Browse and manage your files in Drives

Drives in the sidebar of the Web App opens your drives: a list with My Drive, your Personal Drive, and Shared Drives. My Drive holds the files the agent wrote for you in your Conversations, and what you upload yourself. Only you can see them, and each Tenant you belong to has a Personal Drive of its own. Shared Drives are for your team; see Create a Shared Drive.

Select My Drive or Shared Drives in the list to open it. Each row shows what is in it and how much of its limit it uses. Above the list, the search field finds files and folders by name in all your drives; see Search.

Open a folder

A drive lists its folders and files in a table with the columns Name, Date modified and File size. A folder shows how many files it holds directly, such as 4 files, or 1000+ files for a very large one, in the size column. Sizes are shown in decimal units: kB, MB, GB and TB, where 1 MB is 1,000,000 bytes. A recent date shows as a short date, and its full time appears when you hover over it. The agent writes the files of a Conversation into a folder named for that Conversation, the Conversation folder. All Conversation folders sit together in one folder called Conversations, which is always there, even while it is empty. Select a folder’s name to open it.

The heading of the page is the path, such as Drives › My Drive › a folder, and shows where you are; each part takes you back up. In a deep path the middle parts fold into …, which opens a menu with them. The last part of the path is the place menu; see The place menu.

Every folder has an address of its own, so a reload, a bookmark or a link to a folder opens that folder again. An address of a folder that doesn’t exist shows This folder doesn’t exist.

The tables follow the width of the space they have, not of the screen. On a narrow screen the size column goes first, then the date; what they said shows in a line below the name, and on a phone only the checkbox, the name and the actions remain.

The last part of the path is a menu button that holds the actions for the place you are in. In a folder it has Rename, Move, Copy and Delete for that folder, Download as ZIP, and, in a Conversation folder, Open Conversation. In the root of a drive it shows how much of the drive is used, offers Download as ZIP for the whole drive, and has Recently deleted; in a Shared Drive it also has Share, People and, for its owners, Delete drive, and in My Drive and in drives you own Empty Recently deleted. Only what you may do is there.

New, next to the path, makes things in the place: New folder, Upload files and Upload folder. In a drive you can only read, New is disabled and the page says Read only; in a full drive it says that uploads are paused until you delete files. In every case the reason is next to it.

Conversation folders

The Conversations folder is the home of all Conversation folders. It is kept by the platform: you can open it and everything in it, but you can’t rename, move or delete it, and you can’t make a folder or upload a file with its name at the top level of My Drive; the page says why.

A Conversation folder is named by its Conversation’s title, so you recognise it, and it has a link Open Conversation that takes you to the Conversation. A Conversation without a title yet shows Untitled Conversation. Only your own Conversations name folders.

If the Conversation was deleted, the folder stays with all its files. It shows From a deleted Conversation and the date of its oldest file, which tells such folders apart.

A folder whose Conversation was never created is marked Not sent with the date of its first file. You get one when you attach files on Start and leave without sending the message. The files stay, and you can open, download or delete them like any other.

The way back works too. Every Conversation has a Files link below its input field that opens its folder. When a run’s card says that some files aren’t listed, select Conversation folder in that note to see all of them.

Sort, filter and search

Select Name, File size or Date modified in the table’s header to sort by it, and select it again to reverse the order. The first selection sorts Name from A to Z and the other two with the largest or newest first; the table starts with the newest first. The header marks the order, and the Sort button opens the same choices as a menu, which is the way on a narrow screen. Folders always stay in front of files.

Filter

Between New and the search field, the chips Type (Folders, Spreadsheets, Documents, PDFs, Images, Text and Markdown) and Modified (Today, Last 7 days, Last 30 days, This year) narrow the list. Select a chip, choose a value, and the list shows only what matches; Any or the cross on the chip clears it. When nothing matches, the page says Nothing found. The chips apply to the folder you are in and start fresh in the next folder. In the Shared Drives list, the chips are Access (Owner, Can edit, Read only) and Modified.

Search

The search field next to the chips finds files and folders by the words in their names, ignoring capitals, at any depth: in all your drives from the Drives list, in one drive from its root, and in one folder from inside it. Results replace the table while you type, each with the place it is in, and the chips narrow them too. Open a result’s folder from its row menu or select a result to preview it. A search shows the first 100 results and says so when there are more; type more of the name to narrow it down. Deleted files are never found.

Keyboard

The first Tab stop of every page in Drives is Skip to files, which moves you to the first row of the table. A row has the checkbox, the name and the Download button, then the row menu. After you delete, move or rename an entry, focus stays near where it was, and going to another folder puts focus on the page’s heading.

Preview a file

Select a file’s name, or Preview in its row menu, to look at it without downloading it. The preview opens at once and shows what it has while the file loads.

An image appears as a picture.
A PDF opens in your browser’s own PDF viewer.
A text file or a Markdown file appears as plain text, exactly as it is written: markup in it is shown, never run. A very long file shows only its start, and says so.
A CSV or TSV file appears as a table with a header row, a very long one with only its start.
A Word file (.docx) appears as a document, a PowerPoint file (.pptx) as slides you can page through, and an Excel file (.xlsx) as a spreadsheet with a tab for each sheet. You read them there; you can’t change them. Pictures, links and other content that a file would load from elsewhere are left out.
Older formats such as .doc, .ppt and .xls can’t be previewed.
If a file can’t be shown, the preview says so and offers Download.
Any other kind of file can’t be previewed, and the preview offers Download instead.

Download is also in the preview, and Close preview (or the Escape key) takes you back to the list. A file that is a Dashboard (.dashboard.json) shows as text here.

When the agent looks at an image from your Personal Drive, the card of that look in the Conversation shows a small picture of it.

Download a file

Select the Download button in a file’s row, and your browser saves it under its own name; the page stays where it is. The button shows Downloading… until the download starts. If it can’t start, a message says so, and you can try again. A file that was deleted meanwhile can’t be downloaded.

Downloads from a run’s card and the links in the agent’s answers work as before. See Let the agent run code.

Download folders and several files as a ZIP

Download as ZIP, in a folder’s row menu and in the place menu, packs a folder, or a whole drive, into one ZIP file. When you select several entries, the selection bar offers it too, as soon as a folder is among them. A bar shows the progress while the ZIP is prepared, and your browser saves it when it is ready; you can use the page meanwhile, but only one ZIP is prepared at a time. A ZIP holds the files you can read, in their folders, up to 4 GB and 10,000 files; a larger one is refused with the reason, and you choose less. The ZIP is kept for one day, and its download link works for 5 minutes. It is made for you only, and nobody else can open it. It doesn’t count as storage used.

Upload files

Open a folder, or stay in the root of My Drive, then select New and Upload files and choose one or more files, or drop files anywhere on the page. The files go into the folder you are in. Any type of file works, up to 4 GB each.

An upload is a row at the top of the table, with the name, Uploading · 40 % and a progress bar, below the name on a narrow screen and in the size column on a wide one. The row stays until the file is in the list, and then it becomes the file’s row. Select Cancel upload of the file to cancel one that is waiting or on its way, and Retry to try one again that failed. An upload goes on while you open another folder. A file over 4 GB is listed as too large and never starts. A file that would not fit in the drive’s remaining room is refused with the reason, before it is uploaded. Uploads go straight from your browser to the encrypted drive, not through the Web App’s servers.

If the folder already has a file with that name, you choose what happens:

Replace puts the new file in place of the old one. The earlier file stays as a File Version.
Keep both gives the new file a number after its name, such as report (2).pdf.

Create folders and change files

New › New folder makes a folder in the folder you are in. Each row has a menu Actions for the entry, the three dots at its end, with:

Preview and Download for a file, and Open for a folder;
Versions for a file, and Open Conversation for a Conversation folder;
Rename, which keeps the file in its folder;
Move, which asks for the folder the file goes to, one level at a time; a file may go into a folder or into the root of the drive;
Copy, which puts a copy in the folder you choose, and keeps the original;
Delete, which takes the file out of your drive. Its earlier File Versions are kept.

In a drive you can only read, the menu has only what reading allows.

Delete doesn’t ask first. A message at the bottom says, for example, report.pdf deleted with Undo, which brings the file back. The message stays for a few seconds, and stays longer while you hover over it or focus it. If you miss it, the file is in Recently deleted.

Select several entries

Tick the checkboxes in the table, which show when you hover over a row or tab to it, or Select all in the header; hold Shift to tick a range. Double-clicking a row opens the file’s preview or the folder. When something is selected, a bar takes the place of the toolbar and says, for example, 3 selected. It has Download (Download as ZIP when a folder is among them) and, where you may write, Move, Copy and Delete. Clear selection, or the Escape key, ends the selection. The Conversations folder can’t be selected. A selection that spans several drives, as in a search, can be downloaded but not packed, moved or copied together, and the bar says why.

To move, copy or delete several entries at once, use this bar. When a name is already taken in the destination, you choose Replace or Keep both, as for an upload. Each action shows that it is working as soon as you press it, and says so if it fails.

Upload a folder

Select New › Upload folder and choose a folder on your computer, or drop a folder on the page. The folder goes up with everything in it, and its structure stays: the subfolders are made first, and each file goes into its own. This works in the root of My Drive too. The upload shows as one row with the folder’s name, the percent done and how many files it holds, until it is finished. If a folder of that name exists already, the files go into it, and a file whose name is taken asks you to Replace or Keep both, as for any upload.

Rename, move, copy and delete a folder

A folder has the same Actions for menu as a file, and the same actions are in the place menu while you are in the folder. Rename gives the folder and everything in it the new name. Move and Copy ask for the destination, and here the top level of a drive is a destination too. At the top level of a drive the list Other drives offers the other drives you can write to, so a folder or file can go from My Drive into a Shared Drive and back. Moving needs write access to both drives; copying needs read access to the source and write access to the destination. The same actions work in Shared Drives, at your level there. Delete takes the folder and everything in it out of your drive; earlier File Versions are kept. From a folder’s row menu it works with Undo, as for a file; from the place menu of the folder you are in, it asks you to confirm first, and then takes you up a level. A folder can’t go into itself or into a folder below it.

A folder can hold many files, so each of these actions is a job that runs in the background. It appears in the Folder operations list above the folder as soon as you confirm, with a bar that shows how many files are done (while the number is not known yet, a short bar moves along the track), and then says what it did, such as Renamed “Reports” to “Archive”. The folder list updates when the job ends, and you can open other folders meanwhile. Select the cross next to a finished job to remove it from the list.

If a job fails, the list says so and shows Retry, which goes on from where it stopped. If the name is taken at the destination, choose Keep both to give the folder a number after its name, such as Reports (2); a folder never replaces another. A folder of more than 10,000 files is refused with a message: change it in smaller parts.

File Versions

Every time a file is replaced, its earlier state stays as a File Version, for 365 days. Open Actions for a file and select Versions to see them; in a Shared Drive you can only read, Versions is a button of its own, and you can download versions but not restore them. The panel opens at once and lists the versions newest first, each with its time and size; the current one is marked Current.

Download saves any version under the file’s name.
Restore makes an earlier version the current one. Nothing is lost: the version it replaces stays in the list. The button shows Restoring… while it works, and the panel says Restored. or that it failed, so you can try again.

Recently deleted

Recently deleted, in the place menu of My Drive, lists the files you deleted in the last 365 days, each with the folder it was in and when it was deleted. Select Restore and the file comes back into its folder with its last version. A folder you deleted is one entry with the mark Folder, instead of the files it held; Restore brings back the folder with everything in it, as a job in the Folder operations list. Every Shared Drive has its own Recently deleted in its place menu: everyone who can open the drive sees what was deleted, and people who can write in it restore. A file you moved or renamed is listed at its old place, because a move starts a new history at the new place; restoring it from here brings back the old one as well.

Delete for good

Next to Restore, each entry has Delete for good. It asks you to confirm, and then deletes the file, or the folder with everything in it, together with every earlier File Version, in the background. This can’t be undone, and nobody, not even an admin, can bring the files back. Only the user of My Drive and the owners of a Shared Drive can do this; people who may only write in a Shared Drive can restore, but not delete for good. In My Drive and in drives you own, Empty Recently deleted in the place menu deletes everything in the list for good, after you confirm. A file that exists again is never touched, and the agent can’t delete for good. The Tenant’s Audit Log records who deleted for good, in which drive and which file, or how many files.

How much a drive holds

My Drive and each Shared Drive show how much they hold: the size of the current files and how many files there are. The place menu of a drive’s root has a Storage part with a meter, and the Drives list and the Shared Drives list have a Storage used column.

The numbers follow a change at once when you, a colleague or the agent save or delete a file: a file counts from the moment its upload starts, and deleting a file frees its room immediately. Only the files that code the agent runs in the Sandbox writes are counted a little later, within a few minutes. A drive that was not counted yet says so, which does not mean it is empty. Earlier File Versions and deleted files are not counted.

Create a Shared Drive

A Shared Drive is a file area for your team, in your Tenant. Open Drives, then Shared Drives, and select New › New Shared Drive. Give it a name and select Create Shared Drive; you become its owner, and it opens at once. Only its owners and those you share it with can see it.

A name has 1 to 80 characters. It can’t hold a slash, a backslash or a control character, and it can’t be . or ... Names are unique within your Tenant, ignoring capitals: if Finance exists, finance is refused, and the dialog says so under the name field so that you can change it.

The Shared Drives list shows the drives you own or that are shared with you, in a table with the columns Name, Your access (Owner, Can edit or Read only), People (how many people reach the drive), Date modified and Storage used. Select a column’s header to sort by it, and use the chips Access and Modified to narrow the list. The row menu has Open, Recently deleted and Storage; sharing, renaming and deleting are in the place menu of the drive itself. Date modified shows a dash for a drive that has not been counted yet. A Shared Drive works like My Drive: you open folders, preview, download and upload files, make folders, and rename, move, copy and delete files, and every folder has an address of its own. The files of a Shared Drive are kept apart from your Personal Drive. As an owner, select Rename in the drive’s place menu to give it another name; its files stay where they are. Creating and renaming a Shared Drive are recorded in the Tenant’s audit log, without any file names.

As an owner, select Share in a Shared Drive’s place menu to share it, whole, with users and Groups of your Tenant. Type part of a name or an email in Find users and Groups, choose Read or Write, and select Share. Everyone in a Group you share with gets the access, and loses it again when they leave the Group. Change a share’s level in its row, or select Remove to end it. If someone has several shares, for example one of their own and one through a Group, the higher level counts. Owners always can write.

Read lets people browse, preview and download files. Write also lets them upload, make folders, and rename, move, copy and delete files. Only owners rename a Shared Drive or change its shares.

Everyone who reaches a Shared Drive can select See owners in its place menu to see its owners and shares. A Shared Drive you can only read says Read only, and New is disabled, with the reason next to it. The Shared Drives list shows your access to each drive: Owner, Can edit or Read only. Sharing, changing and ending a share are recorded in the Tenant’s audit log, without any file names.

Owners of a Shared Drive

A Shared Drive can have several owners, and it stays when they leave. As an owner, open Share, find a user under Find users and Groups and select Make owner. Owners manage the drive, its owners and its shares. Select Remove next to an owner to remove them; you can remove yourself too, and then you reach the drive only if it is also shared with you. The last owner can’t be removed: make someone else an owner first.

When a user is removed from the Tenant, their shares and ownerships end with them. When a Group is deleted, its shares end. If the last owner is removed this way, the Shared Drive stays with its files and shares, shows that no owner is left, and is managed by admins who hold the Right to manage all Shared Drives. Adding and removing owners is recorded in the Tenant’s audit log, without any file names.

Delete a Shared Drive

As an owner, select Delete drive in a Shared Drive’s place menu. Type the drive’s name exactly as shown to confirm, then select Delete Shared Drive again. The drive disappears at once for everyone: it leaves every list, and the agent and the code it runs can no longer reach its files, from the next message on. An admin who holds the Right to read and manage all Shared Drives can restore it within 20 days, with its shares and owners. After 20 days it is deleted for good, with every version of every file, and its name is free again. Until then the name stays taken. Deleting and restoring are recorded in the Tenant’s audit log, without any file names.

Files can also sit at the top level of My Drive and of a Shared Drive, next to the folders, and every action above works for them.

What the agent sees in Shared Drives

In every Conversation the agent sees the Shared Drives you own and those shared with you, directly or through a Group, next to your Personal Drive. It finds, reads and searches their files with its file tools, and tells you which drive and file it used. It sees what you see and no more: a Shared Drive nobody shared with you is not there, and holding the Right to read and manage all Shared Drives gives the agent no extra drives in your Conversations. Your shares are checked again for every message, so a share you lose stops counting with your next message.

If your Shared Drives can’t be read for a moment, the agent says that they are unavailable instead of guessing, and the Conversation goes on with your Personal Drive. The agent knows which of your drives you can write to, and which you can only read. Unless you ask otherwise, it writes the files it makes into the Conversation folder of your Personal Drive. When its answer names a file of a Shared Drive, the name is a link: select it and the file downloads, as for a file of My Drive. If you can’t reach the drive any more, the download fails like any file that isn’t there.

Code the agent runs reaches the same drives, at the same level. It can read a Shared Drive’s files, and write into one you can write to; a drive you can only read refuses it, and nothing in a Shared Drive is deleted for good, because earlier File Versions stay. After the agent changes a Shared Drive it tells you which files changed and links each. Rename a drive and the agent’s next code run already uses the new name. When your access to a Shared Drive changes, because an owner shares it with you or stops sharing it, changes your level, or adds or removes an owner, the Sandbox Session of your Conversations is stopped, and the agent’s next code run starts a new one with your drives as they are now. A running run is ended with it.

Limits

Every drive has a limit: a file you upload can be up to 4 GB, My Drive holds up to 100 GB, a Shared Drive up to 500 GB, and all the drives of your Tenant together up to 10 TB. Your Tenant can have other limits. Only current files count; earlier File Versions and deleted files don’t.

Each drive shows how much of its limit it uses. From 90 % it shows a warning, so you can delete files you no longer need before it is full.

A drive is full when it holds its limit, or when the drives of your Tenant together hold theirs. A full drive says so, and what to do:

Uploading to it is refused, and the reason is named. Uploads are held to the limit: a file that doesn’t fit isn’t uploaded at all. Deleting, renaming and moving files still work.
The agent can only read it. It tells you that the drive is full instead of writing, and code it runs can’t write there either.
It is writable again as soon as you delete files, because the room is freed at once. The agent’s next message already works with the new state.