Connect a local folder or a mounted network drive to a meinGPT data source.
This is the most common case and the reason the Outpost exists: a folder sits on the machine (or is mounted there as a drive), and meinGPT should be able to search it. The source and search index stay there; you decide per folder on the Outpost what may leave for a request.
Only with your own Outpost
Only an Outpost can read a folder on a machine. Without your own Outpost this
source type does not exist — you connect your storage in meinGPT directly
instead (SharePoint, Google Drive, S3 …).
The connection is made of two halves, and the order is not arbitrary:
Where
What
1
In the Outpost
Share the folder — pick the path, data retrieval, and local source access.
2
In meinGPT
Adopt the reported folder under Shares, name it, and then grant Access. That is what decides who may find it.
The machine reports its folders itself; meinGPT can only adopt what was reported. The data source in meinGPT does not know where the folder is — that exists only on the Outpost machine. The Outpost does not know who may search — that exists only in meinGPT.
One setting, one owner
Data retrieval and source access are set exclusively on the Outpost. meinGPT
only displays the values most recently reported by the device and can neither
change nor widen them. In the platform you manage adoption, the name, user
access, and any narrower tool policy.
The path must be absolute — C:\Data\Quotes or /srv/documents. Choose folder opens the operating system's file dialog.
The same wizard immediately continues with two more steps for release level and source access — the next two steps on this page. There is no ID to type: the machine reports the folder to meinGPT itself once you save.
Open the folder's row. At the very top: What this folder releases:
Level
What travels to meinGPT
Text only(default)
the extracted text of the documents found. The files stay on this machine.
Text and original files
the file itself as well — it then leaves the machine.
The decision is made here, not in meinGPT: whoever binds the folder is the person who knows whether its files may leave the building. The platform only displays this device report.
Read only is the default. Read and write allows meinGPT to explicitly
create, edit, rename, or recoverably delete small text files inside the shared
folder. Data retrieval and source access are independent: permission to retrieve
original files does not grant write access.
When saving, the Outpost checks the operating-system permission. Before every
change it checks the current local policy and target path again. Create and
rename never overwrite; edit and delete retain the previous file in the local
recovery area. The platform can only narrow this local ceiling.
Settings → Outposts → Manage → Shares. The reported folder is listed there with its path. Use as source, give it a name — from then on it is a collection like any other.
That does not yet make it visible to anyone but you. In the list of document collections, click Access and add the people, teams, or assistants that may work with it — that is what decides who finds the documents.
If the Outpost is running, the pass starts on its own. If the status bar at the bottom says Stopped, nothing happens — press Start first. The row under Shares only shows whether the folder is already usable. Open the folder and switch to Processing to follow file discovery, text extraction or OCR, and the keyword and vector indexes separately.
A network drive works as a local folder if it is permanently mounted from the Outpost process's point of view:
Windows: a UNC path (\\server\share\folder) or a mapped drive. Careful: mapped drive letters are per user session. If the Outpost runs as a different account it will not see Z:\ — use the UNC path instead. Details on SMB shares.
Linux: a mount point from /etc/fstab that survives a reboot.
The folder must be readable by the account the Outpost runs as. Grant that
account operating-system write access only when Read and write is enabled
for this exact folder in the Outpost.
The Outpost reads the folder including subfolders and picks up new, changed and deleted files on later runs.
What it cannot process, it skips — and that is the thing that decides answer quality. Open the folder under Shares. Source documents lists the affected files with the concrete reason; Processing shows exceptions while building the search indexes.
Typical large bars and what they mean:
.zip — archives are not unpacked. If the quote is inside a ZIP, nobody finds it.
.msg — individually exported Outlook mails. There is currently no dedicated mailbox source — only individually exported messages are read.
no extension, .exe, .dll, .pyc — no text inside, correctly skipped.
Images and video — no text that can be extracted as-is.
A folder you release is open to everyone who can see the data source
File and directory permissions do not travel. Anyone allowed to see this
data source in meinGPT finds every document in it — including someone who
could not open the folder in Explorer. Check that before you release it, not
after.
There is one beta exception: Windows user permissions (Beta) can be enabled per workspace, and it makes each user's real NTFS permissions apply to search, download, and file changes — but only for folders bound as a local NTFS folder on this machine itself. Network drives and shares connected via UNC path are excluded from this feature; the rule above still applies to them. Talk to your account contact if you'd like to test this beta feature.
