How a workflow on Sandbox deals with accessing directories that need special access

Question

In the process of automating a workflow, I've needed files from certain directories in sharepoint, for which I've had to raise explicit access from the respective owners.

But when a different user is running this workflow from sandbox, would they need to raise access for those directories as well ? I know they wouldn't be running this locally on their pc and that sandbox is hosted on cloud so I'm now aware of how access for this would work. Does this depend on how my company's IT department is set up?

dataguyW · Answer

This depends a little bit on how you work with accessing shared data and by whom.   We have done this a few ways.  The first is to have a system account created that can get access to the shared resources.  This can then be used across the sandbox and production.  I've also seen cases where we've had to store credentials in the gallery and save the workflow to "run as" one of those save credentials.   This has downsides when passwords need to change etc. but can work just fine.

This assumes you have the same basic access to file shares whether or not you are on your PC or the cloud.  We try to use UNC path names to avoid local drive naming.  I'm not sure if this helps exactly as every setup is a bit different.