Cloud File Manager

There are two web Cloud File Managers for the Storage Made Easy platform. One is named “File Manager” and the other is named “Lite File Manager”. The difference between the two is that the File Manager has slightly richer functionality. The Lite File Manager works on lower specified browsers and only loads the current directory view, reloading view each time you click between directories. For the purposes of differentiating between the two, we will refer to one as the 'Rich File Manager' and the other as the 'Lite File Manager'.

If you have more than one cloud mapped to your account, both file managers show a unified view of your files in one directory structure. You will always know where your files are stored as you will see an icon representing the Cloud Storage vendor to the right of the file.

Things you should know from the start !

1. If you delete your cloud files in Storage Made Easy you are actually deleting them on the storage provider where they are actually located, but also note that they will not be deleted until you empty the trash.

2. Your files don't move from your storage provider. All the Storage Made Easy platform is to provider a view of your files and enhance functionality and access points.

Hovering over the “i” icon in the File Manager shows SME clouds usage information. Hovering over over the 'total space used' when this is visible shows the storage status of al mapped clouds..

To access options available for a file:

- Lite file Manager: left click

- File Manager: right click

File Manager- right click

Lite File Manager: Use the checkbox and choose from the options presented.

Click on upload an choose to upload a single file or choose batch upload if more than one file is to be uploaded.

You may wish to add additional security to certain files. When you upload files via the File Manager you have the option to choose for the file to be encrypted. This means that you enter a password that only you know that is used to encrypt the file. This password is not stored on the Storage Made Easy servers so if you forget it you will also not be able to access the file!

Files are encrypted using AES SHA1 256 bit encryption.

Also if you share the file you will also need to share the password for users to be able to view it.

You can easily tell if a file is encrypted by looking at the file information section in the preview sidebar.

Whenever a user who receives a shared link tries to download or access a file that is encrypted, or is password protected, he will be brought to a screen that asks him to enter the file password. On successfully entering this password he will be able to download the file.

The “file info” shows detailed information about the file, including shared links, whether the file is encrypted and whether it is locked. It also includes other governance data such as File GEO location information, which includes the IP address and also the City and Country from where the File was uploaded which could be important for certain legislation scenarios.

The Trash icons on the File Manager are visible when you navigate to the Trash icon in the folder tree. If you have not clicked on the Trash icon you will not see the Trash options in the File Manager toolbar.

Restore all: Restore all items from Trash to original locations
Empty Trash: Delete all Files

Right clicking on individual files enables individual files to be deleted or restored.

Until a file is removed from Trash it will still exist on the original location on the Cloud that it resides.

You can think of a business group as a virtual workspace where you can share content with colleagues and friends. Whenever you add new files to a business group, they get shared to all the members of the group members automatically. There is no need for you to share each file again to a set of email addresses.

If a new member joins your work team just add him/her to your business group and he/she can see all the files that are there. You are able to set different permissions for each of the members in your workspace which enables them just to view files or to be able collaborate and upload files You can also share folders as well as files with your business group.

For Organization Cloud Users business groups represent a way to interact with external companies or users, the same way they do with Organization folders.

Group Actions

Refresh - Refresh the group view

Create new Group - Create a new business Group. A business group is name for a group of people whom you invite to share content. You can enable user to only view content or upload their own content. You can also choose whether users can see each other or not when you create the business group. When any content is shared with the group all users receive an email telling them about the new files that have been shared with the group.

Edit Group - Enables you to edit an existing business group.

Delete Group - Deletes an existing business group and all its users.

Invite user - Invite a user to be a member of a business group. The user will receive an email asking them to be come a member of your name business group.

Unsubscribe User - Unsubscribes a current user from a business group.

Repeat Invitation - Send a repeat invitation to a business group member (if they have not accepted the prior invitation you may want to use this)

Edit user permissions - Edit the user permissions for the business group of which they are a member.

Request a file - Enables a group admin to request a file from a user. An email is generated asking a user to send a specific file to the group

Add auto-sharing rule - Auto-sharing rules are rules that can be applied to directories. The directory location is taken from the directory that you have highlighted, or are in, before moving to Groups→Add Auto-Sharing rule.

An auto-sharing rule tracks changes to files the directory you nominate (and sub directories if you nominate this) based on a number of different conditions that you choose. The conditions are file extension, file name or file description. If you chose .doc for example and a new file of type doc is added you will receive an email letting you know this. If you choose a specific file name and a revision is done to this file you will receive an email letting you know etc.

Show auto-sharing rules: Show any auto-sharing rules that already exist and enables you to edit them.

The following sections will look at some of the options in a little more detail

You can add new business groups from either the File Manager, Lite File Manager, Windows, or mobile tooling. When adding the group, there are two options to be aware of:

1. You can choose whether all members can submit content or just you as the creator
2. You can decide whether the group is 'private'. This decides whether the members can see each other or not.

Group owners can request members to join a business group. This will generate an email to the user added with the comments the co-ordinator entered.

You can edit group member permissions for a business group to decide whether users can submit content or not. This overrides the default settings for the business group when you set it up.

A group owner can request a member to submit a file. This will generate an email to the group member with the comments the group owner enters.

When a folder is shared with a business collaboration group it becomes visible in the Business Groups Folder.

Tags - Tags are like keywords that you assign to your file when uploading. You can assign more than one Tag to any file. Clicking on the Tag presents a list of files to which you have assigned that Tag. Tagging is an easy way to group and then find your files.

Tags can be sorted, the number of tags visible can be changed, and recent tags only can be show.

When you are uploading a file, after you pause when you are typing characters, any known tags will popup for you to choose, or you can click the “+” icon to be taken straight to the tag explorer to choose tags.

You can search for files across all the clouds that are mapped to your account. You can also save searches and then easily re-run them at some point in the future. In the screenshot above we have saved a search for .doc files across all clouds.

Enterprise on-premise users get an expanded WYSIWYG search editor and content search of files due to the integration with Apache SOLR.

You can 'move' or 'copy' files by dragging a file from one location to another. The default action on drag is 'copy' and if you hold down the shift key before releasing the 'copy' is changed to a 'move'.

Files can be shared simply by selecting the file and choosing the sharing option for the menu bar. Sharing options are also available on right click.

Make Public: Changing a file status to public means that it can be found on the Public files page, or shared on Facebook and WordPress. Note that this file is searchable on the internet if you choose this option. Also note that you can combine making a file public with passwords or encryption,

Share with Group: Sharing with a business Group results in the members of the business group receiving an email with file link

Send link to Twitter: Only visible if you have enabled Twitter integration, which can be done in the Menu 'App Integrations' in your sidebar. If enabled then you will be able to share file links directly over Twitter with a message.

Generate Direct Links: This will generate direct URL links. See the next section in the Wiki for more detail

Email File: When choosing to email a file then a file is sent by Storage Made Easy

When choosing to generate URL links there are options to set when the link expires and also to password protect the file which means the user will need to enter a password prior to download.

Once you have made a file Public then it will be available to be shared using a public file URL that is based on your username.

For example if your username is 'Acme' then your public files link would be /users/Acme.

Your public file page can be found in your sidebar once you have logged in, just click on “My Public Files”.

Any public files can also be shared over RSS. You can get the link for this by right clicking on the RSS icon and choosing to copy link. RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication”. It is a way to easily distribute a list of content. You could choose for example to have a link to your RSS file content on the footer of your email or on a blog.

You can edit HTML, text or code files directly within the browser by clicking on the fllename and choosing “Visual Edit” or “Source Edit”

Choosing to edit as a document brings up the WYSIWYG editor where you can make changes and save back to Storage Made Easy.

Choosing Edit as Source enables you to edit the document at a code level. You can also choose the type of document so that you get the correct highlighting etc.

Storage Made Easy is integrated with the Zoho Office service for online editing so when you click on the name of a file that is either a word, excel, or Powerpoint document you will see an option to open the file with Zoho online office. In the case of word or excel you will be able to edit the file and save the changes back to Storage Made Easy. Currently Powerpoint files can only be viewed.

Other Office editing options can also be set as the default, including Google Docs editing or direct office editing in the desktop.

You can choose to upload the images that you have on your storage cloud directly to Flickr by clicking on the filename and then clicking on the 'upload to Flickr' link. You will be taken to the Yahoo authentication page to authenticate after which your image file will be uploaded.

To backup your email to your Cloud Storage Provider, click the 'Email Backups' node which will reveal the 'Add' email account in the File Manager task bar. Clicking on this will bring a popup box so that you can fill in your email provider information for the backup.

Only IMAP is supported. All emails will then be searchable just as other files in your account.

Files can easily be viewed inline using the expandable document preview. Simply hover over the file and click the 'eye' icon to preview a file inline.

If you would like to edit or work on the documents you can do this by choosing 'edit' or 'annotate' from the toolbar when a document is selected.

Comments can be made on files and shared files. To comment,simply click on the comment icon when hovering over a file.

Comments can also be exported as a HTML file to ensure key information is not lost.

Business users of the Cloud File Server have an extra option in the Cloud File Manager that enables files to be locked. This enables the files to be edited by the user who locked the file prior to updating and then unlocking the file.

Other users have read access to a file when it is locked.

A file is marked visually as being locked when a lock has been placed.