Admin approval needed to access OneDrive for Business

(The information in this article applies only to users of Microsoft work or school accounts. Users of personal Microsoft accounts are not affected.)

When users try to add their OneDrive work or school account to our sync apps (Autosync - File Sync & Backup, or OneSync), they may encounter the following screen:

This message indicates that the IT administrator of the user’s work or school organization does not allow third-party apps to access files in Microsoft accounts. To use our app, the user must request approval from their IT administrator.

Please do not confuse this with admin permissions. Our apps do not request admin-level permissions. However, approval from an administrator is required so that regular users are allowed to use the app.

In the past, this approval was not necessary. However, Microsoft has recently made its default security settings more restrictive. In the Azure admin portal, this is reflected on the All services > Enterprise applications | Consent and permissions | User consent settings page:

The default option is “Let Microsoft manage your consent settings.” With this setting, Microsoft now rejects user consent requests for accessing files in OneDrive and SharePoint sites.

As a result, users must ask their IT administrator to approve our app. There are two straightforward ways for administrators to do this.

Method 1: Consent on behalf of the organization

An administrator can give consent on behalf of all users in the organization. When they connect our app using an admin Microsoft account, they will see the following screen:

Make sure to select the checkbox “Consent on behalf of your organization”, then tap Accept. After this, all users in the organization will be able to use our app without additional approval.

Method 2: Allow users to request admin consent

Administrators can also allow users to request approval individually. To do this, the IT administrator must enable user requests on the All services > Enterprise applications | Consent and permissions | Admin consent settings page in the Azure admin portal:

Once this option is enabled, the next time a user tries to connect our app to their account, they will see this screen:

The user can enter a short explanation and send the request to the IT administrator. After the request is approved, the user will be able to connect our app to their account and configure file synchronization.