Create the storage account and container

The first stage on the Azure side, all in the Azure Portal. By the end you will have a storage account and a container, and you will have written down both names.

1. Create an Azure account

Skip this if you have one.

1. Go to https://azure.microsoft.com/free and click Start free.
2. Sign in with a Microsoft account (a personal Outlook/Hotmail account or a work/school account). First-time users get $200 in credit for 30 days plus 12 months of free-tier services.
3. Verify your identity (phone plus credit card - you will not be charged unless you actively upgrade out of free).
4. Sign in to the Azure Portal at https://portal.azure.com.

2. Create a resource group, if you need one

1. In the portal search bar, type Resource groups and open the service.
2. Click Create.
3. Subscription - pick your free trial or paid subscription.
4. Resource group name - sliick-files-rg (or similar).
5. Region - pick the Azure region closest to your Salesforce org and users. The resource group region only controls where the metadata lives; the storage account region, in the next step, is what matters for performance. Common choices:
   • East US
   • East US 2
   • West US 2
   • West Europe
   • North Europe
   • Australia East
6. Click Review + create, then Create.

3. Create a storage account

The “storage account” is the namespace that holds blob containers, file shares, queues, and tables. Each account has its own globally unique URL of the form <account>.blob.core.windows.net.

1. In the portal search bar, type Storage accounts and open the service.
2. Click Create.
3. Basics tab:
   • Subscription - same as above.
   • Resource group - pick the one from the previous step.
   • Storage account name - must be globally unique, 3 to 24 characters, lowercase letters and numbers only (no hyphens). Use something like sliickfilesacmeprod. Write the exact name down.
   • Region - pick the region closest to your Salesforce org. Write down the region you pick.
   • Performance - Standard (recommended). The Premium tier is much more expensive and only needed for very low-latency workloads.
   • Redundancy - LRS (Locally-redundant storage) is the cheapest and is fine for most cases. GRS doubles the cost but geo-replicates to a paired region for disaster recovery.
4. Advanced tab - leave defaults. Notably:
   • Require secure transfer for REST API operations - keep Enabled.
   • Allow enabling anonymous access on individual containers - Disabled (recommended). Sliick uses SAS tokens; containers should never allow public anonymous access.
5. Networking and Encryption tabs - leave defaults. On the Data protection tab:
   • Enable soft delete for blobs - turn it on, with 7 to 30 days retention. This is the safety net behind Sliick’s Restore: deleting a file in Salesforce removes the blob into Azure’s soft-delete bin, and the Deleted Files tab’s Restore un-deletes it from there. With soft delete off, deletes are immediate and permanent and Restore reports the file as gone.
   • Blob versioning - leave it disabled. Sliick keeps its own version history, and enabling Azure-side versioning will silently double your storage costs. It is a different thing from soft delete.
6. Click Review + create, then Create. Deployment takes about 30 seconds.

4. Create a container

1. Open the storage account you just created.
2. In the left sidebar, click Data storage → Containers.
3. Click + Container at the top.
4. Name - sliick-files (or whatever you want). Lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens only. Write the exact name down.
5. Public access level - Private (no anonymous access). Always. Sliick uses SAS tokens for browser access.
6. Click Create.

Next: Configure CORS on the storage account.