Laserfiche and OnBase alongside Microsoft 365 storage

SOLUTION GUIDE

Enterprise records management systems (Laserfiche and OnBase are the two dominant platforms in government, healthcare and financial-services markets) own the official records layer of the organisation: retention schedules, audit trails, workflow automation, formal declaration and disposition. Microsoft 365 storage handles everything else: working documents, correspondence, planning material, department workspaces, general staff content. Most organisations end up running both. This piece covers how they coexist, where Cloud Drive Mapper fits on the SharePoint side of that arrangement, and how ECM import and export workflows benefit from a mapped-drive layer rather than a sync-client one.

Why a records system and a general file estate are two different things

Laserfiche and OnBase exist to manage records: to enforce retention schedules, to track lifecycle events, to guarantee an audit trail against a document from creation to disposition. A record is a document the organisation has legally or operationally committed to keeping and managing in a specific way. Not everything an organisation creates is a record. The proposal draft you are editing today is not a record; the signed contract that comes out of it is. The meeting-scheduling working document is not a record; the formal minutes are.

Microsoft 365 storage handles the everything-else layer: the drafts, the working papers, the correspondence, the departmental workspaces, the personal folders. It is the layer most staff live in most of the day. The ECM sits to one side, invoked when a document needs to become an official record.

Where Cloud Drive Mapper fits

CDM does not touch the ECM. Laserfiche and OnBase manage their own repositories (their own database and their own storage) and are accessed through their own clients: the Laserfiche Windows Client, the OnBase Unity Client, plus the browser and mobile interfaces both platforms offer. Records live inside the ECM, controlled by the ECM.

CDM sits on the Microsoft 365 side. It presents SharePoint document libraries as Windows mapped drive letters so staff can work with the wider file estate the way they always have, without depending on the OneDrive sync client. In an organisation running an ECM plus SharePoint, this gives users two clean workflows: the ECM for records, the mapped drive for everything else.

Where the two systems touch: ECM import and export workflows

Records are frequently born outside the ECM. A signed PDF arrives by email, gets saved to a Windows folder, and is then formally imported into the ECM. A meeting produces minutes that get drafted in Word, approved, then declared as a record. Batch document imports (scanning operations, mail-room intake) drop files into a watched folder that Laserfiche or OnBase then picks up.

All of that touches the Windows filesystem: the folder that the ECM watches for new files, the location where Office saves the draft before it becomes a record, the output path where the ECM writes an exported record back out to staff. If those paths live in OneDrive-synced folders, the same sync-timing patterns that cause friction elsewhere show up in the ECM integrations: imports fire against partly-uploaded files, exports are delayed by sync churn, and the audit trail records a timestamp that does not match when the file was actually created.

CDM presents the SharePoint side of those workflows as a stable mapped drive with real Windows filesystem behaviour. ECM import folders watched on the mapped drive trigger cleanly when a file is written. Exports write through with no sync delay. Word and Outlook operations that flow into the ECM through Laserfiche's Office Business Toolkit or OnBase's Application Enabler behave normally.

Where OneDrive sync creates friction alongside an ECM

Import folder timing

An ECM watches a Windows folder for new files and imports them into the repository. If the folder is OneDrive-synced and the incoming file arrives via the sync client, the ECM sees the placeholder before the content is fully hydrated. The import fires against a partly-populated file, the record is declared with the wrong content, and someone spends the afternoon unwinding it.

Export path lag

A user requests an export of a record to a Windows path for offline use or onward distribution. Under OneDrive sync, the file appears at the destination but is not immediately available to other users because sync has not propagated it yet. Downstream workflows that depend on the file being at the path fire before it is really there.

Office-integration document handling

Laserfiche's Office Business Toolkit and OnBase's Office integrations sit inside Word, Excel and Outlook and operate on file paths. When those integrations reach out to a OneDrive-synced folder for the source document, they hit the same hydration-and-timing issues that affect other Windows applications working against sync clients.

Cross-user consistency of shared reference folders

Departmental reference libraries (policy documents, standard operating procedures, form templates) often sit alongside the ECM rather than inside it. When those libraries live in OneDrive-synced folders, different users may be looking at different versions on the same day. Sync is eventually consistent; policy libraries need to be currently consistent.

Transitions from ECM to SharePoint-native records management

Some organisations (particularly in government) are actively considering or running a transition from a legacy ECM to SharePoint-native records management using Microsoft Purview for retention and disposition. This is a significant undertaking and CDM alone does not complete it: the compliance features of a records platform come from Purview and SharePoint retention labels, not from any middleware.

What CDM contributes to that kind of transition is the user-experience side. Staff who have spent years working with the ECM's Windows Client are used to a mapped-drive style interaction with records. If the SharePoint tier that replaces the ECM is only accessible through the browser, the change-management cost of the migration goes up. CDM presents SharePoint as a mapped drive so the UX is familiar even when the underlying records-model architecture has shifted.

Setup notes

Point ECM import-watch folders at CDM-mapped paths rather than at OneDrive-synced folders. Both Laserfiche and OnBase can watch any Windows folder path.
Configure ECM export destinations to the CDM drive so exported records land in SharePoint immediately and reliably.
Standardise the CDM drive letter across the organisation so departmental reference libraries and shared paths resolve identically for every user.
Where an Office integration (Laserfiche Office Business Toolkit, OnBase Application Enabler) is in use, verify it still works after moving the wider Office storage from OneDrive-synced folders to the CDM drive. In practice it does, because both integrations operate on file paths that CDM provides transparently.
For organisations planning an ECM-to-SharePoint transition, sequence the CDM deployment before the records-model shift so users have the mapped-drive UX in place when the underlying architecture changes.

CDM supports ECM-adjacent workflows in the following deployment models:

Windows desktops (direct)
Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops
Citrix DaaS
Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD)
Windows 365 Cloud PC
Omnissa Horizon (formerly VMware Horizon)

Cloud Drive Mapper is used across government agencies, healthcare organisations and financial-services firms to give staff a familiar mapped-drive interface to Microsoft 365 storage alongside their Laserfiche or OnBase records system.

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Frequently asked questions

Does Cloud Drive Mapper replace Laserfiche or OnBase?

No. CDM is drive-mapping middleware for Microsoft 365 storage, not an enterprise content management or records-management system. It does not provide the records-lifecycle controls, retention schedules, audit trails, workflow automation or compliance features that Laserfiche and OnBase are built around. CDM sits alongside the ECM on the non-records side of the organisation's file estate.

Does Cloud Drive Mapper work alongside Laserfiche or OnBase?

Yes. The ECM handles official records and the workflows around them; CDM handles the wider Microsoft 365 file estate (working documents, correspondence, planning material, department workspaces). The two operate on separate content and do not interfere with each other. Most CDM deployments in government, healthcare and financial services run alongside an ECM in this way.

Do ECM import and export workflows benefit from a mapped-drive layer?

Yes. Both Laserfiche and OnBase have import workflows that watch a Windows folder and bring new files into the repository, and export workflows that write records-derived files back out to a Windows path. When those folders live in OneDrive-synced locations, sync-timing artefacts cause imports to fire against half-uploaded files or exports to be delayed by sync churn. CDM presents the SharePoint side of those workflows as a stable mapped drive with real Windows filesystem behaviour, so the ECM integrations run cleanly.

Do Word, Outlook and Office integrations with Laserfiche or OnBase still work through CDM?

Yes. Both ECMs offer Office integrations (Laserfiche's Office Business Toolkit, OnBase's Application Enabler and Office integrations) that let users save documents from Word or Outlook straight into the ECM. Those integrations operate on the Windows filesystem and do not depend on where the source file lives. CDM does not touch the ECM integration; it just makes the wider firm content on SharePoint reachable through the same mapped drive letter.

What about firms transitioning from an ECM to SharePoint-native records management?

Some government agencies and larger organisations are considering (or actively running) a transition from a legacy ECM to SharePoint-native records management with Microsoft Purview retention and disposition. CDM helps on the user-experience side of that transition: SharePoint gains the mapped-drive interface that ECM users are familiar with, so the migration does not force a UX change at the same time as a records-model change. CDM is not by itself a records-management platform; the compliance features come from Purview and SharePoint retention.

Does IAM Cloud have access to our ECM or SharePoint content?

No. Cloud Drive Mapper operates purely with delegated permissions inside your Microsoft 365 tenant, and does not touch your Laserfiche or OnBase repositories in any way. IAM Cloud holds no credentials to your ECM and no credentials to your Microsoft 365 tenant. Only your own signed-in users can access content through CDM, and only within their existing M365 permissions. See Zero-access architecture for the design detail.

Try it alongside your ECM

The fastest way to see if CDM fits your Microsoft 365 estate alongside Laserfiche or OnBase is to try it for 30 days, free. Point a department at a mapped drive and see how the day-to-day work feels.

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