We’re Ending Up With Copy of a Copy Again”: What One Contractor Told Us About Autodesk File Management

We recently met with the technology manager and IT lead of a mid-sized general contractor. They’re about 18 months into Autodesk Construction Cloud and usually have around 15 projects running, from small tenant fit-outs to multi-million-dollar community builds. They found SyncEzy in Autodesk’s connected apps list while working in the platform, and wanted to know whether we could fix a few problems that had crept in since the move.

What follows is what they told us, in their own words (lightly edited for clarity), and how we answered. If you run Autodesk alongside Microsoft 365, there’s a good chance some of this will sound familiar.

The move to Autodesk was meant to end file chaos

Before Autodesk, this team worked the way most builders did for years: project files on a local server, later moved into Teams and SharePoint and synced to everyone’s File Explorer. Moving to Autodesk was a big change, and on the whole it has gone well.

“We’ve got pretty good adoption… but there’s still a few things to do.”

The plan was for Autodesk to be the single, clean home for project documents. Their technology manager was candid about how that turned out:

“We were doing it the way that we were hoping it was going to work, and it was clean and didn’t need any additional anything, but that’s just not the case anymore.”

Here’s why.

Headache 1: Desktop Connector became the daily driver

Autodesk Desktop Connector exists for a good reason: you can’t drag an entire folder into the Autodesk web interface, so Desktop Connector lets you upload large folder structures in bulk. Autodesk was clear with this team that it isn’t meant to be anything more than that.

“They were very clear with us when we signed up with this that it is not intended to be used as a daily driver file structure. That’s not what it’s for.”

But people who have spent their whole careers working out of File Explorer want their files in File Explorer. So they kept using it.

“That gets lost on some people and they continue to use it in that capacity.”

“We’ve tried to push the narrative that’s not the use case for it, but that is a very hard pill for people to swallow sometimes.”

This is the core issue. Telling a project team to change a habit they’ve had for twenty years rarely works. The better answer is to give them a File Explorer experience that actually works with Autodesk.

Headache 2: Locked files and “copy of a copy”

Using Desktop Connector as a daily file system has a side effect, and it brings back the exact problem the team moved to the cloud to escape.

“When you open a file from Desktop Connector it signs it out from Autodesk and locks it.”

On their old server, a locked file meant someone either waited, saved over a colleague’s work, or made a copy:

“We’d end up with the same file 12 times, with copy of a copy of a copy of a copy.”

Cloud platforms were supposed to fix that with real-time collaborative editing. Desktop Connector quietly takes it away:

“With most cloud-based platforms you get the collaborative workflows with SharePoint and all that stuff. That’s lost if you’re now using Desktop Connector. You lose that collaborative workspace.”

The result:

“So now we’re ending up with copy of a copy again, because people are opening stuff, not signing it back in properly. It’s then locking in Autodesk, which means somebody else is going to go work in it. Now they have to create a copy of it because it’s locked out.”

Headache 3: The Bluebeam download, edit, re-upload loop

This was the other big one. Like most builders, this team relies on Bluebeam.

“The biggest struggle that our team has is they can’t go into Autodesk, open a PDF file, edit that PDF file in Bluebeam without having to download it, edit it in Bluebeam, re-upload it. We lose out on the versioning abilities, all that kind of stuff.”

They’d like people to do more basic markup inside Autodesk over time, but they’re realistic about where the tools are today:

“The tools just aren’t as robust as they are in Bluebeam. No one’s denying that. Even Autodesk is like, yeah, it’s not quite as good.”

The pain isn’t in the final issued drawing sets. It’s the everyday work, like marking up a submittal before it goes back to the engineer:

“It’s mostly just the day-to-day sort of, you know, I got to go in and put a cloud around this drawing.”

They had previously looked at a Bluebeam-only integration that worked through Bluebeam Studio, but it wasn’t the right fit. What they really wanted was simpler:

“They can just open it in Bluebeam from their desktop and know that it’s going to get back to Autodesk without problem.”

Headache 4: Working offline in the field

Project managers tend to treat their project as their baby. They want every file on their laptop, available whether or not there’s a signal on site. That raised an obvious question from the team:

“How does it reconcile if they’re out in the field working offline from a file, and then their project coordinator is back in the office working on that same file in Autodesk?”

It’s a fair question, and one they’d already run into with SharePoint alone:

“We had that problem come up even just using SharePoint. One person’s working offline, one person’s working online.”

Headache 5: Copilot can’t see Autodesk

The team already uses Microsoft 365 and has Copilot. But Copilot can only work with what lives in Microsoft. Everything in Autodesk is invisible to it. As we put it in the meeting, their Copilot is currently flying blind. Their technology manager had already joined the dots:

“That’s another thing I thought about too. If it’s in SharePoint, then Copilot has access to it as well.”

What they actually wanted

Underneath all five headaches was one clear requirement. Whatever the fix, the project team shouldn’t have to think about it:

“I’d prefer they don’t have to worry about it at all. It’s just set up in the background and it works.”

How SyncEzy fixes it

SyncEzy’s Autodesk to SharePoint integration keeps Autodesk Docs and SharePoint in two-way sync. Here’s how that maps to each problem.

Give people File Explorer, properly (headaches 1 and 2)
SyncEzy replicates your Autodesk Docs folder structure into a SharePoint site. Every minute it checks for changes on either side: new files are added to both, and changed files are updated to the latest version. Your team then syncs that SharePoint site to File Explorer through OneDrive, just like any other SharePoint library.

That means people get the File Explorer experience they want, without Desktop Connector. Files are never checked out or locked in Autodesk, and Microsoft’s real-time co-authoring works as normal, so several people can work in the same Word or Excel file at once. Desktop Connector goes back to doing what Autodesk intended: bulk uploads.

One point we clarified in the meeting: these are two separate copies, not one shared file. One lives in Autodesk’s cloud and one in Microsoft’s, and SyncEzy keeps them in step. Each system keeps its own full version history. Over time, many teams find they prefer editing from SharePoint, because Microsoft’s collaborative editing works best inside its own environment. Those edits flow back to Autodesk anyway.

End the Bluebeam round trip (headache 3)
Because the Autodesk Files tool is synced to SharePoint, a PDF in Autodesk is just a normal PDF in OneDrive. Open it in Bluebeam from your desktop, mark it up and save. SyncEzy sees that the Bluebeam version is newer than the one in Autodesk and uploads it as a new revision, with the markups, on top of the previous version. There’s no downloading, no re-uploading and no broken version history.

To be clear about scope, this works with the Files tool in Autodesk Docs. The Drawings tool does things SharePoint can’t, such as title block reading, so for issued drawing sets Autodesk stays the master. That fits the workflow Autodesk itself recommends, and the one this team already follows: upload to Files first, then bring drawings into the Drawings tool when they’re ready to issue. As their technology manager put it, the issued sets “aren’t as big a deal”. The daily markup work is where the friction is, and that’s exactly what the sync covers.

It’s also an honest bridge rather than a lock-in. Teams can keep Bluebeam for takeoffs and advanced markup, and move basic markups into Autodesk at their own pace.

Work offline without losing anyone’s changes (headache 4)
Project managers can keep their whole project available offline in OneDrive. When they reconnect, OneDrive syncs to SharePoint and SyncEzy carries the changes through to Autodesk.

When the same file has been changed on both sides, SyncEzy relies on a simple rule: every file in Autodesk has exactly one matching file in SharePoint. It compares the edit times on the two, and the most recent version wins. SyncEzy never deletes and replaces. Every change is applied as a new revision, so the earlier version is always in the history on both sides if you need to go back.

We were also upfront that SharePoint does the first round of reconciling when several people edit the same file offline, and SharePoint itself can still create conflict copies in that situation. SyncEzy doesn’t replace SharePoint; it makes sure SharePoint and Autodesk agree.

Let Copilot see your project documents (headache 5)Once your Autodesk documents are in SharePoint, Microsoft 365 Copilot can use them, within each person’s existing permissions. Your team can ask Copilot about the project documentation they already have access to.

SyncEzy can also sync Autodesk project metadata, such as project IDs, project types, dates and links, into SharePoint. That opens up filtered views, for example showing a project manager only their department’s projects.

Set it and forget it

• Connected once, at the back end. You authenticate Autodesk and SharePoint in the SyncEzy portal. We recommend a dedicated service account, so changes made by the sync are clearly labelled in both systems.
• Your structure, your permissions. You decide where new Autodesk projects land in SharePoint (by team, department, project type or time period), and access stays governed by the permissions you already manage in each system.
• Full visibility. There’s a complete audit log of every change and a file manager view showing sync status in both systems. A single file syncs within a minute or two; a drop of a thousand drawings from the architect might take around 20 minutes, depending on file sizes.
• Your data stays yours. SyncEzy passes files between your systems and doesn’t store your project data.
• Security reviewed. SyncEzy holds SOC 2 Type 2 certification. Security documentation, including our disaster recovery plan, is available through our Trust Centre.
• Real people on support. Support runs 24 hours a day, five days a week, with a live person quickly, plus a comprehensive knowledge base.

How we help you get Autodesk working well with SharePoint

This is the path we agreed with this contractor, and the one we recommend for most teams:

1. Start free. Our free plan covers up to five projects and 2 GB of data, which is enough to prove the workflow on real work.
2. Pick a real project. Choose an upcoming project run by an experienced project manager and coordinator who are comfortable in Autodesk. Real use beats a dummy project.
3. Bring in IT early. If an IT team or managed service provider looks after your Microsoft 365, involve them from the start. We’ll send the SharePoint permission requirements ahead of time.
4. Map your structure. We’ll help you decide where projects should land in SharePoint so it matches how your team already finds things.
5. Test the edge cases. Do a Bluebeam round trip, an offline edit and simultaneous edits, so you know exactly how the sync behaves before you roll it out.
6. Roll it out quietly. Once it’s configured, most of your team will never need to know SyncEzy exists. That was the goal.

Making Autodesk and SharePoint talk to each other

Autodesk is a great construction platform, and Microsoft 365 is where your people already work. You shouldn’t have to choose between them, or rely on workarounds that bring back the file chaos you moved to the cloud to escape. As this contractor’s technology manager summed it up:

“If we can make it so that those two things talk to each other, that’s a positive in my book.”

If any of these headaches sound familiar, book a demo and we’ll show you how SyncEzy keeps Autodesk and SharePoint in sync, or set you up on a free plan to try it on a live project.