> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.deandesk.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Shared Drive

> Upload documents that the Institution AI can read as context — institution-wide and per-school.

<Info>
  **Institution-level feature** — managed from your institution dashboard at `deandesk.com/dashboard`. Files in the Shared Drive are private to your institution.
</Info>

The **Shared Drive** is a file manager attached to your institution. Files you upload here become **context** that the [Institution AI Chat](/institution/ai-chat) can search and read when answering questions or drafting communications.

Use the Shared Drive to give the assistant access to documents like:

* Member handbooks and policies
* School handbooks
* Event flyers and program descriptions
* Internal reference docs (FAQs, runbooks, year-end procedures)
* Templates for letters and announcements

## Open the Shared Drive

Go to **Shared Drive** in the institution dashboard sidebar. You'll see a folder browser with two scopes:

| Scope           | What lives here                                                                                              |
| --------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| **Institution** | Files visible to the assistant across all of your schools                                                    |
| **Per-school**  | Files scoped to a specific school — the assistant only references them when working on that school's context |

## Folders

Pick a scope (institution or school), then create folders within it. Folders can be nested arbitrarily deep, so you can group files however your team needs — for example, *Member Handbook → 2026 → Appendices*. Files live inside any folder.

<Steps>
  <Step title="Pick a scope">
    Click **Institution** or pick a specific school from the scope selector.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Create a folder">
    Click **New Folder**, give it a name (e.g. "Member Handbook", "2026 Camp Materials"), and save.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Open the folder">
    Click the folder to see its contents.
  </Step>
</Steps>

## Uploading files

<Steps>
  <Step title="Open a folder">
    Navigate into the folder where you want the file.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Upload">
    Click **Upload** and select up to 10 files at once. PDFs, Word documents, plain text, Markdown, and common image formats are supported.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Wait for indexing">
    DeanDesk extracts the text content from each file so it can be searched by the assistant. Indexing usually takes a few seconds per file.
  </Step>
</Steps>

### Inline text files

You can also create text files directly in the browser without uploading — useful for quick notes, FAQs, or templates.

<Steps>
  <Step title="Click New Text File">
    Inside any folder, click **New Text File**.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Compose">
    Enter a name and write the content directly in the editor.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Save">
    Save. The text file is indexed immediately.
  </Step>
</Steps>

## Previewing files

Click any file to preview its content in the right panel. Text is shown as-is; PDFs and Word documents are shown as their extracted text representation.

## Deleting files

To remove a file from the assistant's context, delete it from its folder. Deleted files are removed immediately and the assistant will no longer reference them.

## How the assistant uses Shared Drive content

When you ask the [Institution AI Chat](/institution/ai-chat) a question, the assistant searches the Shared Drive for relevant content and cites which files it pulled from. You can ask follow-up questions like:

* *"Summarize the cancellation policy from our member handbook."*
* *"Draft a member announcement following the tone of the welcome letter in the templates folder."*
* *"Look up what the 2026 Camp Materials say about parent waivers."*

<Note>
  Files in the Shared Drive never leave your institution — they're not shared with other DeanDesk customers and they're not used to train any model.
</Note>