As a Google Workspace super admin, use this procedure only if your organization uses Gmail as its email system.

If this is not the case, ask your email system administrator to set up forwarding rules of all your AODocs storage accounts to the following email address: aodocs-permission-requests@ao-docs.appspotmail.com.

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Why do you need to set a forwarding rule for the AODocs storage account?

If you don't implement a forwarding rule, when users make sharing requests on AODocs document attachments, the requests are sent by email only to the AODocs storage account.

This is a technical account, so if no one regularly accesses the mailbox of the AODocs storage account, the sharing requests won't be received and processed by the appropriate person, and the sharing requests will be lost.

When you implement the simple forwarding rule described in this article:

• your AODocs storage accounts are identified (tagged) via a group
• the sharing request emails received by the AODocs storage accounts are redirected to AODocs via this AODocs email address: aodocs-permission-requests@ao-docs.appspotmail.com
• when the emails reach the AODocs back-end, AODocs performs a triage to assign the sharing request to the corresponding library administrator
• AODocs sends emails to the corresponding library administrator – below is an example of a sharing request

• the library administrator can process the sharing requests

Configure a forwarding rule for AODocs storage accounts

Create an admin group

1. Open the Google Admin console.

2. Click Groups.

3. Click Create group.

4. Enter the following values:

• Name: AODocs email forwarding group
• Description: This Google Group uses the Google Admin console's email routing rules to forward all the emails received by the AODocs AODocs storage accounts to AODocs Application.
• Group email address: aodocs-emails-forwarding@yourdomain.com

5. Click Next.

6. In the Access type section, select the checkbox Restricted.

7. Click Create group.

8. Click Done.

Note: Do not delete this admin group for as long as you use AODocs in Google Workspace.

Add the AODocs storage accounts to the newly created admin group

If you have multiple AODocs storage accounts, add them all as members to the newly created group. In our example, we are adding the AODocs storage account aodocs@demo.aodocs.com to the group aodocs-emails-forwarding@demo.aodocs.com.

1. Open the forwarding group you just created and select Members.

2. Click Add. 

3. Add your AODocs storage accounts. 

4. Click Add to group.

Your AODocs storage accounts are displayed in the list of members.

Create the forwarding rule in Google

1. In the Google Admin console, click Apps.

2. Click Google Workspace, then Gmail.

3. Scroll down and click Routing. You can also use the search bar.

4. Next to Routing, click Configure.

5. Configure the routing rule with the following settings:

Note: Don't configure the settings that are not mentioned.

• In the Routing description, type in: Used to forward emails sent to the AODocs storage accounts to the AODocs application.
• In the Email messages to affect section, select the checkboxes: 
  • Inbound 
  • Internal - receiving

• In the For the above types of messages, do the following section:
  • select Modify message from the drop-down menu
    
    
  • under Also deliver to, select the checkbox Add more recipients
  • click Add and add this address as a recipient: aodocs-permission-requests@ao-docs.appspotmail.com
  • click Save

• In the Account types to affect section, select the checkbox Users.
• In the Envelope filter section:
  • select the checkbox Only affect specific envelope recipients
  • select Group membership (only received mail) from the drop-down menu
  • click Select groups and add the AODocs email forwarding group: aodocs-emails-forwarding@yourdomain.com
    Note: If you have more than one organization, configure the routing rule at the root organization.

6. Save the routing rule.

Known issues

Share permissions on folders

In Secured Folders, if you give edit rights to a user on a folder via the AODocs interface, they still don't have edit access on the folder in Google Drive (whereas they have edit rights in AODocs). If they access the folder via Google Drive, they may continue sending access requests.

Synchronization delay between AODocs and Google Drive

When you share documents or folders in AODocs, there is sometimes a delay before the new access permissions are synchronized to Google Drive. If a user tries to access a folder or document via Google Drive on which the access permissions haven't yet been propagated, they may send an access request even though this has already been granted on the AODocs side. In this case, you need to wait for the permissions to propagate to Google Drive.

Learn more:  Google Drive performance recommendations (under Guidelines).