File Share

This data source works with most SMB/CIFS-compliant devices, including Windows and Samba file shares.

Set up your file share

The way to do this varies, depending on the systems you’re using. For example, on Windows you should share all the folders you want NOW Privacy to crawl, but remember your local security policies.

NOW Privacy requires list permission and read permission on every file and every folder in the share. If it finds a deny permission on any file or folder, it ignores:

  • the file

  • the folder

  • everything below the folder

Configure NOW Privacy

To create a new File Share data source:

  1. From the main menu select Data Sources

  2. Click New ⇾ New Data Source

  3. In the New Data Source dialog, select the dataset this new data source will belong to by:

    1. choosing an existing dataset from the dropdown, or

    2. clicking Add to new Data Set and typing the name of your dataset

      If you use option 3b, remember to add the dataset to at least one security group. If you don’t, no users will be able to see the data from this data source.

  4. Click Next

  5. Select the data source and click Next

  6. Enter the credentials and details for the data source

    You can omit:

    • Path or

    • Path and Share

    If you omit one or both of these, click Browse to navigate to the location you want to share

Field

Description

Domain

The domain the user belongs to.

If the user does not belong to a domain you can use . (the full stop or period character) as the domain.

User Name

A user who has read access to the data you want to crawl.

Password

The password for the user.

Server

The IP address or fully qualified domain name of the target server.

Share

The name of the target share.

Path

The path to the directory where you want to crawl.

To crawl the entire share, specify a forward slash (/) or backslash (\).

  1. Click Test to check the details you entered

  2. Click Next

If the target you want to crawl is //hrserver/hr/users/john:

  • the server is hrserver

  • the share is hr

  • the path is users/john

  1. Select the country for this data source and click Next

    The country is used in geographical visualisations

  2. Optionally, click Add Custom Description

    This allows you to use you own description for this data source, rather than accept the default description that NOW Privacy provides

  3. Set the Crawl priority

  4. Specify whether you want to crawl once or continuously

  5. Click Start Crawl Immediately if you want to crawl the data right now

    Or you can start a crawl manually anytime you want

  6. Optionally, click Collect File Ownership Information

    Read more details on this option

  7. Click Create Data Source

Limitation

We do not currently crawl symbolic links. There would be a risk of infinite loops.

Note

Optionally, NOW Privacy can attempt to preserve the last accessed date on files when we crawl them. If you would like to enable this feature, please contact our Support Team.