During its OneDrive and Copilot event, Microsoft announced a massive number of changes to its cloud storage platform. Many of the improvements center around using Copilot to find items and generate new content, but there is also a feature for sharing OneDrive links.
Now, when you share a file in OneDrive, you can continue to use the same link even after you change access or permissions to that file. Previously, you'd need to create a new link after changing those settings. Old links would continue to work, but over time you'd accumulate a bunch of different links to the same file.
With so many different links to the same file, it would be easy to accidentally share one with the wrong permissions. The new method of sharing, which relies on "hero links," can update access and permission settings while retaining the same link.
Support for hero links is rolling out now. In the future, Microsoft will add support for expiring hero links. With those, you can set an organization's hero links to expire automatically on a schedule.
Copilot and OneDrive
It may not have received the fanfare of the Windows and Surface event held earlier this month, Microsoft just held a OneDrive and Copilot event. The event highlighted several new capabilities to Copilot, such as analyzing files, organizing projects, and turning files into interactive HTML reports.
Custom skills in Copilot let you capture a process and save that process as a Markdown file, which helps ensure Copilot runs the same way every time when performing that process.
Copilot also makes it possible to use natural language to find a photo in OneDrive.
Microsoft also highlighted its refreshed Photos app for Windows. That app shocked me due to its responsiveness and quick loading times. It also has several new features, such as Map View that lets you browse photos based on their geographic location.
Microsoft's blog post about Copilot and OneDrive is almost 3,500 words, so I won't rehash all of it here. The change that I'm most excited about is the addition of hero links. I share a lot of files through OneDrive and send links across several group chats. Reducing that clutter will reduce my stress immensely when it comes to sorting access and permissions.
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