Keeping Reports and Files in SharePoint or Google Drive

Pental can keep a copy of every report, attestation and file the portal holds in your own SharePoint or Google Drive, in a folder for each client and engagement, laid out and named as you choose, and kept up to date as things change. It is off until you switch it on, it runs one way, from the portal to there, and it uses the Microsoft or Google application your firm has already set up, so nobody signs in again.

Switch it on

1. An administrator opens Settings, then SharePoint & Drive. Its first card has the switch Keep files in step, off to begin with, and Save.
2. Under Where they go, choose SharePoint or Google Drive. Each says which of your applications it uses and whether that application is saved already.
3. Fill in where the files go (below), switch Keep files in step on and press Save.

Beside the switch, a word or two says how it is going: Off, Choose where, Not saved yet, Finding your site, Sending a number of files, a number not sent, Needs attention or Up to date, with when the last file went. If your portal’s database or your Pental gateway needs its latest update first, the tab says so.

SharePoint

SharePoint is reached through your Microsoft Teams application (Settings, Integrations) or, where you have no Teams one, your own Microsoft sign-in application (Settings, Login Page). Give it three things:

Once saved, the tab finds the site and shows where the files will go, with Open and Check again. If SharePoint does not let your application in yet, the tab says it needs access to your SharePoint sites and offers Give access with Microsoft. An administrator of your Microsoft 365 (a Global Administrator or a Privileged Role Administrator) signs in once and accepts, and your portal’s database gives the application that access (Sites.ReadWrite.All) itself, then takes back what the sign-in was allowed. Nothing passes through Pental.

With a Teams application, first add the portal’s own address, which the tab shows with Copy, to that application as a Web redirect URI (Microsoft Entra, App registrations, your Teams application, Authentication), because Microsoft sends the administrator back only to an address the application lists. A sign-in application lists it already.

Google Drive

Google Drive is reached through your own Google sign-in application, so save its client ID and secret under Settings, Login Page first (single sign-on under your own name covers that). Then press Connect Google Drive. Google asks once to let the portal make and update its own files in your Drive, and nothing else of it, so the portal reaches only the files it makes. The person who connects owns the folder, and shares it with the team as they would any folder. Folder in Google Drive names the folder made at the top of that account’s own Drive, and Disconnect forgets the connection.

Two things belong on that application’s project in Google Cloud. The Google Drive API has to be switched on: if it is not, the tab says so with Turn on the Drive API, which opens the project’s own page, and looks again when you come back. And the drive.file scope belongs on the consent screen’s Data Access page, or Google may say the application is unverified when you connect.

Folders and names

A folder for each client, one for each engagement in it, and one for each kind of file there, or none: leave a kind’s folder blank and its files go loose in the engagement’s folder. Client folder starts as {client} and Engagement folder as {job_code} {assessment}. Every name is built from tokens; press one and it goes into the box you were last in, where your cursor was.

Ten kinds of file can be kept, each switched on or off with its own folder and its own name ({file} to begin with). Reports, attestations, the edited Word report, the files your team adds to an engagement and the files a client uploads are among those on from the start; pictures pasted into findings, each as a file of its own, are among those off. Remove a file there when it is deleted here is off unless you switch it on, and then sends the file to the site’s recycle bin, or Drive’s bin.

Beside all this, Preview shows your latest engagements, with a file of each kind, filed as the layout you are typing would file them (or an example engagement, before you have one of your own), and draws them again as you type. A file already sent stays where it went when you change the layout later, and a new version of it goes into that same file there.

Activity

The last card counts the files In step, Waiting, Not sent and Not kept, and says who sends them. Behind a Pental gateway, the gateway sends them itself as soon as they are found, with nobody needing the portal open. On Supabase, they go from the browser of whoever in your team has the portal open, straight to Microsoft or Google. Either way, nothing passes through Pental.

A file being sent from this browser shows with a bar. A file not sent is listed in Microsoft’s or Google’s own words, with when it is tried again and Try again; after three failed tries it waits for you. The files sent most recently are listed with where each went and a link to it. Sync now looks through the portal’s files at once and asks again for everything not sent.

What it copies, and what it does not

• Every report, attestation and file the portal keeps, of the kinds you switch on, and each new version of them.
• Never credentials, which are not files, nor avatars, templates or branding.
• One way only: what is changed, added or removed in SharePoint or Drive is not brought back into the portal, and nothing is removed there unless you choose it.
• When something stands in the way, the tab says what in words: an application not saved, Drive not connected or its access withdrawn, or an update your database or gateway needs.

The copies are made by your own database and your own side, with your own applications, which is the same arrangement as the rest of your database; Security sets out what Pental’s servers can and cannot reach.