Connecting a shared folder

What it is

A shared folder is the simplest door into Verinode: you share one Google Drive folder, Viewer-only, with a Verinode service account, and drop files into it. Verinode reads what lands there and nothing else on your drive. It follows the same model trust platforms like Vanta use for document collection: one folder is the entire consent boundary, so what Verinode can and cannot see is something you can literally point at.

It exists for two reasons. First, some tools you already use have no API to connect to and no inbox to forward from, most notably Dash and Xactimate. Second, some operators would rather hand over one folder they control than link a broader integration. Once the folder is shared, anything you drop into it, or point a tool's export at, flows in from then on with no repeated steps.

Verinode does not manage your Google Drive or reach beyond the one folder you name. It reads the files you place there, the same way it reads a forwarded email or an uploaded file, and turns them into the same jobs, clients, and financial signal everywhere else on the platform. You choose what goes in the folder; Verinode never decides that for you.

Where to find it

Open Connect from the sidebar (/connect). Under the Add a source row is a tile:

• Connect a shared folder, subtitle: "Drop files into one scoped folder. Google Drive or SharePoint"

Tapping it opens the Connect card slider on the Shared folder tab, one of the tabs across the top alongside Email, Upload, Photo, Voice, and Integrations, plus a tab for each tool in your stack. The card itself is titled Connect a Shared Folder.

How the connection works

The card walks you through a two-step handshake. The first step proves you can point Verinode at a real folder. The second proves you actually control what is inside it, not just its web address, because a folder's link can leak through a forwarded email or a screenshot without the sender meaning to hand over access. Verinode will not bind a folder to your account until you demonstrate both.

1. 1Create one folder in Google Drive, for example "Verinode". This is the only folder Verinode will ever see.
2. 2Share it as Viewer with the address shown on the card. Click the address to copy it (the button reads "Copy" and briefly switches to "Copied" once you click). That address is all Verinode can ever see: Viewer access to this one folder, nothing else on your drive.
3. 3Paste the folder's link into the field on the card (placeholder text: "https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/…") and press Continue. Verinode accepts a full folder link, a Drive ?id= link, or a bare folder id if you already have one.

Pressing Continue checks that the Verinode service account can actually read the folder. If it can, the card moves to the second step and names a verification file:

1. 1Verinode shows you an exact file name, for example verinode-connect-7f3a91c208bd4e11a9c2.txt. Click it to copy it (same "Copy" / "Copied" toggle as the folder address).
2. 2Create an empty file with that exact name inside the shared folder. This is what proves you control the folder's contents, not just its address.
3. 3Click I dropped it in, connect (it reads "Checking…" while Verinode looks for the file). Verinode confirms the file is present, binds the folder to your account, and shows a confirmation line naming the folder, for example: "Connected ("Verinode"). Files in this folder come in automatically now."

You can back out of the verification step at any point with the Back link, which returns you to the folder-link field without losing your place.

What each error message means

The card surfaces these plainly rather than a generic failure:

• "Can't read that folder. Share it with the service account (Viewer) and confirm the id is from the folder URL (drive/folders/<id>)." The service account cannot see the folder at all yet. Either the share step was skipped, the wrong address was used, or the pasted link does not resolve to a real folder id.
• "This folder is already connected to another Verinode account. A folder can only feed one account. Use a different folder." A single physical folder can only ever feed one Verinode account, by design, so the same client's exports cannot double-count across two accounts by accident. Point Verinode at a folder that is not already connected elsewhere.
• "Drop the file named '...' into the folder first, then connect. That confirms it's your folder." Verinode can read the folder but has not found the verification file yet. Double-check the exact name (case and characters matter) and that it landed directly inside the shared folder, not a subfolder.
• "Verified the folder, but couldn't store the connection. It may already be connected to another account, or the migration isn't applied yet." A rare storage-layer failure after both checks passed. Try again; if it repeats, contact support.

Connected folders

Once a folder is connected, it appears as a row above the setup steps, with a hairline rule separating it from the next section (no card frame, this is the platform's usual flat-list treatment). Each row shows:

• Folder name, the name Verinode read from Google Drive at connect time (falls back to "Shared folder" if no name came back).
• Status line, reading "Connected." followed by one of:

- "No files in yet" if nothing has synced from the folder yet. - "Last file in [Month Day]", the date of the most recent file Verinode successfully pulled in, for example "Last file in Jul 9".

• Disconnect, a text control on the right of the row. Clicking it revokes the connection immediately; Verinode stops reading the folder and the row disappears. Disconnecting in Verinode does not automatically unshare the folder in Google Drive: if you want to fully close it off, also remove the Verinode service account from the folder's share settings on the Google side.

What happens after you connect

Every file you drop into the folder rides the same pipeline as a forwarded email attachment or a manual upload: it is parsed, normalized, and saved as part of your business record, without any relevance filter. Placing a file in this one dedicated folder is itself treated as the signal that it belongs; Verinode does not second-guess what you chose to put there.

A few behaviors worth knowing:

• Native Google files are skipped. A Google Doc, Sheet, or Slide created directly in Drive (as opposed to an uploaded file) is not pulled in, since these require export rather than a plain download. Export a copy as PDF or the tool's native format and drop that in instead.
• Re-dropping a file is harmless. Verinode content-hash dedupes, so if the same export lands in the folder twice, it will not be processed twice.
• Only new or changed files sync. Once Verinode has pulled a batch of files, later syncs only look at files modified after that point. If a sync run hits an error partway through, the ones that did not make it in are simply retried on the next pass, nothing is silently skipped.

Using it for tools with no connection: Dash and Xactimate

Dash and Xactimate are two of the tools restoration operators run day to day that have no API to connect to. The usual Flow answer for a tool like this is to set up an auto-export to your inbox and let email forwarding pick it up (see Forwarding documents), but a scheduled export can be large, come as multiple files, or simply be easier to manage as a folder than a mail rule.

The shared folder is the clean way around that: point the tool's export at your shared Verinode folder once, on whatever cadence you already run it (nightly, weekly, monthly), and every export from then on flows in without you touching anything again. It is the same "share it once, it flows forever" pattern the rest of Connect uses, just aimed at tools that have nowhere else to plug in.

If the live setup isn't showing yet

Shared-folder connect is rolling out in a limited pilot. If it is not yet live on your account, the card reads:

"The shared-folder connection isn't switched on in this environment yet. It's coming. You'll grant access to one folder, and it flows from then on."

That is not an error, it means the connector has not been switched on for your account yet. Nothing else on Connect is affected: your other channels (email, upload, photo, voice, integrations) keep working as usual, and shared folder becomes available the same way any other Connect tile does, without you needing to do anything to prepare for it.

Privacy and scope

The line at the bottom of the card is the whole promise: read-only, scoped to the one folder you choose, encrypted under a key that is yours, and never sold. Verinode never sees the rest of your drive, only what you have explicitly shared, and you can end that access at any time by disconnecting in Verinode or unsharing the folder in Google Drive. As with every source that feeds Verinode, this data is never sold to carriers.

Best-practice example

Say your Xactimate exports currently sit in a monthly zip you have to remember to email yourself. Create a folder named "Verinode Xactimate," share it Viewer with the address on the Shared folder card, drop the verification file in, and connect. Set Xactimate's export destination to that same folder. From the next export on, the file lands in the folder and Verinode picks it up on its next sync, no email, no manual upload, no reminder to yourself. If you ever change tools or close the export off, disconnect from the Connected folders row and remove the share from the Google Drive side.

Related reading

• Connecting your data, the full picture of how Connect and Flow bring data in
• Forwarding documents, the email-forwarding path for tools that can auto-export to an inbox

Data sources