Hi, I’m a bit confused about how to tackle this situation and would love your help.
We have about 2 years of data (documents) stored on our drive. A few weeks ago we started using Monday and started storing the files both in Monday and our drive.
- Does it make sense to use Monday to store 95% of all company documents? Or just save it all on our server and link it?
- If migrating, what do we do with all documents from the past 2 years? Ideally we would want them to be easily accessible from the same platform we use for our current processes.
- Would love if you guys could share how you manage your file storage in your company.
Thank you!
1 Like
For a robust document management system, and this may be controversial, I would recommend not storing documents in monday for one simple reason. At this time you con only collaborate on a document from different locations through mirrors. But you can’t do things like duplicate an item with a file onto another board, and have changes to that file appear in both items!
At this time, adding documents from onedrive/sharepoint/dropbox/google drive to a files column lets you access that file from any location its linked to and you’re editing the same file instead of different files. You can also link to folders from items.
It is possible, through make.com or custom development to integrate these platforms by API where creating items on boards creates folders in these platforms and links to them on the item. This link can then be passed through the rest of the platform with mirrors or when creating connected items. Or, connecting to existing folders if they have a project ID for example. It all depends on the platforms capabilities.
Obviously the details are not something that I can spell out here since I know nothing about your workflow.
2 Likes
Thanks for the reply! You raised a great point regarding collaborating on files through different boards - I believe it is not relevant for us but I’ll look into it.
If it’s not too much to ask then I have a added some details for context and appreciate any help 
Basically, we’re a classic real estate investment fund - managing properties and investors relations. Our target is to migrate any workflow that can be formalized into Monday.
We don’t have a huge amount of documents so we know the storage suffices. For internal use it really doesn’t make a huge difference, but our vision is to use the guest function to create an investor portal. If we do not store on Monday that means:
- If we store in OneDrive we also need to manage permissions to the investor’s directory. Duplicate permission work.
- Else, we create copies of their files on Monday. Duplicate manual work and potential outdated documents.
Both options have their flaw, either in managing permissions or manual syncing of files. Unless we store them on Monday…
Any ideas or feedback is much appreciated!
Well as far as sharing, since you’re using OneDrive (I would recommend using SharePoint - OneDrive is just an interface to SharePoint). Its entirely possible to generate the sharable links to SharePoint folders including read only through the microsoft API. But all this automation / custom integration work is work that has a cost.
That said, if you’re just attaching documents to a property, then you could use monday for that and control permissions through monday and assigning people to items, for example.
Just consider long term what you need to do with the documents, as well as the editing workflows. Working on a spreadsheet or word doc from monday has a lot of limitations compared to sharepoint.
If you’re going to maintain documents on sharepoint/onedrive and just upload a document of record as PDF to an item rather than actually authoring within the monday.com platform that also changes the equation.
1 Like
Those are some great points for internal discussion! Thank you very much Cody!