There’s a zillion things you can do and implement for those kind of situation. If I was you, I would at least start by having:

• At least a spare laptop/computer in each branch, ready to go
• An image ready to be deployed on a laptop I need to reinstall with minimal configuration afterwards (only employee specific stuff)
• A remote monitoring/remote control app like Meshcentral, to be able to fix (most) issues without driving to the branches

I don’t know if your company use GSuite for all their needs (docs, emails, etc). If the answer is yes, then it might be difficult to migrate from GDrive, but otherwise, I would replace it with something else.

If your salesperson need to look for a customer name INSIDE their files, they are not storing/naming them efficiently. I don’t know the business you are in, how many customers you deal with and how many invoices a customers can have but here’s a few ideas:

Invoices/Customer XYZ/2023-10-16 Invoice 1234.pdf

Invoices/Customer XYZ/2023-10-16 Computer Replacement Project.pdf

Invoices/2023/2023-10-16 Customer XYZ - Invoice 1234.pdf

Projects/Customer XYZ/Project Name/Date - Invoice Number - Whatever.pdf

That’s just examples, but I would say that the kind of “metadata” they are looking for should be somewhere else than just in the content of the files

This is an excellent use case of having a web-based system to manage customer data. However, I used to use insync to sync my Google drive locally. There is an option to sync the actual file contents not just links to the online Google version.

we store our data at one master GDrive and share the files to each employee

I’ve been an IT guy (professionally) for over 35 years. If this is your major use case, why complicate things by self hosting anything?

Get rid of your (presumably Windoze) laptops and replace them with Chromebooks. Capital cost of equipment is much lower (due to no MS licensing and lower hardware demands), no constant updates, no antivirus required, and best of all, if things get messed up it takes literally one minute to reset back to factory defaults (powerwash) and another few minutes after login you will have a completely restored to normal laptop. Even if you guy a new one, all settings get transferred from the cloud upon first login, within minutes, and it looks and acts exactly as before. If no reset is required and all you need to do is a little hand holding, the Chrome Remote Desktop allows you to do so by remote control, even from a Windoze machine. This is why they are so great for tech-challenged people, seniors, kids who like to mess with things, and probably for your business. All you would need if you don’t already have it, is a separate Google account per user. Best to assign these rather than have them use their personal account. Then share your GDrive to all users. Since everything is stored and done in the cloud they should have no problems searching for things. They will also have access to the full suite of Google office apps and 15GB of ‘personal’ cloud storage per account in addition to your shared file store.

Can’t you set up an shares via a Windows PC/server and grant access as needed? I might not have understood the question but this to me seems like the simplest solution to manage SMB shares.

Awesome Open Source Software on YT did a series on OS software for small businesses.

http://opensourceisawesome.com

https://youtube.com/channel/UCwFpzG5MK5Shg_ncAhrgr9g

I can’t speak necessarily well to the question of where to store files, I’m not sure what security you need to have or are required to have. That would dictate a large part of an acceptable answer. I can however help with keeping that commute down to HW issues only.

MeshCentral - Remote into a system, some basic monitoring (plugin abilities), keep you from having to drive 3-4 hours to fix a printer install or something stupid and not boot/network related.

Build a GOOD usb imaging stick to leave at each branch (lock it up with the branch manager?) so when you need to image (assuming no bad hardware) you can walk the end user through booting and clicking ‘GO’. Once it boots back into windows use Mesh to walk them through the rest of the login and setup process.

Have a desktop/laptop setup in the office ‘ready to go’ as a loaner. Have the user ship it to you to fix. It can be an old laptop, loaners are not for replacement, they are to ‘get you by’ until your main system is back up and running. How much does it cost for you to drive (not just gas money, but existing work stoppage) to another branch, fix a system, and drive back? Sounds like an entire day of work to do that based on what you said above. Shipping a laptop back and forth (even next day FedEx prices) can make sense.

Maybe corteza would be more fitted for your use case instead of a bunch of file on a gdrive. Host it at one of the branches, and let the others vpn to it. Also, I would back it up to both other branches in case of burning down the main one.