FAQ: Drive Item Storage and Integrations

Where are Drive items stored?

Drive stores items in different locations depending on the item type. This table shows the supported item types and their storage locations.

Item Type	Storage Location	Notes
Drive folders	Tenant data center
Files	Tenant data center	The File item type is associated with supported types that don't fall into a more specialized category: BMP, CSV, DOC, DOCX, GIF, HTM, HTML, JPEG, JPG, PDF, PNG, PPT, PPTX, SVG, TIF, TIFF, XLS, XLSM, and XLSX.
Discovery boards	Tenant data center	Workday stores discovery board data in the OMS database. Workday stores keys that refer to the data in a separate proprietary data store.
Notification templates	Tenant data center	Proprietary database in the tenant data center. Note : Notification Designer uses a third-party Content Delivery Network (CDN) to deliver the images in emails that Workday sends to users.
Worksheets workbooks	Tenant data center	Proprietary database in the tenant data center.
Slides presentations	Tenant data center	Proprietary database in the tenant data center.
Workday Media Files (video, audio, live stream, and packaged (ZIPped) e-learning content (such as SCORM, AICC, or other formats))	Cloud data center provider (service agreement required)	You can select to upload Learning-related files in 3 ways. When you do the upload, the files become available using Drive but Workday stores the files with the cloud data center provider. While creating a course/lesson by navigating to a location on your computer. As a standalone action into Drive; then you navigate to them when setting up a course/lesson. Using a web service. For more information about Workday Media Cloud files, see Workday Media Cloud - FAQ on Community.

Are my Drive uploads scanned for viruses?

Yes, except for media files.

What's the storage limit for Drive files?

Drive doesn't limit the number of files that you can upload. File size limits depend on the type of file you are uploading. Videos are limited to 20 GB, and SCORM, AICC, and zip files are limited to 4 GB. Other files like PDFs or XLSX are limited to 30 MB per individual file. There are currently no limits on the total Drive storage capacity in your tenant. However, we do not recommend using Drive as a file repository for all of your organization's files. Instead, Drive is best used for content and files specific to your workflows in Workday. Workday will work directly with customers in cases where abnormal or excessively heavy usage patterns affect the performance of normal business operations.

How do I maximize performance in Drive?

We recommend setting up a folder of frequently used files to use as your default view, instead of the Drive view. Example: Create a folder named

Important Items

and move frequently used items into it. Click the

Settings

icon. Select

+Add Folder

, and add the

Important Items

folder to the left navigation menu. Then drag the folder to the top position; it becomes your Home Page in Drive. Click Save.

Use Folders at “My Drive” level to store items, minimizing the number of individual files stored in the main Drive view. When there are thousands of individual files in the Drive view, performance starts to degrade.

Use group shares instead of sharing to a large number of individual users.

Is it possible for users to upload copyrighted or sensitive material into Drive?

Each customer is fully responsible for all content housed in Drive, including files that were originally created outside a Workday environment and then uploaded to Drive. We recommend working with your IT and Legal teams to define and publish an acceptable use and data content policy.

Is there a configurable business process associated with the ability to submit files to Drive?

No, any user with access on the Drive domain can upload files with supported file types directly to Drive.

Does Workday have access to files stored in Drive?

No. Drive files are secure for each customer and Workday doesn't have access to them. The only exception would be if the customer explicitly granted temporary visibility as part of a technical support request or similar situation.

Are files in Drive backed up?

Workday has a defined storage plan for each file type. All files except media files are stored on a server in a Workday data center. Media files are stored in a third-party cloud-based storage center (typically Amazon Web Services, although other providers are available) managed by a third-party agreement.

Can I delete Drive files?

Content owners can remove files, which places them in the Trash. This severs any file sharing relationships associated with the files. The files remain in the user’s Trash and you can restore them later.

Drive administrators can permanently delete most file types using the Drive Permanent File Delete task. File types excluded from the task include:

Discovery boards used as worklets on the Home page.

Media files (video and packaged content).

Workbooks used in integrating applications such as Payroll, Recruiting, or HCM.

Items that have a reference from a Knowledge Base Article.

Folders that have items in them.

Workbooks used as a template by other workbooks.

Document templates (used in generate document in business process) that have a reference from a generated document or a review document step.

Are there any public web services for Drive?

Yes, Drive provides public web services, secured to the Drive Web Services domain. Owner permission is required. The web services are available for file types such as PDF, DOCX, PPT, JPG, and more. We currently don't support folders, or items in product-specific areas such as:

Discovery boards

Docs templates

Media files (including ZIP files)

Notification templates

Slides presentations

Worksheets workbooks

Considerations:

Files that you upload to Drive using a web service display in the main Drive view.

Drive doesn't automatically convert files that you upload using a web service. Example: When you upload a CSV file from the Drive user interface, Drive automatically converts the CSV file to a Worksheets workbook. This conversion doesn't occur with the web services.

Web Services	Description
Get Drive Document Content	View Drive document content
Get Tenant Setup Group Share Configurations	View group share configurations in the tenant
Put Drive Document Content	Create or update Drive document content
Put Tenant Setup Group Share Configurations	Create or update group share configurations in the tenant