Is Files Connect enough on its own?
You've decided files need to live outside Salesforce. Before evaluating anything else, check whether Salesforce's own free bridge already does the job.
For Salesforce admins, IT and security reviewers, and whoever signs off the budget.
Published by CloudFiles, who sell one of the apps a gap in Files Connect could lead you to. Every claim below is quoted or drawn from Salesforce's own current documentation and dated. Nothing here needs you to trust us.
What it actually does
Files Connect is Salesforce's own bridge to Box, Google Drive, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business and Quip. It's included with the platform from Professional edition up. Nothing to buy to find out if it's enough.
Reading is genuinely solved: browse, open and preview an external file from a record. Writing is not. Salesforce's own FAQ states it plainly: “The Salesforce UI doesn’t feature those write capabilities.” Creating or updating an external file only works through the Chatter REST API, which means a developer builds it; an admin cannot configure it.
What standing it up requires
- OAuth 2.0, through an auth provider configured before the external data source itself.
- An identity model: Per User (everyone authenticates individually, preserves SharePoint's own permission model) or Named Principal (one shared credential, simpler, collapses that model into one account).
- The Files Connect Cloud permission, for users and for admins configuring data sources.
- Chatter enabled org-wide, and Customize Application to set it up.
Where it quietly stops
- Only document libraries are supported; other SharePoint list types are not.
- Folders with # or % in the name show up in the list, but you cannot open anything inside them.
- SharePoint Managed Metadata / Taxonomy fields are not supported.
- Updated By and Name search filters do not support the = operator.
Salesforce's FAQ also publishes a 50 MB download cap and a “SharePoint 2013 only” line, both attributed to the Secure Agent, a component Salesforce retired on 1 October 2021 and states is not required for SharePoint Online. This page doesn't repeat them as current, the same call the guide already made; test your own real file sizes rather than trust either figure.
Source: Files Connect FAQ, quoted. Retrieved 21 Aug 2026.
Copy versus reference
Files Connect offers two sharing modes, and the admin picks one for the org.
| Copy | Reference | |
|---|---|---|
| What lands in Salesforce | A duplicate is stored in Salesforce | A pointer to the original, nothing duplicated |
| Who can open it | Anyone in the Chatter group, even without SharePoint access | Only people who authenticate with real SharePoint access |
| Reflects later edits | No | No |
Source: Access and Share Files Connect External Files. Retrieved 21 Aug 2026.
What your answer means
- Read-only, no creating or updating files from Salesforce
- Standard objects, nothing custom
- No folder-as-a-unit, no automation, no portal or Experience Cloud users
- Your own real files, tested by you, comfortably under whatever size you actually verified
All true? Files Connect is enough. Stop. No third-party app needed, no procurement.
Any untrue? The gap is real. It closes only by building on the Chatter REST API yourself, or by an external app doing the write path, folders, automation or portal access for you.
Where this stops
This page settles Files Connect specifically. It says nothing about how files attach to records, identity beyond Files Connect's own model, migration, or cost; those are the guide's other questions. CloudFiles sells one of the external apps a gap here eventually points toward, and every claim above is Salesforce's own, dated, and checkable without us.
Check my working
Most readers won't need this. If Files Connect left you unsure, say what's in the way.
- Report: written assessment, two to three working days.
- Reader: a person. Not a bot, not an auto-reply.
- Call: only if you ask. We won't ask twice.
- Fields: four. No phone, no company size, no mailing list.
That's with a person now.
You'll get a written assessment within two to three working days. No call unless you ask for one.