Drive App Overview

Apps Apps & Extensions Updated October 31, 2026 432 views

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. Drive also stores the files attached to broadcasts and workspace messages, each with a version record and an activity trail rather than as a disposable blob; those live in a hidden system drive and open from the post or message they came with.

Enablement: Requires a license. An admin enables it from Admin → Apps → All Apps. 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

Enable the app — go to Admin → Apps → All Apps, find Drive, and enable it.
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.
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 color and header/footer messages — and can put a watermark on PDFs downloaded through share links (files collected by a file request are not watermarked). One branding profile can be set as the default.
Confirm it worked — any employee who opens Drive sees My Drive in the sidebar (created automatically on first visit) and the Shared Drives of the workspaces they belong to.

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 have Manager access on every drive — every Shared Drive and every person’s My Drive. Drive App Admins have Manager access on every Shared Drive and on their own My Drive, but not on colleagues’ personal drives. Everyone else — including people whose role in your organization is Manager, which gives no extra reach in Drive — sees their own My Drive, the Shared Drives of workspaces they belong to, and any files or folders 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 there is no screen to create one any other way. Personal drives are private to their owner by default; a shared drive is reached through its workspace (owners and members get Editor, workspace viewers get Viewer), and any file or folder in it can also be shared with a person.

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. Saving a lower limit, or turning versioning off, removes the extra versions from every file in the background (files in the Trash or under a legal hold are skipped); removed versions cannot be restored.

Sharing and roles — Access is granted by sharing a file or folder with a person; a whole drive is reached through its workspace, not shared. Four roles, from least to most capability: Viewer (read and download), Commenter (read, download, and comment), Editor (read, download, comment, upload, edit, and trash), Manager (everything an Editor can do, plus sharing, external share links, and file requests). These are Drive roles, separate from anyone’s role in your organization. A role on a folder is inherited by everything inside it.

External links — A public link that lets anyone who has it view or download a file, or browse a folder and download the files in it, 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, who may create them, whether a password is required, and the maximum lifetime. A link can’t be extended: make a new one before it expires.

File requests — The reverse of an external link: a public link that lets anyone who has it upload files into a designated folder without signing in. File requests have an expiry, an optional file-count cap, and can carry branding. They are governed separately from external links: turning external links off does not stop them. The requester is notified when uploads arrive, unless the admin has turned off Notify requester when file-request uploads arrive.

System drive — A hidden per-organization drive (“App attachments”) where other apps — broadcasts and their comments, alerts, workspace messages, direct messages, and Password Manager entries — store file attachments through Drive’s infrastructure. It is not visible to users or admins in Drive; each attachment opens from the record it belongs to.

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

4. Running it

Open the file and click Share, or choose Share from a file’s or folder’s menu in the list. You need Manager access on it (the Drive role).
Under Add a person, type a name or email and pick the person.
Choose a role: Viewer, Commenter, Editor, or Manager, and click Add.
The recipient is notified (if the Notify users when files are shared with them or their access is removed setting is on and they have not turned Drive notifications off). Someone who already has more access through a folder above it, the drive or their workspace is not told, and the Share panel says where their access comes from.
To remove a share, open the Share panel again and click the × button (labelled “Remove” and the person’s name) beside the person under People with access. It removes the share on this file or folder only: access the person has through a folder above it, the drive or their workspace stays, and the panel lists that access without controls.

Featuring a file for a group

A manager of a shared drive can put up to six files in front of the people who need them.

Open the file’s menu in the drive and choose Feature this file.
Under Who is it for?, choose a saved audience, a department, a location or a job title, or leave it for everyone who can open it.
Add an optional short description.

The file shows in a Featured row at the top of the drive and under Featured for you on each person’s Home, on the desktop and the phone. It stays until someone chooses Stop featuring. Only people who can open the file see it. If Drive finds people in the audience who can’t, it says so when you save, and you can share the file with them.

Open the file or folder’s Share panel and go to its External share links section.
Set an expiry (left blank, it lasts the max lifetime configured in settings), an optional download limit, and a password (optional unless the admin requires one), then click Create.
Copy the link and send it to the recipient. The recipient can view or download the file — or browse the folder — without signing in.
To end the link before it expires, return to the same section and click the × (Revoke link) beside it.

Sending a file request

Go to Drive → File Requests and click Request files.
Choose the target folder where uploaded files will land.
Enter the recipient’s email and an optional message. Set an expiry and optionally a file-count cap.
The recipient receives an email with a link to the upload page. They can upload files without signing in.
When uploads arrive, the requester is notified — unless the admin has turned off Notify requester when file-request uploads arrive. A request can’t be extended: make a new one before it expires and send the new link.

Managing branding profiles

Go to Drive → Admin → Branding.
Create a new profile: set a name, upload a logo, choose an accent color, and write header and footer messages.
Turn on Apply a watermark to PDFs downloaded through public share links if PDF downloads through external links should carry a visible watermark (only the default branding’s watermark is applied).
Set one profile as the default — it is used on external link and file request pages when no specific profile is selected.

Viewing analytics

Go to Drive → Admin → Analytics.
The dashboard shows storage usage, file counts, and activity trends.
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 Help Agent	Drive AI agents	On	Enables the read-only AI assistant that finds files by name and lists recent and shared files — and, when Embed file contents for AI search is on, summarizes files and finds them by description. Turning it off turns off both Drive assistants, the Drive Admin Agent included
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 with no edit in 96 days are surfaced to the content governance review pipeline, prompting the owner to upload a new version of anything out of date or move what nobody needs to the Trash
Max upload size (MB)	General	500	Maximum size of a single file upload, in megabytes
Allow external share links	External links	On	Users can create public share links. Turning this off stops new links and pauses every link already sent; the paused links work again if it is turned back on, so revoke a link to end it for good. It does not stop file requests
Require password on external links	External links	Off	Every external link must have a password set before it can be created; saving it on also ends, for good, every live link made without one — turning the rule off again does not bring them back
Max external link lifetime (days)	External links	30	Upper limit on how long an external link can remain active; lowering it also shortens links already out, and ends any already older than the new limit
Max file request lifetime (days)	Inbound file requests	30	Upper limit on how long a file request can remain open; lowering it also shortens requests already open
Who can create external share links?	Who can share outside the organization	Anyone with access to Drive	Narrows who may make external share links: everyone, Drive app admins only, or specific people and groups. Drive admins can always make one, and a person still needs Manager access on the file or folder. It applies to new links: links already out keep working until they expire, are revoked or stop because their maker lost Manager access
Who can request files from outside the organization?	Who can share outside the organization	Anyone with access to Drive	Narrows who may make file requests, with the same choices. Drive admins can always make one, and a person still needs Manager access on the destination folder. It applies to new requests: requests already open keep taking uploads until they expire, are cancelled or stop because their maker lost Manager access
Enable Drive Admin Agent	Drive AI agents	Off	Enables the write-capable AI agent that can create folders, share files and remove shares, make and turn off share links, create, list and cancel file requests, revert versions, and trash items — for people whose organization role is Manager or above, and Drive app admins (Drive’s own Manager role does not count here) — and requires user confirmation before each action. It also needs the Drive Help Agent on
Notify users when files are shared with them or their access is removed	Notifications	On	In-app notification when someone is given access, their role changes, or their access is removed and they can no longer open the item
Notify users when a new version is uploaded or restored	Notifications	On	In-app notification when a new version of a file is added, or an earlier version is restored as the current one. It goes to the people the file, a folder above it or the drive is shared with (directly or through a group) and to the owner of a personal drive, never to the person who made the change; members who reach a workspace’s Shared Drive only through the workspace are not told
Notify an internal recipient in-app 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	Notification to the requester when external uploads land — in the app, and by email when they have an address
Keep prior versions of files	Versioning & semantic search	On	Retains version history. When off, each upload replaces the previous version immediately, and saving it off removes the earlier versions from every file in the background
Embed file contents for AI search	Versioning & semantic search	Off	Extracts text from uploaded files and sends it to an external embedding provider, so content search and the Drive Help Agent can search by meaning and summarize files, not just match filenames
Versions retained per file	Versioning & semantic search	20	How many versions to keep per file. Saving a lower limit removes the extra versions from every file in the background
Activity log retention (days)	Versioning & semantic search	365	How long Drive keeps its activity log — who viewed, downloaded, shared or trashed what. Entries older than this are deleted nightly, and a change applies to entries already recorded

6. More help

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

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Article ID: drive_app_overview