Why does Metadrive for GSuite require the permission to manage your contacts?

[lu...@ocluke.com]

I was looking into installing Metadrive into the domain through GSuite Google Apps Marketplace. For the Docs or Drive integration it does not ask for access to contacts. For the GSuite integration it requires access to manage your contacts. Can you explain why this is needed and what is actually accessed and stored on Metadrive servers with this permission?

[EvenBytes Admin]

Hello luke,

This is a good question! We will create one page in our documentation to explain one by one by we are requesting those scopes. Meanwhile this page is created, we explain you the reason of this particular scope.

I want to clarify first that Metadrive do not store any customer data. Metadrive only store the configuration of the folders and views. 

Contacts scope is required because the contact Field type. Contact field type is a kind of metadata you can create that is able to search and auto suggest contacts from your contacts list. 

This is useful when you create, for example a responsible property. When you input the name of the college in that property, Metadrive uses contacts api to search in your contact list and auto suggest based on the text you have introduced.

Related to that topic, I want to announce you that next week, we will release a new version of Metadrive, and the application will ask for two additional scopes:

• View user on your domain, this new scope is required to query and auto suggest users from your domain when using the contact field type.

• View the activity history of your Google Apps, this new scope is required to detect if there were changes in the folder structure since the last time you have visited a folder within Metadrive. This feature will improve the response time loading deep folder structures

For your information, this is the change log for the next release:

Change log v3.1

New features

• Smart URL

  • Cleaner and better urls. Now it’s possible to include current subfolder, editing documents or specific views in the url.

• Loading improvement in deep folder structures

  • Metadrive will save deep folder structure information in your browser to avoid loading every time.

• Boolean Field type (true or false)

• Move documents

  • Move documents directly from Metadrive. Now you can move documents through or out of the folder structure.

• Create Folders

  • Users can create Google Drive/Team Drive Folders directly from Metadrive

• Edit in Datasheet smart pickers

  • New data pickers in edit in datasheet for choice and date properties.

Changes

• Sort options kept when editing in datasheet

• Panels cleaned when closed

• Possibility to save choice properties empty (it will include “undefined value” as value)

• ‘None’ value included for choice properties

Fixes

• Sorting enabled in edit in datasheet

• Possibility to search date and datetime properties through Google Drive or Metadrive

• Contact properties now retrieve information from all users in your domain

• Some styles fixes

Don't hesitate to come back to us in case it's not clear enough.

Regards,

Fernando.