Setting up Users / Resources: Detailed walkthrough

This is an overview of how to setup users and folder resources (or buckets / containers if using object storage) for an external cloud provider and assign each to a different user resource within the File Fabric.

This is a more detailed guide to the default overview of user space when setting up users. This tutorial also outlines a setup in which Administrators can also have access to user private file resources which is not the case for the default setup.

For the purpose of this tutorial we will use Amazon S3 as the Storage resource.

How to setup the various Storage Providers are documented elsewhere on our Wiki but it is fairly simple, when logged in as Administrator navigate to the DashBoard, choose to 'Add a new storage provider' and follow the wizard. For the purposes of this example refer to the documentation for the Amazon S3 Storage.

Note that if you are using the hosted version of the File Fabric you may wish to use the newly added Amazon S3 storage provider as the nominated 'default' storage for the File Fabric rather than the SME provided storage (which is added on sign up).

Simply navigate to the Dashboard, after login to the web as Administrator, and choose to set the S3 Cloud as the Primary Storage Cloud by clicking the tick icon to the left of the settings cog symbol. Once this is done you will see 'def' marked next to the Amazon S3 cloud that shows it is now the nominated default storage cloud.

After logging in to the File Fabric as the Administrator, users can be setup by choosing the Users option from the right sidebar.

Users can be added to 'Role's by selecting or creating New 'Roles' from the 'Roles'™ option in the sidebar.

This can be done prior to creating 'Users' or by creating the 'Roles' afterwards and then going back to the Users screen, editing the users and choosing to assign the role.  

'Roles' are a way of being able to easily assign permissions to a group of users for folder resources.\\If an external Identity Management system is being used such as Active Directory or LDAP then 'Groups' can be imported and will automatically create, and be mapped to, 'Roles' in the File Fabric.

By default each user's files are stored on the default provider. If this is an external provider then each users files are stored in what is set to be the default folder or bucket for that provider.

For example:

Default Bucket = Store
User Login = Neil
File saved = in a users personal User space a file called 'myfile.doc' is saved in a folder called My Documents

On S3 this file would be saved in an S3 Bucket called Store in the location My Documents_Neil/myfile.doc'.

This ensures that no files can be overwritten and each user file can easily be identified on the underlying file store, in this case, S3.

This is sufficient for most companies but for companies who wish to nominate individual folders, buckets or containers to single users, please read on.

Companies may want to map buckets / folders to individual users or make them available as an external resource to their partners.

To do this:

First either create a new Org folder for sharing from the Web File Manager or enable an existing folder / bucket resource to be a shared folder by right clicking and choosing to Convert to Org folder.

In the example above we are showing how the shared resource i789 can be set to be only accessed by User1 by setting User2's permissions to No access€™. This means that only User1 will see this folder/bucket resource in their file tree. User 2 will not even see or be aware of the resource.

Only the Cloud Administrator will continue to have access to this resource other than the user who had exclusive access.

Next Section: Active Directory Integration