ActiveTransfer enables you to create a Virtual File System (VFS) to provide an abstract view of resources in your physical file system or on a remote server such as, another FTP server. This capability enables users and client applications to access a variety of file structures in a uniform way. Although the information in a virtual folder might be physically stored across one or more local or remote file systems in your enterprise, it appears as a cohesive data collection in the VFS. You can create a VFS by creating one or more virtual folders, which you typically arrange in a file system hierarchy.

For example, you can create a group of virtual folders to categorize your organization’s sales for various years. At the top level of folders, you can create a group of separate virtual folders, each representing one year of sales. Inside each yearly virtual folder, you can create 12 virtual folders to represent the monthly sales data for that year.

After you create a virtual folder, you can assign users to the folder and specify each user’s access privileges to the folder. When the users log on to ActiveTransfer, they can view the folders they have access to and resources within those folders. This way, you can store different types of data (for example, sales data and customer profile information) on the same physical file system, yet control user access to that data accordingly.

A VFS also bridges the differences between file systems on various operating systems so that users and applications can access files without having to know the type of file system they access.