US Patent 9577998 Dynamic file access to files of unmapped remote computers

Dynamically providing access to files of presently unmapped remote computers, including, responsive to receiving a file access request from a user, displaying a file access Graphical User Interface (‘GUI’) dialog box; receiving, from the user through the file access GUI dialog box, a Uniform Resource Locator (‘URL’) representing a file location on a remote computer, wherein the URL specifies a particular access protocol among a number of available access protocols, a network location of the remote computer, a port number, and a file system path; and accessing, in dependence upon the URL, a file on the remote computer at the file system path through data communications established between a local server module and a remote server running on the remote computer using the particular access protocol, the network location of the remote computer, and the port number.