even millions of files.

View Only Folders And Files

Zee Drive checks users' SharePoint Online permissions in mapped network drives when file and folder operations are performed. If the operation is not perrmitted by SharePoint Online, an access denied error will result. This alerts the user that they do not have permissions to perform that operation.

This is a useful scenario where users are to have access to documents such as templates or reference material, but they should not be permitted to modify the documents.

Operations such as creating new files and folders will be blocked with an access denied error.

If user permissions in SharePoint Online have been changed after the mapped network drive has been loaded, users will need to restart Zee Drive using the restart option from the Zee Drive action button for the new permission settings to be reflected in the network drive.

Open Office Documents For Co-Authoring By Default

Zee Drive offers two options for opening Microsoft Office documents; either in exclusive editing mode which is similar to the behaviour when working from a traditional on-premises file server, or, opening the document for co-authoring. When opened for co-authoring, advanced Office features such as collaborative editing and autosave are available.

The default behaviour when opening an Office document (exclusive or for co-authoring) can be changed by the Zee Drive subscription administrator

Choose the 'Set default behaviour for Office documents' option from the action button.

The administrator can choose to have co-authoring the default behaviour for all users, or, for specific users by their group membership.

Changes will take effect for users after they restart Zee Drive.

If open for co-authoring by default is enabled, when a user opens an Office document from File Explorer through a double click action, the document will open automatically for co-authoring where features such as collaborative editing and autosave are available.

The following Office document types are supported for opening for co-authoring by default: .docx, .xlsx, .xlsm, .xlsb, .pptx

If you prefer to have documents open for exclusive editing with co-authoring as an option, enable the File Explorer context menu option for co-authoring and users can then selectively choose to open Office documents for co-authoring should they need to.

Open Files And Folders In SharePoint Online

Files and folders in Windows File Explorer can be opened in a web browser. This can be convenient for users that need the functionality of SharePoint Online that is not available from the File Explorer context menu.

Right click on a file in Windows File Explorer and choose Open in web browser.

Your default web browser will then open and display the file.

A folder can also be opened in the web browser using the same approach as for a file.

Your default browser will open to show the folder and its contents.

Zee Drive subscription administrators can choose whether or not to show the open in web browser command on the File Explorer context menu.

Automatic DWG Locking For Autodesk® AutoCAD®

When opening an AutoCAD® DWG drawing from a Zee Drive network drive, Zee Drive will take out a lock on the file to ensure that only one user at a time can edit the drawing. Zee Drive will also ensure that when a user opens the drawing, the latest version of the drawing is opened. Together, this helps to prevent changes from being unintentionally overwritten.

The locking support is automatic. The user does not need to perform any specific steps to lock/unlock or check out/check in the drawing. The behaviour should be familiar to users working with AutoCAD® drawings on local file servers.

On opening a DWG drawing file, Zee Drive will check if it is locked. If so, the user will see the familiar alert from AutoCAD®. The alert will show the username of the user that is editing the drawing and the SharePoint site where the drawing is located.

If the drawing was not already locked, AutoCAD® will proceed to open the drawing and a lock will be taken out. Zee Drive will regularly refresh the lock whilst the drawing is opened. On closing the drawing in AutoCAD®, the lock will automatically be released.

If there is a more recent version of the drawing available then AutoCAD® will show an alert to the user when opening the drawing. The user should click OK and open the drawing again and Zee Drive will ensure they are opening the latest version.

Zee Drive locking support has been tested to work with AutoCAD® 2024 and AutoCAD LT® 2024. Prior versions of AutoCAD® should also be compatible. Users should be running Zee Drive v51 or above to avail themselves of the locking support.

A message similar to the following will show in the Zee Drive log file if Zee Drive has successfully identified a valid installation of AutoCAD® or AutoCAD LT® and enabled support:

Support for Autodesk, Inc. AutoCAD (R) DWG files enabled

View And Compare AutoCAD® DWG Drawing Versions

Zee Drive will preserve the version history of your AutoCAD® DWG drawings when saving to a Zee Drive network drive. Your drawing revisions can be recalled using the Zee Drive version history feature.

From the version history you can view the changes made to your drawing, restore older versions, open a version or compare versions using AutoCAD®'s drawing compare feature to identify differences between revisions.

Use the Zee Drive version history command to recall your editing history and compare revisions.

After choosing the compare command, AutoCAD® will start up and show the changes between the drawings.

If you have the "Create backup copy with each save" enabled in AutoCAD® then consider setting the ISAVEPERCENT command to 0 as this will ensure that your drawing is uploaded to SharePoint Online with each save.

Zee Drive will not create AutoCAD® BAK files when saving as previous drawing versions are preserved in the DWG version history instead.

The drawing compare feature will work only on a supported version of AutoCAD® and where it is the default associated application for .DWG drawing files.

Choose Folder Colours In File Explorer

Zee Drive brings coloured folders from OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online in to Windows File Explorer. Change the colour of your folders directly from Windows File Explorer via the context menu from a palette of 16 colours. The colours you choose will reflect in OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online on the web, and vice versa. Folder colours can be used to classify information and assist in rapid location of folders.

Coloured folders are enabled by default but you can choose to disable them completely, or enable them only for OneDrive for Business.

Choose from a range of 15 different alternative colours to the default yellow.

Change the colour of a folder directly through the File Explorer context menu. Right click a folder and choose the new colour.

The folder colour choices made in File Explorer will sync to OneDrive and SharePoint Online in the browser, and vice versa.

Colours are useful for classifying the function of folders. For example, green for approved and red for rejected. Colouring a folder provides the means to apply visual metadata to a folder but without changing the structure. For a folder containing many folders of which some are rarely used, the rarely used folders can be coloured grey to take the attention from them and on to active folders.

Consider colouring rarely used folders grey so that active folders are more prominent.

The Zee Drive administrator can choose whether to enable the colourisation of folders on the subscription. Colourisation of folders can be enabled for all folders (OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online), for OneDrive for Business only, or disabled entirely.

From the Zee Drive action button choose the option "Customise the end user experience > Colourise folders in File Explorer" to open the configuration settings.

If a folder colour is changed in OneDrive for Business or SharePoint Online in the web, it may take up to a few minutes for File Explorer to show the new colour. Changing a folder colour via the File Explorer context menu will show immediately.

Single Sign-On and Entra ID Token Protection

Zee Drive supports SSO (single sign-on) experience for both Entra ID joined devices and ADFS joined devices, and Entra ID token protection (token binding).

Zee Drive subscription users on an Entra ID joined device or ADFS joined device will experience a seamless mapping of their Zee Drive network drives. When a user signs in to their Windows desktop, Zee Drive will start-up automatically, identify the user and sign the user in automatically to Entra ID. End user interaction is not required. Access tokens will subsequently be refreshed automatically to keep the network drives 'always on'.

For organisations requiring additional security, Zee Drive is compatible with Microsoft Entra ID conditional access token protection (or token binding) on Entra ID joined devices. if your organisation enables token protection, then Zee Drive will continue to authenticate and issue tokens successfully from Entra ID on an Entra ID joined device.

Open Documents In the Browser By Default

Where end users do not have Microsoft Office installed (i.e. those that are not licenced for Microsoft Office desktop applications as they have the lower cost Microsoft 365 F1 or F3 frontline worker licence assigned) and those without AutoCAD® installed, Zee Drive will default to opening Office documents (Word, PowerPoint and Excel) and AutoCAD® drawings (DWG files) in the web browser by default.

Users can browse for Office files conveniently from Zee Drive mapped network drives in Windows File Explorer whilst still benefitting from a full document editing experience from Microsoft Office online.

Where Zee Drive has configured the documents to open in the browser by default, the file icons will show as blue.

Double click from File Explorer to open a document in the browser.

Users in an engineering environment but without AutoCAD® installed can view AutoCAD® DWG files from their browser by opening the DWG file from File Explorer.

Zee Drive will only open Office documents and AutoCAD® drawings in the browser by default where there isn't already a default application associated with the file types.

Map Network Drives For External (Guest) Users

Zee Drive supports mapping network drives for external users you have invited to your Microsoft Entra tenant. Set up the external user on your Zee Drive subscription, map a network drive to the site, document library, or folder you have shared with them, provide them with their Zee Drive activation code and when they activate Zee Drive, the drive you have configured will be mapped for them to access your shared files.

All external user types are supported: users from other Microsoft Entra tenants, Microsoft personal accounts and users invited through an email address, such as @gmail.com accounts.

External user support may be appealing to engineering and architectural organisations to facilitate collaboration with external contractors on AutoCAD® documents with assurance that AutoCAD® DWG files will be locked to avoid overwriting changes, even when the user is external to their organisation.

Here is a walkthrough to set up an external user with an @gmail.com account to access a folder in a document library through a Zee Drive network drive you configure on your Zee Drive subscription.

Navigate to your organisation's Microsoft Entra admin centre and select Invite external user.

Enter the email address (sending an invitation is not required) click Review + invite to complete the process of inviting the external user to your tenant as a guest. The guest user will now show along with the other users in Entra.

Now that the guest user is set up in your Entra you can grant them access to the folder in your SharePoint Online document library.

Navigate to the folder in the SharePoint document library that you intend to share, click the three dots ... and choose Manage access.

Click on the Grant Access icon.

Enter the user name, or if it is not yet searchable by name, then enter the user's full email address. A notification is not required. Then click Grant access.

The Microsoft Entra and SharePoint Online configuration is complete. Now to set up the user on your Zee Drive subscription and the mapped drive through which they will access your shared folder.

Open your Zee Drive administration console, choose Set up or manage users, set up a new user, and enter the user's email address. Validate and add the user on your Zee Drive subscription. Make a note of their activation code.

Set up a new network drive and assign an appropriate name to make it clear this is an external share for your company. Proceed through the drive set up wizard and connect the drive to the folder you have shared.

Create a new Zee Drive group and add the user as a member of the group.

If you have other network drives that are configured to show for all users, you may want to set up a group targeting exclusion so that the drives will not be mapped for your external user. If you don't do this then the user will see your other drives and receive errors trying to access them.

To modify a network drive, from the Zee Drive administration console, select the network drive, choose Modify, click Next. Choose the option from the screenshot below and select the group you set up previously. Publish your drive changes.

All the configuration tasks are now complete. Provide the Zee Drive download link and the user's Zee Drive activation code to the external user. The user will need to activate Zee Drive and authenticate with Microsoft 365 through a onetime access code.

After running the Zee Drive wizard and entering their email address and Zee Drive activation code, the user should click the blue authentication link.

The authentication popup will now show. As this user is a @gmail.com account and not an organisational or Microsoft account, they will need to request a onetime access code to their email address and enter it in to the authentication popup.

If this is the first time the user has connected with your Entra tenant they will be prompted by Zee Drive to accept standard Entra permissions.

The user can now complete the activation of Zee Drive on their computer. After Zee Drive starts up, the network drive you have configured for the user will be mapped and they can acccess it via File Explorer.

The user can now collaborate with you on your SharePoint Online files via a Zee Drive mapped network drive.

Connect Drives to Hub Site Hierarchies

Hub sites in SharePoint Online provide a flexible means to structure and re-organise sites. Unlike subsites in a site collection, sites' association with a hub site can be changed, allowing hub sites to be re-organised with evolving business requirements. Zee Drive supports connecting a mapped network drive, or Zee Drive virtual folder, to a SharePoint Online hub site; the associated hierarchy of sites, hub sites and document libraries can be accessed via the Zee Drive network drive.

Zee Drive will show the full hub site hierarchy you have configured. If a root hub site has other hub sites associated, and those associated hub sites themselves have associated hub sites, Zee Drive will show the full hierarchy in the network drive.

Changing the hub site associations in SharePoint will reflect in the network drive in Zee Drive automatically. There may be a delay of a few minutes before changes will reflect in the network drive depending on SharePoint Online's search index performance which is used by Zee Drive to discover site associations.

To connect your network drive or virtual folder to a hub site, choose the 'Hub site' option from the 'Connect To' drop down list in the Zee Drive administration console.

Click the Choose button and browse for a hub site.

After selecting your hub site, click the Options button to configure how Zee Drive will show sites.

If your associated sites have only a single document library and you don't use document libraries in hub sites, then choose to show only the default document library and hide hub site document libraries. File Explorer will show only the sites as folders, not document libraries. Your files can be found directly in the site folders.

As a comparison, the document libraries will now show in File Exploer if you choose to show hub site document libraries and all document libraries from associated sites.

Zee Drive for Partners

If you are considering deploying Zee Drive to your customers or integrating Zee Drive in to your broader service offering, then contact us to request a Zee Drive partner subscription. A Zee Drive partner subscription has specific support to help you setup and manage multiple customer subscriptions from a single interface.

A Zee Drive partner subscription can help you to provide a "managed cloud file server" solution to your customers. Here are some of the key benefits of a Zee Drive partner subscription.

View and manage multiple customer subscriptions from a single interface
Setup new customer trials directly from your partner subscription
White labelling options to put your name and contact details in front of your customers
Retain exclusive administration capability over the subscriptions from your customers
Does not consume a user licence from your customer subscriptions
Setup team members on your partner subscription to help you manage your customers
Your partner subscription runs from your Windows taskbar to access when you need it

A partner subscription starts with 3 partner user licences and can manage up to 20 customer subscriptions. Limits can be increased as your customer deployments and partner team grows. View the Zee Drive partner subscription agreement here.

Here is a walkthrough of the key features of the partner subscription.

View your full list of managed customer subscriptions from a single interface.

New customer trial subscriptions are easy to setup. Just choose the "Start a new Zee Drive trial" option from the action button.

Setup a customer trial directly from your partner subscription.

Setting up a new trial is straightforward, only the Office 365 tenant name is required. Once setup has completed its available to manage immediately.

Trial setup requires just the tenant name.

You can put your organisation name and a custom information page directly in front of your customer using the white labelling options.

Follow the wizard to setup white labelling and publish your settings.

Customers will see your information from the Zee Drive interface. This can give them reassurance and a means to lookup your support contact details

Your organisation name shows on the status screen to your customers.

Clicking your organisation name or selecting the support contact option from the action button shows your custom information page.

Your custom information page shows web addresses as clickable links.