With v6.6.16+ UpSlide, libraries can be hosted on Azure Blob Containers and synced to user machines directly.
When to use it?
We highly recommend hosting your UpSlide Library in an Azure Blob Container if your organisation uses multiple Entra ID Tenants. Especially when the two following conditions are met:
- You have different teams that need to access the same Library content.
- Those teams are not in the same Entra ID Tenant.
Hosting the Library in SharePoint, in this case, would involve a lot of rights management.
Benefits
- Cloud storage accessible without a VPN.
- Users can expect better performance than the SharePoint Document Library, as there is no concurrent access limitation with Blob Containers.
- You don't have to configure nor manage groups' permissions as access to the Blob Container can be granted with a token.
Limitations
- UpSlide does not support content administration yet. The Library Administrators won't be able to add/edit/delete content directly from UpSlide. They will have to download the Library content, make the changes locally and upload them to the Container. Please contact us to discuss this.
- Only the Library paths are supported, not the Customization path for Templates.
How do I set it up?
Create your container
- In your Azure Portal, you will need a Storage Account (
upslidelibrarystorage
in our example)- This Account can have several Containers and various Blobs stored in these Containers.
- We recommend you use a dedicated Container for each UpSlide Library (
library
in our example)- Each element of the Library will correspond to one blob.
Set up the library
- Upload the library content to the Container using Microsoft Azure Storage Explorer.
- Create a file named
"UpSlide Library Do not DELETE"
and place it in the Library root folder. UpSlide will use this file to store the latest modification date. - Create a
"azure-blob-storage-sas-token.json"
file and deploy it to all users' machine in%PROGRAMDATA%\UpSlide\
. This file must contain the SAS Token allowing the user to connect to the Blob Container. We explain how to generate this Token in the next section.
How do I manage access?
You can manage access to the Container's library using a Short Access Signature (SAS).
You can generate it directly from the Azure Administration Portal:
- Open your Storage Account.
- In the left-side menu, select Storage Explorer and right-click on your Container > Get Shared Access Signature.
- Set the start and end dates, check
Read
andList
permissions (for a read-only library) and click Create to generate the SAS token. - Copy the generated QueryString and place it in the file
"azure-blob-storage-sas-token.json"