With many available interfaces and with drag and drop convenience, it's possible that one of your users may inadvertently move a folder, drop it into another folder, or otherwise alter your file structure from what your workflow or team requires.

Logging and interface flexibility make those mishaps easy to correct, but when you have a team relying on the integrity of your folder structure, you can take it a step further.

You can use the Lock Subfolders folder setting to lock the folder structure from the present folder down through all subfolders depending on the option you chose. These options gives you the flexibility to lock some portions of your folder tree while leaving other portions unlocked. While file operations can continue as normal: creating, moving, renaming, or deleting any folders or subfolders will be prevented. Folders remain where they are, named as they are, including all subfolders.

Options for Lock Subfolders Setting

Lock Subfolders folder setting has 3 options to choose from, depending on what your organization needs.

Lock structure of folders in this folder and also in their children is the most restrictive choice. This will prevent any folders from being created, deleted or renamed in this folder or any of its subfolders. You might choose this option if you have a folder tree that you wish to duplicate in multiple places in your site.

The choice to Lock structure of folders in this folder but not in their children provides more flexibility by preventing subfolders being changed in the immediate children subfolders. If you have some interchange that requires the existence of a specific folder to indicated processed files, but allows for archive folders to be created each month within that processed folder, this option would allow that flexibility.

If your goal is to prevent changes to a specific folder and not to any subfolders, Lock this folder's existence only, but not any folders inside it will do the job, preventing even administrator users from accidentally making changes that could derail an automated process.

To remove the restrictions entirely reset a folder to the default, choose Allow users to create, rename, and delete any folders in this folder.

Using the folder structure lock feature applies to all users by default, including site administrators. Users who have admin access to the folder can change the behavior in the folder's settings or site administrators can completely bypass the locks.

Overriding Locks on Subfolders for Site Administrators

If you want your site administrators to be able to make structural changes on locked folders, you can enable the setting Allow site administrators to bypass the locks on subfolders from Data Governance -> Restrictions. Once enabled, site administrators gain the ability to bypass the locks on subfolders on your site, enabling them to create, move, rename, or delete folders and subfolders within any locked folder.

Conflicts with Create User Folders Here Behavior

When you configure a folder as the location for new user folders to be automatically created, the Lock Subfolders setting will not prevent the new folders from being created.