How sign-in works
Dockli signs you in with your Microsoft 365 work or school account using MSAL (the Microsoft Authentication Library) and the native Windows account broker (WAM) — the same Windows component that already knows the accounts you use for Office, Teams, and Windows itself.
The important part: your password never touches Dockli. When you sign in, Windows handles the whole exchange and hands Dockli back a token. The token is stored in an encrypted cache owned by Dockli’s small local service — never in the interface, never in a browser. If you’re already signed in to Windows with a work account, sign-in is often a single click with nothing to type.
Where the token lives
The real access token is held in a DPAPI-encrypted MSAL cache owned by Dockli’s local service, which is the only source of truth. The interface just gets a yes/no answer to “is this user signed in?” For the full picture, see Authentication and tokens and Permissions and scopes.
Opening Dockli for the first time
- Open File Explorer and click Dockli in the navigation pane (see Installing Dockli if you don’t see it yet).
- On a cold start — when Dockli has no cached answer about who you are — you’ll briefly see a small spinner reading “Checking sign-in…” while it confirms your state. Returning users skip this entirely; Dockli remembers and paints straight through.
The signed-out screen
If you’re not signed in, Dockli shows a clean welcome screen with the Dockli logo and:
- The heading “Sign in to Dockli”
- The line “Sign in with your Microsoft account to view your drives.”
- A Sign In button
Click Sign In. The button is replaced by a small spinner labelled “Waiting for sign-in…” while the Windows account picker takes over. Pick your work or school account (or add one), and Windows completes the exchange.
Taking your time is fine
Dockli sets no client-side timeout on the sign-in flow — the picker can sit open for as long as you need to choose an account or type credentials. If you close the picker without choosing, Dockli simply re-enables the Sign In button with no error.
Consent — what your organization sees
The very first time anyone in your organization signs in, Microsoft Entra asks who is allowed to grant Dockli the permissions it needs. What you experience depends on how your IT team has set things up:
| Scenario | What you see |
|---|---|
| Admin pre-approved (tenant-wide) | Nothing. Your admin has granted consent for the whole tenant, so you sign straight in with no prompt. |
| User consent allowed | A one-time Microsoft consent screen listing the permissions Dockli requests. Review and accept, and you’re in — this won’t appear again. |
| Admin approval required | Microsoft blocks the consent and tells you an administrator must approve Dockli for your organization first. Sign-in can’t complete until that’s done. |
If you hit “admin approval required,” your organization needs to grant tenant-wide consent once. Send the Admin consent article to whoever manages your Microsoft 365 tenant — it walks them through it in a couple of minutes.
What appears after you sign in
Once you’re signed in, Dockli loads its Home and the left Sidebar fills with everything you already have access to, organized into groups:
- Hub Sites — SharePoint hub sites in your organization
- SharePoint sites — the team and communication sites you belong to
- Teams — the SharePoint document libraries behind your Microsoft Teams
- OneDrive — your personal OneDrive for Business
Everything you see is scoped to your existing Microsoft 365 permissions. Dockli never widens your access — if you can’t open a site in the SharePoint web UI, it won’t appear here either. Take a look around with A quick tour.
Signing out
Your account lives in the account menu in the top-right corner (it shows your active tenant name and avatar). Open it and click Sign out.
Signing out affects the active account only. If you’ve added more than one account, Dockli signs out the current one and promotes the next added account so you stay signed in as that identity; if it was your only account, you land back on the “Sign in to Dockli” screen. Either way, Dockli clears that account’s cached session data on the way out. Managing several identities is covered in Multiple accounts.
Sign-in trouble?
Stuck on the picker, seeing a consent block, or getting an unexpected error? Work through Troubleshooting sign-in and consent.