Switch on each OneDrive and sites redirect for a named audience, and plan the content behind it separately

Hybrid OneDrive and the hybrid sites features are redirects: "when users attempt to access a service in SharePoint Server using site navigation, they are automatically redirected to the equivalent service in Microsoft 365" (hybrid sites and search, checked on 13 November 2026). The same page says what does not happen: "existing data in SharePoint Server is not automatically migrated to the equivalent Microsoft 365 service. Documents in OneDrive and user profile information have to be manually migrated for each user, and SharePoint Server followed sites will have to be re-followed."

Which of the OneDrive, profile, followed sites, app launcher and site creation redirects does this farm switch on, for whom, and what happens to the content each one leaves behind?

The decision this chapter leads to is a recorded list of redirects, each with its audience, the test that proved it on your farm's update, and the plan for the content that stays on premises.

What this chapter settles

It settles what each redirect does, the documented procedure and checks, and how to switch it off.

It takes from Chapter 1 the farm's version and update level, and from Chapter 2 the synchronised accounts, the trust and the authentication realm. It hands Chapter 6 the governance of files now in Microsoft 365, Chapter 7 the monitoring, and Chapter 8 the move of My Site content.

It leaves out searching OneDrive from the farm, "a search vertical" set up separately (configure hybrid OneDrive, checked on 13 November 2026), which belongs with Chapter 3, and taxonomy, in Chapter 5.

Applies to

Sources for the table: minimum update levels, hybrid sites and search, plan hybrid OneDrive, plan hybrid profiles, hybrid site following, extensible hybrid app launcher, hybrid self-service site creation and Hybrid Configuration Wizard, all checked on 13 November 2026.

For Subscription Edition, that is all the documentation holds. The wizard "must be launched from an on-premises server with SharePoint Server 2013, SharePoint Server 2016, SharePoint Server 2019, or SharePoint Server Subscription Edition installed". The minimum update page has no section for Subscription Edition. No sentence we read says from which build any of the five features works on it. We do not know. The test: on a test farm at your production build, configure the feature for a pilot audience and run the matrix in Verify.

SharePoint Server 2016 and 2019 left support on 14 July 2026 (2016 servicing policy, 2019 servicing policy, both checked on 13 November 2026).

Architecture

Five redirects, two bundles

Microsoft ships two bundles: "Hybrid OneDrive" (OneDrive and profiles) and "Hybrid sites features" (OneDrive, site following, profiles and the extensible app launcher). Self-service site creation is a separate option (hybrid sites and search).

The farm keeps working behind every link: its services "continue to function in the background and are accessible by users if they've bookmarked the URL" (hybrid sites and search). A user with a bookmark can still save into the old My Site.

What hybrid OneDrive is not

• Not a migration. "Be sure to plan to migrate your users' content from their old SharePoint Server OneDrive to the new one in Office 365" (plan hybrid OneDrive).
• Not one OneDrive. "Because there's no direct link between OneDrive in SharePoint Server and OneDrive, users' Shared with me lists in Office 365 won't display documents that have been shared with them from on-premises SharePoint Server" (plan hybrid OneDrive).

It is the one scenario Microsoft exempts from the trust: server-to-server authentication "is required for all hybrid scenarios except hybrid OneDrive" (plan SharePoint Server hybrid, checked on 13 November 2026). The wizard page says: "For all options, the Hybrid Configuration Wizard configures a server-to-server trust between your SharePoint Server farm and Microsoft 365". Both hold: the redirection does not need the trust, and the tool Microsoft documents for configuring it creates one anyway. We would plan by the wizard page, and assume the trust and the realm change described under Security even if OneDrive is the only box ticked.

Profiles, following, launcher, site creation

Profiles. "Selecting a hybrid user's profile in SharePoint Server redirects you to their profile in Microsoft 365 (even if you're not a hybrid user yourself)" (plan hybrid profiles). The Microsoft 365 profile is not a copy of the farm's: "a standard set of attributes are replicated from Microsoft Entra ID", and custom properties arrive only through "a user profile bulk update API".

Site following. "When a user follows a site in SharePoint Server, it's added to the followed list in both SharePoint Server and Microsoft 365." Earlier lists "aren't migrated", so "Users will have to follow their SharePoint Server sites again", and "follow people functionality remains in SharePoint Server only" (hybrid site following).

On followed documents two pages differ. Hybrid site following: "follow documents functionality remains unaffected". Hybrid sites and search: "Hybrid document following is not available. If you use hybrid OneDrive, the SharePoint Server followed documents list will be hidden from users." We would follow the second, because both bundles include hybrid OneDrive.

App launcher. "After you enable this feature, the Office 365 Delve and Video apps appear, along with your custom Microsoft 365 tiles, in your SharePoint Server app launcher" (extensible hybrid app launcher). The page does not say whether those two apps still exist. We do not know which tiles a farm receives today: enable it for a pilot audience and write down what appears.

Site creation. The feature page names both /_layouts/15/ and /_layouts/16/; the wizard page says it "redirects the default self-service site creation page in SharePoint Server 2013, SharePoint Server 2016, or SharePoint Server 2019 (/_layouts/15/scsignup.aspx)". We would follow the feature page, which documents the procedure; on Subscription Edition the redirect is not established until the test shows it.

Everyone, or a hybrid audience

"If you want to redirect only a specific set of your users from your on-premises environment to OneDrive, you need to use an audience to identify that set of users" (configure hybrid OneDrive).

For people outside the audience, the pages speak for two features. Profiles: "non-hybrid users (those not in the audience) retain their SharePoint Server profiles". Site creation: "on-premises only users will continue to be directed to self-service site creation in SharePoint Server". For OneDrive, site following and the app launcher no sentence says what such a user sees. That they keep the farm's pages is the evident reading, not a quoted one: Verify tests it.

Prerequisites

Microsoft 365, from Chapter 2. A registered public domain, matching UPN suffixes and synchronised accounts (configure Microsoft 365 for hybrid, checked on 13 November 2026).

Licences. "Your users must each have a license in Microsoft 365 in order to be able to use hybrid features." On plans: "If you're planning to configure hybrid OneDrive, be sure to subscribe to a plan that includes OneDrive. All other hybrid SharePoint hybrid scenarios require an Enterprise plan that includes SharePoint in Microsoft 365." The page names no specific plan: confirm yours with whoever holds your Microsoft agreement.

Farm services (set up SharePoint services for hybrid, checked on 13 November 2026):

• Always: "Managed Metadata service application", "User Profile Service application" and "My Sites". "If you're setting up OneDrive, these are the only services you need."
• For the sites features, also an App Management service application, the Subscription Settings Service turned on, and "a Subscription Settings service application and proxy", which "must be created by using Microsoft PowerShell" with New-SPSubscriptionSettingsServiceApplication.
• In the User Profile service: "a synchronization connection with Active Directory Domain Services", Work email mapped to mail and User Principal Name mapped to userPrincipalName.

The steps for turning on that service are written for 2013 and for "SharePoint Server 2016 and SharePoint 2019". For Subscription Edition we do not know the documented steps: confirm on the test farm that it is online.

User permissions. Two, granted in step 2 of Procedure.

The wizard. Whoever runs it is "A member of the Farm Administrators group", "A service application administrator (Full Control) for the User Profile Service" and "A Microsoft 365 Global Admin, either with or without multi-factor authentication (MFA) enabled for the account". It "requires the .NET Framework 4.6.2" and checks, in Microsoft's spelling, that AppMangementServiceInstance, AppMangementServiceApplication, AppMangementServiceApplicationProxy and UserProfileApplicationProxy are online (Hybrid Configuration Wizard). We would therefore have App Management online even for OneDrive alone.

The Hybrid Allow List. "Hybrid features are only enabled for tenants in the Hybrid Allow List. To use Hybrid features, contact Microsoft Support to add your tenant to the Hybrid Allow List." The page gives no lead time: open the request before booking the change window.

Decision criteria

What stops all of them: a tenant not on the Hybrid Allow List, no Global Administrator for the configuration, farm add-ins untested against a realm change, and no test farm to prove the feature on. We would start with a pilot audience in every case.

Procedure

Work on a farm server.

1. Read what the farm has now

# Farm server, SharePoint Management Shell. Reads the hybrid link settings and the realm; changes nothing.
Write-Host "Writing the current hybrid link settings and authentication realm to hybrid-links.txt. Nothing is changed."
Get-SPO365LinkSettings | Format-List * | Out-File .\hybrid-links.txt
Get-SPAuthenticationRealm | Out-File .\hybrid-links.txt -Append

Parsed, not yet run: try it on a test farm first.

Get-SPO365LinkSettings is documented "to display current hybrid configurations in the farm" (Get-SPO365LinkSettings, checked on 13 November 2026). Its page lists no returned properties: keep the whole output.

2. Grant the user permissions

"To use OneDrive, your users must have Create Personal Site and Follow People and Edit Profile permissions" (configure hybrid OneDrive). In Central Administration, go to Manage Service Applications and open the User Profile Service Application. On the Manage Profile Service page, under People, select Manage User Permissions. In the Permissions for User Profile Service Application dialog select All Authenticated Users, or the pilot audience, and verify that both check boxes are selected.

3. Run the Hybrid Configuration Wizard

The feature pages give this path: More features in the SharePoint admin center, under Hybrid picker select Open, then Go to Hybrid Picker Download Page, "select click here" and accept the prompts.

On the Credentials page "verify your on-premises credentials and enter your global admin credentials", select Validate credentials, pass Checking prerequisites, and on Select the features you want to use in your hybrid environment choose:

• Hybrid OneDrive, which redirects "on-premises My Sites/OneDrive sites to SharePoint in Microsoft 365 and OneDrive" and "also sets up hybrid user profiles".
• Hybrid Sites Features, which "configures hybrid OneDrive and hybrid user profiles, hybrid site following, and the hybrid app launcher".
• Hybrid self-service site creation, for the web application you select when prompted.

Choose with care: "If you run the Hybrid Configuration Wizard and deselect a feature that you previously installed, it remains installed."

A cmdlet also configures "some of Hybrid features (Hybrid site redirection, OneDrive redirection, ODB default to Cloud) without running Hybrid Configuration Wizard" (Set-SPO365LinkSettings, checked on 13 November 2026). Its parameters are marked for 2013, 2016 and 2019. We would not use it on Subscription Edition before a test farm shows what it sets.

4. Set the audience

"On the Central Administration website, select Microsoft 365 > Configure hybrid OneDrive and Sites features. Select Use a specific audience, and for the audience that contains your Microsoft 365 users, enter the audience name. Select OK." (configure hybrid OneDrive). We would do this as soon as the wizard finishes.

5. Manage site creation per web application

In Central Administration select Application Management, under Site Collections select Configure self-service site creation, choose the web application, and "select or clear the Create Site Collections in SharePoint check box" (hybrid self-service site creation). The page does not say which state sends users to Microsoft 365: record the state the wizard left before changing it.

Verify

"Because the link may be stored in the user's browser cache, we recommend you wait 24 hours and then verify the links are working" (configure hybrid OneDrive). Test with one ordinary user inside the audience and one outside.

Microsoft documents two checks. OneDrive: "The URL in the browser address bar should change from that of your on-premises farm, to the personal site URL of SharePoint in Microsoft 365" (hybrid OneDrive roadmap, checked on 13 November 2026). Sites features: after you select Follow, "You should see a small pop-up under Follow letting you know that you're following the site. Select this pop-up and note that it navigates to your personal site, and the list of sites you're following in SharePoint in Microsoft 365" (hybrid sites features roadmap, checked on 13 November 2026). The other rows are ours.

Run step 1's script again afterwards and keep both outputs.

When it fails

We found no Microsoft troubleshooting page for these features; these are the causes the configuration pages name. For anything else we do not know the documented cause: reproduce it on the test farm.

• The link has not changed. The browser cache: wait the 24 hours. Then check the audience, and the two user permissions.
• The wizard will not configure. The tenant is not on the Hybrid Allow List; the account lacks one of the three roles; .NET Framework 4.6.2 is missing; or a prerequisite check fails, including that "The SPO365LinkSettings cmdlet (used to set MySiteHostURL) is accessible on the server".
• Add-ins stop authenticating after the wizard. The realm changed: see Security.
• Access Denied in Microsoft 365. For links to services the plan does not include, users "would see Access Denied messages" (configure hybrid OneDrive, in a section written for 2013). Check the licence first.
• Files seem to be missing. They are in the old My Site; nothing moved them.

Security

Identity matching decides who arrives where. The farm redirects by its own User Profile service and audience; Microsoft 365 then authenticates the person itself, and synchronised accounts are not single sign-on. The hybrid pages do not describe what the user is asked for at that moment. We do not know what yours will see: the pilot shows it.

Files and followed sites leave the farm. Users "Store personal files they are working on in the cloud, and access these files even when they aren't signed in to your corporate network" (plan hybrid OneDrive); Chapter 6 decides how those files are governed. A followed farm site is written to the Microsoft 365 list as well.

Configuration needs the tenant's highest role. The wizard requires a Global Admin, and the same page says "Global Administrator is a highly privileged role that should be limited to emergency scenarios when you can't use an existing role". It names no lesser role. We would grant the role for the change window only.

The wizard changes the farm's realm. It "updates the on-premises farm's authentication realm to match the Microsoft 365 organization context ID. After the authentication realm is changed, existing SharePoint in Microsoft 365 add-ins fail to authenticate. The Hybrid Configuration Wizard attempts to fix this issue automatically" (Hybrid Configuration Wizard). The search FAQ gives the symptom: "users will get an HTTP 401 when they're redirected to the add-ins" (cloud hybrid search FAQ, checked on 13 November 2026). List the farm's add-ins and test each on the test farm after the wizard; Chapter 2 covers the realm and the trust.

Rollback and recovery

Microsoft documents the switch (removing hybrid scenarios, checked on 13 November 2026):

1. "In the Central Administration website, select Microsoft 365."
2. "On the Microsoft 365 page, select Configure hybrid OneDrive and Sites features."
3. "On the Configure hybrid OneDrive and Sites features page, under the Select hybrid features, select None, and then select OK."

"Setting the option to None also removes the Hybrid app launcher feature." Site creation is reversed separately, per web application, with the check box in step 5 of Procedure.

The wizard is not a way back: it "doesn't uninstall features", and the FAQ says "re-running the wizard doesn't clean up the trust". The removal page's last step, deleting the service applications named ACS and SharePoint App Management Proxy, leaves all hybrid: Chapter 8.

Not established about the state afterwards:

• Files saved to OneDrive in Microsoft 365 while redirected. We would plan for users having two places.
• Whether profile and followed sites redirection stop at the same moment.
• How long cached links keep redirecting.
• The realm. No page says None restores it.

One test settles all four: on the test farm, select None, then run step 1's script and the Verify matrix again.

Redirection is not migration. On-premises My Site content stays where it is until a person or a tool moves it. Microsoft's migration tool lists its sources as "SharePoint Server 2010, 2013, 2016, and 2019" (SharePoint Migration Tool, checked on 13 November 2026); the OneDrive configuration page still says it "is only supported for SharePoint Server 2013". We would follow the tool's own page. Neither names Subscription Edition: we do not know, and Chapter 8 holds the test and the move.

Working documents

The Hybrid Architecture Advisor generates these from your answers about the farm; what you did not answer is left as unknown, not guessed.

• Prerequisites Matrix (Excel): licences, accounts, service applications, permissions, wizard roles and the Hybrid Allow List request, each with its state.
• Configuration and Validation Runbook (Word), the OneDrive and sites part: the steps of Procedure, with the account, the wizard option, the audience and the evidence to keep.
• Validation Checklist (Excel), the OneDrive and sites rows: configuration, and user experience as the matrix in Verify, inside and outside the audience, with who ran each row and when.

Sources

• SharePoint hybrid sites and search, checked on 13 November 2026
• Plan hybrid OneDrive, checked on 13 November 2026
• Configure hybrid Microsoft OneDrive, checked on 13 November 2026
• Configure hybrid Microsoft OneDrive - roadmap, checked on 13 November 2026
• Plan SharePoint Server hybrid, checked on 13 November 2026
• Plan hybrid profiles, checked on 13 November 2026
• Hybrid site following, checked on 13 November 2026
• Extensible hybrid app launcher, checked on 13 November 2026
• Hybrid self-service site creation, checked on 13 November 2026
• Configure hybrid sites features - roadmap, checked on 13 November 2026
• Hybrid Configuration Wizard in the SharePoint admin center, checked on 13 November 2026
• Minimum public update levels for SharePoint hybrid features, checked on 13 November 2026
• Set up SharePoint Server services for hybrid environments, checked on 13 November 2026
• Configure Microsoft 365 for SharePoint hybrid, checked on 13 November 2026
• Removing SharePoint hybrid scenarios, checked on 13 November 2026
• Cloud hybrid search service (Cloud SSA) FAQ, checked on 13 November 2026
• Get-SPO365LinkSettings, checked on 13 November 2026
• Set-SPO365LinkSettings, checked on 13 November 2026
• Overview of the SharePoint Migration Tool (SPMT), checked on 13 November 2026
• Updated Product Servicing Policy for SharePoint Server 2016, checked on 13 November 2026
• Updated Product Servicing Policy for SharePoint Server 2019, checked on 13 November 2026

Related pages on this site

• Chapter 2 of this guide: identity, authentication and trust, including the realm the wizard changes.
• Chapter 6: governance of files that now live in Microsoft 365.
• Chapter 8: migration, coexistence and exit, for the move of My Site content.
• Keep hybrid only for named features, in the SharePoint Migration Field Guide.
• Hybrid Architecture Advisor and end of support dates.

Before you continue

• Each redirect is recorded as on or off: OneDrive, profiles, site following, app launcher, and site creation per web application
• Each redirect that is on has a named audience, or a recorded decision to redirect everyone
• The tenant is on the Hybrid Allow List, and the Global Administrator account for the change window is agreed
• The services, the two profile property mappings and the two user permissions are checked on the farm
• The farm's add-ins are listed and were tested on a test farm after the wizard changed the realm
• The Verify matrix was run on a test farm at the production build, and every "not stated" cell holds an observation
• Every My Site behind a redirect has a plan, and users know that nothing moves by itself
• Setting None was rehearsed on the test farm, and what stayed in Microsoft 365 is written down

Download chapter 4 (PDF)Same text, same tables, same sources as this page.