Store file on network drive through eForms or Process

If system admin tries to map a drive on AgilePoint NX server machine manually, it will not be usable by AgilePoint NX server as it is not mapped in context of this service. This is where intricacies of Map drive and how it works at O/S level shows up and that is what we are going to resolve in this article. Let me give you an example.

Map drive is always done in context of a logged in user. So for e.g. if you log on to a machine and map a drive and if I log on to same machine I would not be seeing the mapped drive. Because underneath mapped drive is created only for user called A and not B though we were using same machine. Also mapped drive remains only till user is logged on to the system. But remember that when AgilePoint NX service is running there is no user logged on to the server. It is running as windows service.

So what we did is we provided an AgileConnector called Map Drive AgileConnector.

Map Drive AgileConnector – Configuration

The provided AgileConnector does is that it will open mapped drive under context of AgilePoint service account at server startup so that AgilePoint has access to that drive while it is running. Also it brings one more advantage that now network drive is give a local file drive letter so it behaves as if you were using local drive which removes all complications even in case of a Network Load Balanced environment.

This way user does not have to worry about mapping drive himself on server. AP Server automatically will take care of it

So for e.g. if my network share is astn\xyz folder. I can assign it a drive letter for e.g. “S”. Now in my AgilePoint apps I can just use “S” as local drive even though it was mapped behind scene to network drive and files are getting uploaded to network drive. Server at start up ensures that mapped drive is available and is not susceptible to mapping or user errors. You just need to add connector and map it to a local drive letter which is available.

This already works in lot of client environment using the attached sample in the KB article but since we know with Network drive customers tend to do peculiar scenarios sometimes, we have even provided the source code just in case they want to tweak it tailor it as per their needs. Typically they do not need to make changes unless they really need to add more functionality. Actually 99% clients use it as is.

This is how you map network drive to local drive in the connector config. This is similar parameters to what is asked while mapping drive in windows.