Cloud Folders

Cloud Folders is MSPControl’s own file-sharing service: network storage presented to users as drives, hosted on the operator’s infrastructure.

Not SharePoint and not OneDrive

Cloud Folders is a separate product from SharePoint and from OneDrive. It is frequently confused with both because all three end up as “where the files are”. Cloud Folders storage comes from a hosting quota, not from a Microsoft tenant.

The menu appears when the hosting plan provisions Cloud Folders. Four screens: Dashboard, Shared Folders, Personal Folders and Drive Maps — the last requiring its own drive-maps quota.

Dashboard

Overview of the organization’s cloud folder usage. The place to start when someone reports running out of space.

Shared folders

Folders available to multiple users, with permissions deciding who can read and write.

Permissions are the whole access model

There is nothing else protecting a shared folder’s contents. Review them when a folder’s purpose changes, and particularly when a folder created for one team starts being used by another — access tends to be added and rarely removed.

Personal folders

Per-user storage. Each user’s own folder, not shared.

A leaver's personal folder is not automatically anyone else's

When someone leaves, their personal folder contains work nobody else can reach. Retrieve anything the business needs before the account is removed — afterwards it is an administrative recovery exercise, if it is possible at all.

Drive maps

Drive maps are how cloud folders actually reach a user’s machine: a drive letter mapped to a folder, applied by the Autopilot agent when the user signs in.

This is the join between this section and the endpoint. A folder with no drive map exists but is inconvenient to reach; a drive map to a folder the user cannot access produces a drive letter that fails to connect.

When a user says their drive has disappeared

Check three things in order: that the drive map still exists here, that the user still has permission to the folder, and that their Autopilot agent is connected. Users can also reconnect drives themselves from the tray application — see the Autopilot icon on your computer, which is written to be shared with them.

Drive maps need their own quota in the hosting plan. Where the Cloud Folders menu is present but Drive Maps is missing, that quota is the reason.

Related

• The Autopilot icon on your computer — the end-user view of drive maps
• SharePoint — the other file-sharing option
• Hosting plans — where the Cloud Folders and drive-maps quotas are set