Storage providers

Storage providers are external data sources that can be synchronised with Raptor. By using a storage provider, external documents can be visualised in the Raptor tenant and used like any other Raptor document. The added benefit is that Raptor does not copy the external documents, but instead contacts the external datasource directly, saving storage cost. Currently the only supported data source is SharePoint.

To create a storage provider, go to the tab ‘Storage providers’ and click the ‘+’ button. Insert a name of your choosing and hit ‘Save’.

After saving, you can further specify the settings:

In the URL field, add the base URL of your SharePoint instance. In the Directory id field, add the ID of the Azure Directory where your SharePoint is located.

In Sites, add all site paths which the Storage provider should take into account. The site paths typically start with ‘/sites/’ or ‘/teams/’. Additionally, you can define some tags that should be added by default for every synchronised document.

When you add ad external document in Raptor that references a file in your SharePoint, make sure that it does not contain double slashes. This may cause trouble for the Storage provider to locate the document.

Bad: https://domain.sharepoint.com/sites/site1//documents/document1.docx

Good: https://domain.sharepoint.com/sites/site1/documents/document1.docx

Hit 'Register' to activate the storage provider. This will allow Raptor to recognize documents for the SharePoint when an external document is manually added (see Uploading files). When an external document is recognised, it will be possible to preview it in the Raptor viewer and download/print it through Raptor.

To actively synchronise documents from the SharePoint site, click 'Activate change tracking'. Whenever a change is made on a document contained in one of the specified sites, an event will be sent to Raptor to synchronise the document.

A document synchronised from the storage provider will appear in Raptor as an external document. The linked SharePoint file can then be opened via the 'External source' button.

Note that .docx files may be downloaded instead of opened in a new tab depending on the configuration in your browser and SharePoint instance. To ensure that documents are opened in the browser, add “?web=1” add the end of the URL when manually adding an external document in Raptor.