GGP Installations - Universal Naming Conventions – GGP Systems Help Center

🧭 Overview

GGP supports the Universal Naming Convention (UNC) for specifying network paths, allowing consistent access to shared resources across different servers and user profiles.

This is especially useful in corporate environments, where users may log in from various servers with differing drive mappings. UNC ensures consistency in how network locations are referenced, regardless of user or mapping configuration.

📂 What is UNC?

UNC paths replace traditional drive-letter-based paths.

🆚 Syntax Comparison

Format	Example
Drive Letter Path	`S:\GGPData\Maps\Basemap.tab`
UNC Path	`\\ServerName\ShareName\GGPData\Maps\Basemap.tab`

🔹 In Novell systems, ShareName may also be referred to as Volume—both serve a similar role.

⚙️ How GGP Uses UNC

In Setup Application and User Control:

Shared directories include a "Save using UNC or Environment variable alias" checkbox.
If checked, network paths are saved using UNC or environment variable aliases (if configured).
Shared vs Personal Directories:
- 🔐 Personal Directories (e.g. HomeDir, ExportDir, TempDir) do not use UNC but can use environment variable aliases.
- 🌐 Shared Directories support UNC and environment variable usage.

In GGP Application:

Go to Options > Directories to manage folder paths.
UNC path use is generally transparent within GGP.
Some settings (like the last-used print template file) store the path format based on the directory checkbox state.
GGP writes this info to the [Directories] section of the GGP.INI file.

🧰 Setup Notes

Before launching GGP:

Ensure UNC paths are mapped to drive letters if needed.
GGP will match UNC paths to the first matching drive mapping found.
If multiple drive mappings point to the same UNC path, the first one is always used.

✅ Summary

Feature	Support
UNC Paths	✅ Supported
Drive Letter Mappings	✅ Supported (with UNC conversion)
Environment Variable Aliases	✅ Supported for both personal and shared dirs
Personal Directory UNC Use	🚫 Not supported (env vars only)