Are the devices running Android 11? You may be running into a restriction on external storage access. This might be able to be mitigated with a higher OEM plugin (1.18+), or by sending the script to trigger the pop up prompt for manually granting the external storage permission to the agent. 

https://discussions.soti.net/articles/impact-of-android-11-scoped-storage-restrictions-on-android-agent

Hi James,

I don't know why you mix up Content Library with File-Sync rule in your description.   They are two different approach for deploying/accessing contents.

If you add your manual/documents in Mobicontrol content library, deployment of such data (whether mandatory push or on-demand) onto the device will be done automatically, and device end-user 's access of such content will be via specific tab in MobiControl device agent app running on the device.

On the other hand, if your manual/documents files need to be opened/read by special reader/viewer app, then you can choose to use file-sync rule to deploy the files onto the devices. Device end-user then need to use file-manager or reader/viewer app to go to the relevant file folder to select the required file to be opened/viewed.   As the tightening scoped-storage permission model architected by Google for recent Android firmware versions means that MobiControl device agent cannot access third-party app's private folders and vice versa, the most sensible choice of device destination folder for file-sync rule will be standard public directory (e.g. %sdcard%/Download or its sub-folder, etc,). Please note that the macro %sdcard% actually refers to internal file-system in Flash memory rather than to external storage on add-on SD card.  Also, the directories referred by macros %shareddata% or %appdata% are private and not accessible by any bundled file manager or add-on third-party apps.

So, you first need to choose whether to use content library approach or to use file-sync rule approach to deployment your document files.

Content library policy is the oldest and least flexible approach among all those currently supported for data file deployment, but it is probably the simplest to configure.   I could not rule out the possibility that you find it too restrictive after successfully trying out the policy as described below.

You seem to have configured the content library root path to be C:\MobiControl on your server host and have already uploaded various content/data files there.  This sounds OK.  Have you created any Content Library policy yet on the leftmost column of the Android  Content-Library tab in your web-console?  The policy should include selected source group/group-tree(s) in content library, the targeted device group/group-tree,  push/on-demand deployment options, etc.

Make sure that the "Assigned Rule" category in the "Configurations" tab of your targeted device in the web-console has the  configured Content-Library policy listed.  Then, go to the MobiControl device agent on the targeted device. Select the content-library tab from the main menu and you should be able to see the selected source tree structure defined in the content-library policy.  Tap on specific data item, and the the file should be opened with registered viewer and displayed on your device screen.

It's good to know that Content Library policy works for your case now.

The Soti Hub approach that you mentioned is comparatively more advanced introduced some five years ago, and using it can leverage more precise user-group permission & access control of files in supported enterprise repositories such as MS Sharepoint, etc. with a free Soti Hub app.

The more generic File-sync-rule approach recently supports using Xtreme Hub to reduce wasted network bandwidth in content distribution with very big content files and/or large number of geographically clustered devices.  

So, you may need to consider using them if your current content-library approach is not good enough.