8.0 Managing Collaborative Storage

Collaborative storage is a shared storage area where a group of people in an organization can collaborate by accessing the same collaborative storage. For example, a cross-functional project team in an organization might need a collaborative storage area where all members could access and submit project files.

Storage Manager lets you easily create collaborative storage areas through Collaborative Storage policies that you can assign to Group objects or to an organizational unit (also known as a container). You can structure the collaborative storage in one of three ways:

  • Creating a single project folder where all project members have access and have the same rights.

  • Creating a project folder with a specified owner. The project folder has subfolders for each of the members of the group. This configuration is done through Dynamic Template Processing. For more information on Dynamic Template Processing, see Setting Group Collaborative Storage Policy Dynamic Template Processing.

  • Creating a multi-group owned project folder with each group having distinct access rights. This capability is available through Multi-Principal Group Collaborative Storage policies. For more information, see Section 8.9, Creating a Multi-Principal Collaborative Storage Policy.

Storage Manager works with Active Directory to ensure that only members of the Group object have access to collaborative storage. As new members are added to the group, they are automatically granted access to the collaborative storage. As members are removed, they no longer have access to the collaborative storage.

In cases where personal folders are issued through Dynamic Template Processing, when a user is removed from the group, the personal folder is renamed to #REMOVED#username, leaving the file content in the storage location, but making the former group member unable to access the files within.

In this chapter, you will learn how to create collaborative storage policies. These include:

  • Group-based collaborative policies

  • Container-based collaborative policies

  • Group Multi Principal collaborative policies