# Storage Folders

Study Tracker can connect with local file systems and cloud storage systems to store you project's files, you can specify what folders within the available file systems will be made available to the application. Here are a few concepts Study Tracker uses:

* **Storage Drive**: Refers to either a locally-available storage drive (eg. HDD, NFS) or a cloud storage drive (eg. S3 bucket, OneDrive Drive, Egnyte Shared Drive). Drives can be added or removed from the integration settings for the appropriate service in the admin dashboard (eg. AWS for S3, Azure for OneDrive).
* **Study Root Folder**: A folder that can be assigned as the root for creating the program/study/assay folder hierarchy. In order for Study Tracker to be able to create storage folders for your studies, at least one Study Root Folder must be defined so that it can be associated with the parent Program records. All programs must have a Study Root Folder assigned, but not all programs need to share the same root folder.
* **Browser Root Folder**: Study and assay folders will always show up in the Files tab on their respective details pages, but only Browser Root Folders will show up as browsable in the File Manager view.

If you try to create program or study records before study root folders have been registered in your tenant, you will see the following notification:

<figure><img src="/files/Nek3knXzU8hKIu7Zm2TC" alt=""><figcaption><p>A warning shown on the New Program page when no storage folders have been configured.</p></figcaption></figure>

Depending on how your tenant was configured, you may already have some default root folders configured, but if not, you will have to add them manually in the Admin Dashboard.

### Adding Root Folders

To add new root folders, go to the Admin Dashboard, select 'Storage Folders'. Click the 'Add Folder' button and provide the following information:

* **Storage Drive**: Select the drive that you would like to register the folder within.&#x20;
* **Folder Path**: Provide the full path within the selected drive to the folder you would like to use. It is important that you get the spelling and syntax correct and that the folder already exists.
* **Label**: Give the folder a display name to make it easy to distinguish.
* **Browser Root**: Check this option if you would like the folder to show up in the File Manager.
* **Study Root**: Check this option if you would like to use this folder for study storage.
* **Write Enabled**: Check this option to enable folder creation and file upload in the File Manager. By default, folders marked as study root will have write access enabled.
* **Delete Enabled**: Currently ignored, but in the future, this will allow file and folder deletion in the File Manager.

<figure><img src="/files/kncXdedAeTWS5Y9aWtwO" alt=""><figcaption><p>Adding a new storage folder in the admin dashboard</p></figcaption></figure>

Once registered and verified, the added storage folder will show up in the list of available folders. From this view you can also modify or remove any existing storage folders. Removing root storage folders will not delete the folders themselves nor remove any records associated with them, but will instead simply prevent further records from being associated with them. If you'd like to re-enable a removed folder, you must recreate the record as above.

<figure><img src="/files/tBtBBNnhTtOOA0W1oHoC" alt=""><figcaption></figcaption></figure>


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