Drive App Overview

Drive

1. What it is

Drive is centralized file and folder management for your organization. Employees get a personal drive for their own files, and teams get shared drives — one is created automatically for each workspace. Files stored in Drive carry versioning, permissions, commenting, and an activity trail regardless of how they arrive: a file attached to a broadcast or a workspace message lands as a real Drive item in the shared drive, not a disposable blob.

• Enablement: Requires a license. An admin enables it from Admin → Apps Marketplace. It is not turned on automatically.
• What it is not: Drive stores and shares files. It does not replace document authoring — you create and edit content in the source application and upload or attach the result to Drive.

2. Standing it up

1. Enable the app — go to Admin → Apps Marketplace, find Drive, and enable it.
2. Review settings — go to Drive → Admin → Settings. The defaults are usable out of the box (versioning on, external links allowed, 500 MB upload limit). Adjust anything that needs to match your organization’s policy before employees start using the app.
3. Set up branding (optional) — go to Drive → Admin → Branding to create a branding profile. Branding controls the look of external share link and file request landing pages — logo, accent colour, header/footer messages, and optional PDF watermarking. One branding profile can be set as the default.
4. Confirm it worked — any employee who opens Drive sees My Drive in the sidebar (created automatically on first visit) and any Shared Drives they belong to through workspace membership or direct sharing.

Silent dependency: Workspace-bound shared drives are created automatically when a workspace is created, but employees only see them if they are a member of that workspace. If an employee reports seeing no shared drives, check their workspace memberships first.

Permissions: Business admins and Drive App Admins have full manager-level access to every drive. Managers see files within drives they own or are members of. Regular employees see their personal drive, workspace-bound shared drives they are members of, and any files or drives explicitly shared with them.

3. How it fits together

Personal drives and shared drives — Every user has exactly one personal drive (“My Drive”), provisioned automatically on first visit. Shared drives are team-level containers: one is created for each workspace, and standalone shared drives can be created by admins. Personal drives are private to their owner by default; shared drives are accessible to workspace members (who get Editor-level access) or to anyone granted a membership.

Items: files and folders — Every node in a drive is either a file or a folder. Files carry their content through versions; folders are organizational containers. File names must be unique within the same folder (enforced at save time). Items support soft delete — trashing moves them to Trash, where they stay until permanently purged. Folders cascade: trashing a folder trashes all its contents.

Versions — Each upload of a file with the same name in the same folder creates a new version rather than replacing the file. The most recent version is displayed by default. Any version can be restored as the current one. When versioning is enabled (the default), Drive retains up to 20 versions per file. When versioning is turned off, only the current version is kept and older versions are pruned on the next upload.

Sharing and roles — Access is granted through memberships, which can be set on an entire drive or on an individual file or folder. Four roles, from least to most capability: Viewer (read and download), Commenter (read, download, and comment), Editor (read, download, comment, upload, and edit), Manager (full control including sharing and deleting). Memberships can be granted to individual users or to recipient groups. Item-level memberships on a folder are inherited by everything inside it.

External links — A tokenized public URL that lets someone outside your organization view or download a file without signing in. External links can be password-protected, time-limited, and download-count-limited. The admin controls whether external links are allowed at all, whether a password is required, and the maximum lifetime.

File requests — The reverse of an external link: a tokenized URL that lets someone outside your organization upload files into a designated folder. File requests have an expiry, an optional file-count cap, and can carry branding. The requester is notified when uploads arrive.

System drive — A hidden per-organization drive used internally by other apps (Forms, Service Desk, eSignature, broadcasts) to store file attachments through Drive’s infrastructure. It is not visible to users or admins.

Workspace integration — Every workspace automatically gets its own shared drive. Workspace members receive Editor access to the workspace’s drive without any additional configuration.

4. Running it

Sharing a file or folder

1. Open the file or folder in Drive and click the Share drawer.
2. Search for users or groups by name.
3. Choose a role: Viewer, Commenter, Editor, or Manager.
4. The recipient is notified (if the Notify users when files are shared with them setting is on).
5. To revoke access, open the Share drawer again and remove the membership.

Creating an external share link

1. Open the file and click External link.
2. Set an expiry date (defaults to the max lifetime configured in settings), an optional password, an optional download limit, and a note.
3. Copy the link and send it to the recipient. The recipient can view or download the file without signing in.
4. To revoke the link before it expires, return to the file and delete the link.

Sending a file request

1. Go to Drive → File Requests and click New file request.
2. Choose the target folder where uploaded files will land.
3. Enter the recipient’s email and an optional message. Set an expiry and optionally a file-count cap.
4. The recipient receives an email with a link to the upload page. They can upload files without signing in.
5. When uploads arrive, the requester is notified.

Managing branding profiles

1. Go to Drive → Admin → Branding.
2. Create a new profile: set a name, upload a logo, choose an accent colour, and write header and footer messages.
3. Enable Watermark PDFs if PDF downloads through external links should carry a visible watermark.
4. Set one profile as the default — it is used on external link and file request pages when no specific profile is selected.

Viewing analytics

1. Go to Drive → Admin → Analytics.
2. The dashboard shows storage usage, file counts, and activity trends.
3. Analytics data can be exported to CSV.

5. Settings

All settings live under Drive → Admin → Settings. Every setting below has a real runtime effect.

Setting	Section	Default	What it changes
Enable Drive AI Agent	General	On	Enables the read-only AI assistant that can search files and answer questions about their contents
Include Drive in Global Search	General	On	Drive files appear in the platform’s global search results
Enable Stale-Content Governance Reviews	General	On	Files older than 120 days are surfaced to the content governance review pipeline for the owner to refresh or archive
Max upload size (MB)	General	500	Maximum size of a single file upload, in megabytes
Allow tokenized external share links	External links	On	Users can create public share links. Turning this off prevents new links from being issued — existing links still work until they expire or are revoked
Require password on external links	External links	Off	Every external link must have a password set before it can be created
Max external link lifetime (days)	External links	30	Upper limit on how long an external link can remain active
Max file request lifetime (days)	External links	60	Upper limit on how long a file request can remain open
Enable Drive Admin Agent (write-capable, managers+ only)	AI agents	Off	Enables the write-capable AI agent that can create folders, share files, revert versions, and trash items — restricted to managers and Drive App Admins, and requires user confirmation before each action
Notify users when files are shared with them	Notifications	On	In-app notification when a membership is granted
Notify users when a new version is uploaded	Notifications	On	In-app notification to members when a new version of a file is added
Notify recipient when invited to a file request	Notifications	On	In-app notification to the invited user (if they are a member of your organization) when a file request is created
Notify requester when file-request uploads arrive	Notifications	On	In-app notification to the requester when external uploads land
Keep prior versions of files	Versioning & semantic search	On	Retains version history. When off, each upload replaces the previous version immediately
Embed file contents for AI search	Versioning & semantic search	On	Extracts text from uploaded files and generates embeddings so the AI agent can search by meaning, not just filename
Versions retained per file	Versioning & semantic search	20	How many versions to keep per file. Older versions beyond this count are pruned after each new upload

6. More help

• Drive FAQ — specific setup and operating questions, limits, and troubleshooting.
• Ask AI — the assistant answers questions about Drive from these articles.