How to emulate dropbox workflow
2 posts infoweb 2 posts
infoweb in SME Windows Desktop and Windows 8 Surface Tablet
Hi there,

Just trialing the business version of smestorage.

What I'm tyring to do is emulate dropbox workflow.

in other words:

1. have one folder that is synced with the cloud
2. everytime I update / change a file it is synchronised with the cloud instatly, automatically
3. share any sub folder / file with 1 or more specific users in the organisation, from windows explorer. eg. right click the file / folder and share it with the specific people.

Is this workflow possible with smestorage?

I'm not clear on a few things:

1. it seems any files placed in the network drive in windows 7 64 bit must be manually uploaded. is this correct? in other words there is no 'automatic' sync that occurs the moment I place the file in the network drive
2. Same situation for synched folders. The best I can seem to get with regards to auto syncing is 1 time per day. Is this correct? if I want to sync each time a file is changed I have to sync it manually?
3. There seems to be no sharing facility from windows shell. The only way to share is to open the control panel and do it from there. is there something I'm missing?

Looking forwards to your response.
Mark
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admin Moderator 782 posts
admin
Firstly it is best to understand the concepts of the tools SMEStorage provides. There are three main tools (discounting Cloud Management DashBoard):

1. Dedicated Cloud Explorer
2. Virtual Drives(s) - 32 bit / 64 bit and WebDav
3.  Desktop Sync Tool
4. MS Office / OpenOffice Toolbar PlugIn's

The Dedicated file explorer enables us to provide a client in which we control the environment to provide added value features that is not possible to add to the windows shell.

The virtual drive is a "view" on data stored. The 32 bit drive is merely a shell extension. The 64 bit drive is more interesting to you as files that you download using this are cached locally and if updated remotely the latest version is again downloaded and cached when you access it from the desktop. You can change cache settings also or turn off completely.

If you drag files or folders to the network drive they are uploaded to whatever cloud location you put them on, but this in not a sync, it really is using it as a data desktop drive except files are stored on the Cloud, not locally.

Why is the Cloud Drive a "view" ? This is because we believe as well as having data that can be replicated you also have data that you do not want replicated byt still want access to. Also specific providers stores files in a "flat" way. For example we have some S3 users who have over 500,000 files in a single bucket. You may want to access this data or search on this data on occasion but you will never want to replicated it (at least in most cases you will not)

The Desktop sync lets you finitely control how often the sync occurs. For example you can set this to run every hour. You are correct that this needed to pick up on changed files. This is an explicit sync rather than implicit sync ie. This process needs to be automated or kicked off for files to be sync'd, it is not done on each file change. We don't own the Cloud endpoints in the way DropBox does hence this is why it works this way (as an aside we are currently working on trying to enable this type of real-time "on file change" sync and it is likely to be added to a later release).

The Shell options (on right click when in the virtual drive) do not currently have a share file link. We actually enhanced this in the release we are currently completing (hope to push out by end of week). This will have the ability to create a URL for a file and the URL is copied to the clipboard. Note that the Cloud File explorer can share files and folders easily in the current release.

The Plugins for MS Office and OpenOffice literally are toolbar plugins to easily save and load files from Clouds. Yes, you can do this using the drive, but the plug-in is faster and more optimised as it integrates directly into the office suites.
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infoweb 2 posts
infoweb
Hi there,

Thanks you for taking the time to provide such a detailed explanation.

I can totally understand the concept of having the virtual drive as a "View only" I have the same situation, where we want to use the cloud drive as an archive for old, unused files.

I'd still really like to see a dropbox type feature, eg.

1. setup a folder to sync
2. automatically perform a sync each time a file is updated
3. easily invite other users to share this folder

We basically need to use this as a team drive becuase we have a geographically diverse team, but don't want to share all the files with everyone, since we only want each user to access the folders relating to the projects they are working on.

Thanks again for your response.

Mark

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admin Moderator 782 posts
admin
No problem. As I outlined in my original explanation, what you outline is what we are currently working on with the windows tools, so it is not far away, but currently the sync is a scheduled one, which can be controlled by the minute, hour or day..
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admin Moderator 782 posts
admin
We now have a new build that adds the virtual drive context menus. Please contact us for this build.

Thanks.
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ITA 6 posts
ITA
Hi,

We are in a bit of a dilemma here. One person is using a Mac and the virtual drive works like a dream for all types of files. Using it with Open Office is no problem a it will save any file easily.

The PC users are stumbling.. The text & spreadsheet) documents are easy to save using the toolbar, but the other applications (database in particular) do not have an option to save to the cloud.

Do you have a virtual Drive for Windows machines? If we are a paid lifetime organisation is the drive included? How do we get that build as noted above?
Moving to the clouds...
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acaetano 6 posts
acaetano
admin wrote:
 
The Desktop sync lets you finitely control how often the sync occurs. For example you can set this to run every hour. You are correct that this needed to pick up on changed files. This is an explicit sync rather than implicit sync ie. This process needs to be automated or kicked off for files to be sync'd, it is not done on each file change. We don't own the Cloud endpoints in the way DropBox does hence this is why it works this way (as an aside we are currently working on trying to enable this type of real-time "on file change" sync and it is likely to be added to a later release).
 


Is the release with the feature mentioned above already available? I saw somewhere in this site a mention to a backup feature from one cloud to another one that seems to go in the mentioned way. However, it is not clear to me that it can sync both ways and that local files can be synced both ways with one our more cloud services.
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admin Moderator 782 posts
admin
The desktop sync tools for windows are available now. They work as described below in which sync pairs can be defined and kicked off on a schedule. If you drop local files into a folder/ file they will sync in any case outside of the schedule (ie. on demand). 

The cloud to cloud sync you refer to  is a server-sdie feature for Personal Business Cloud users or Cloud File Users. You can read more about this at: http://smestorage.com/wiki/cloudbackup/
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