Google Drive

Connecting Google Drive to freedam brings the folders your team already collaborates in into a real asset library - with previews, search, controlled metadata, and access rules - while Drive stays exactly as it is. freedam reads from Drive; it never writes back.

What it does

Google Drive is one of freedam's built-in source connectors (Admin → Sources), alongside WebDAV and S3. You point a source at a Drive folder, and freedam imports its files as assets. A Drive source is refreshed manually, and each refresh picks up where the last one left off: new files are imported, files that changed in Drive become a new version of the existing asset, and files removed from Drive are handled the way you choose - archived safely (and restored automatically if the file reappears) or never removed at all. Drive sources cannot run on a schedule, on any plan, because the access token they rely on is short-lived (see below).

A distinctive option for Drive sources: the catalog spreadsheet that matches files to your products can be a Google Sheet. Where other sources read an uploaded spreadsheet, a Drive source can point straight at a Sheet - useful when the spreadsheet describing your products already lives in the same Drive.

How it works

The connection form takes three things:

• Access credential - a Google access token that grants read-only access to Drive. Today you create this yourself following the step-by-step instructions in the documentation and paste it in; freedam does not yet handle the Google sign-in flow for you.
• Folder - identified by the last part of the folder's web address in Drive.
• Catalog - optionally, the Google Sheet to use for matching files to products.

From there the source works like any other: map folders to collections, optionally match filenames against catalog rows so files inherit product metadata and their place in your hierarchy, preview where each file would land, run a small sample or a dry run first, then refresh whenever you want to pull in what changed. Run history, plain-language run outcomes, and the review workflow for unmatched files all apply.

Good to know

• The credential expires quickly. Google's access tokens only last about an hour, and there is no refresh token, which is why Drive sources are manual only and have no schedule field. A refresh started after the token has expired stops with an authentication error on its run page; paste a fresh token into the source and refresh again.
• Access is read-only. freedam asks Google only for permission to read - it cannot modify or delete anything in your Drive.
• The same safety stops apply as for other connectors: a refresh that suddenly sees more than half the files missing pauses for review instead of archiving your library, and runs never pile up.
• Configuring sources is an admin permission.

Source configuration, catalog mapping, and troubleshooting are covered in the documentation. Questions about running this against your own Workspace, or self-hosting? Get in touch.