In this video:

Virtual Drive is virtually awesome for document management and rivals the slickness of Pizza Delivery Trackers.

Heads-up! For now, Canopy Virtual Drive is only available on Windows. We hope to have it available on Mac soon!

If you have a Document Management License with Canopy and are not a legacy user, you can download the Virtual Drive from the Integrations page.

Next time you open up the File Explorer, your Canopy files appear and synced.

The file structure mimics the folder structure in Canopy, with a folder for:

Let’s click the Contact Files. You’ll see all of your contacts in this folder!

When a new Contact is created in Canopy, a new folder is added in the Contact File section in Virtual Drive - it looks just as it would for your other Contacts!

And as you rename, archive, or delete contacts, those changes or updates are immediately reflected correctly in Virtual Drive.

Also, if you remove a team member’s access to a contact, they no longer have access to their files on the drive.

Uploading files to the drive is super easy. So easy, you don’t even need to log into Canopy!

You can just drag and drop files and folders to the drive in the folder where you want them to be and see them automatically show up in Canopy, exactly where you put them in the drive.

For example, you might have an existing folder structure for tax or accounting forms. You can drag that folder from your Desktop and into the Virtual Drive window.

Now, when you click on that Contact’s file tab, you can see the folder here!

In the Virtual Drive, you have options to offload and download documents.

To offload and download a file:

Offloading a File
Offloading a file allows your file to be in the Virtual Drive, but not take up any space on your computer. It’s stored on the cloud.

An offloaded or non-downloaded file is designated with a white icon with a green checkmark.

Downloading a File
Downloading a file allows you access to the file even without having access to the Canopy cloud. But remember, a downloaded file takes up space on your computer!

A downloaded file is designated with a green icon with a white checkmark.

Downloading a document is like downloading your music playlist (like Awesome Mix Volumes 1 and 2) from your music streaming service before taking off on the plane. Doing this takes up space on your device, but now you can access it without having access to the service’s cloud.

When to Use Them
​So when should you offload and download documents?

Well, it comes down to preference for certain files. If it’s a file you use often (songs like The Chain from Fleetwood Mac or Mr. Blue Sky from ELO), then downloading it might be better.

You can also delete, rename, or move files or folders in the Virtual Drive, just as would if you were doing normal maintenance for folders and files.

Any time you make these changes, the updates are shown in Canopy!

You can also easily make any annotations on files by clicking on a file in the drive. Once the file is saved, the annotations you made in the Virtual Drive are reflected in Canopy.

It also works the other way around. If you annotate in Canopy, those changes are mimicked in the Virtual Drive.

You might be wondering how this works differently than the Desktop Assistant. Let’s go over when you use each of them:

You can use either method to suit your situation. You can migrate, edit, and organize files with either method. It’s just a matter of your preference: