Where is your work music library stored? SONOS does not need to have access to your computer unless music is actually stored on that computer. At work you can update the files, wherever they are stored, then use a SONOS controller to “Update Music Index Now”. The Index and SONOS Playlists are stored in the SONOS players, not the computer.

You may need to do some maintenance on the work SONOS Playlists if files have been deleted.

And the real answer is no. You can certainly mess around with your library all day, but updating Sonos itself requires you to be on the same Wi-Fi / subnet as the speakers. So you can play around with files stored on your computer, you just won’t be able to update the Sonos pointer library until you get home. 

Maybe I didn’t understand the question. The music library is simply a collection of files stored on a computer or external hard drive. You can maintain these files however you like — there’s no need to be connected to a SONOS system while you maintain the files. After the file maintenance is completed, you’ll need to launch a SONOS controller and “Update Music Index Now”. Obviously, you’ll need to be connected to a SONOS system at that time. If the files are stored on a portable device and you have multiple SONOS systems (home, office, cottage, etc.), you would need to update the Index on each system.

Note that SONOS Playlists are stored in the players of each system, they are not part of the library files. If you change file names or folders in your library, SONOS Playlists referencing these files will probably be broken. Sometimes the Indexer will figure this out, but there is no guarantee.

In case of duplicate tracks, SONOS will Index the first version that it encounters and ignore the others. You don’t have much control over which version will be included. This can result in a confused human when the Indexer apparently ignores changes because the Indexer is working with one version while the human is fussing with another.

It’s a little hard to tell from the OP. It sounds like they want to mess around with the files that Sonos points to, which is 100% OK. However, they won’t be able to update their Sonos “library” of pointers until such time as they get home where their Sonos speakers are. Sonos doesn’t maintain the music files, it only points to where they are. You can’t run the controller without being with your speakers, since the controller is merely a remote control to the application that actually runs on the speakers. It’s not its own separate application running all sorts of things. 

But you know that….I’m telling the OP this :)