The File Store Bridge
A file store file can become a document without moving. No bytes are copied and the store goes on working exactly as it did.
Where to find it
The File store tab on the Document Library, which appears only where you hold Read on at least one store. Pick a store, walk the folders, adopt a file.
The version history was always there
The reason this is worth doing. A file store writes a new version row on every upload and then serves exactly one of them, forever — so on an estate of any age there are years of superseded versions sitting in storage that no screen could open.
Adopting a file records each version it has, and the document’s history is how you open them. A tick box records the earlier versions as well as the current one.
What else it gains
Restore, classification, an access log, a review cycle, an owner, expiry, acknowledgements, and content search. What it keeps: its folders, its own permissions, and its own lifecycle.
Adopting does not widen access
The file store’s own Read permission is checked on every download, before the document’s. Somebody who can read the document but holds nothing on the store is still refused the file — two gates, both of which must pass.
That is why the picker only offers stores you can read: offering one you cannot would produce a document nobody could open.
It usually narrows access instead
Adopted without a record link — which is the normal case, since file store files are not attachments on a case — the document is readable by the person who adopted it and by grant, and by nobody else. Link it to a record to widen it.
Two things it refuses
- A share link. A link is entitlement with no login, and the store’s permission check needs security groups a token holder does not have.
- Destroying the file under retention. Disposal removes the document and leaves the file where it is — see Documents and Disposal.
Files already adopted are marked
With their document number, rather than hidden. Somebody looking for a file they adopted last week needs to see that it is there, not to find it missing.
One way only
The file store is not told that a file is now a document, so its own browser shows no sign of it. The relationship is deliberately one-directional.
Worked example
A policy library has lived in a file store for six years, with the current version of each policy served and four or five superseded ones kept. Twenty policies are adopted with their histories; the store is untouched, and for the first time somebody can open the 2021 version of the safeguarding policy to answer a complaint about 2021.
Recommendations
- Record the history when the old versions matter, and leave it off when they do not.
- Link adopted documents to a record if a team rather than a person needs them.
- Do not expect the store to change. It will not.