File Sharing Solution

Real-life Situation: A Monthly News Magazine

Let’s pretend we’re managing a monthly news magazine which covers stories from all over the world. We’ve got teams of journalists and photographers all over Europe to cover various stories such as reaction to the war in Iraq. We need an easy way for journalists to send articles back to headquarters for publishing. Outlined below are the steps required to create and configure the Headquarters account. The detailed instructions for executing these steps are discussed farther down.

1. We create an account for Headquarters.
   
   
2. Create a subfolder in the root folder for each team of journalists. These folders will be used by our teams to share their files with Headquarters.
• "Berlin"
• "London"
• "Paris"
• "Italy"
  
  
3. Turn on sharing for these folders. This will allow file sharing between the journalists and headquarters.
   
   
4. Create a user-group for each team of journalists:
• "TeamBerlin"
• "TeamLondon"
• "TeamParis"
• "TeamItaly"
  
  
5. For each group above, add members using their E-Mail addresses. Typically a team will consist of two to four journalists, an assistant and possibly a photographer. Larger teams might also include a camera crew and drivers.
   
   
6. Bind each team to its folder (e.g. "TeamLondon" to "//London", etc…). Optionally, you may want to restrict access to the shares. By default, user-groups will have "Read" and "Write" access. "Delete" and "Public" access is also available. Public would give access to everyone on earth, and that’s no way to sell magazines! In our case we’re going to leave the defaults alone.
   
   
7. Finally, we need to create a sub-account for each team member.

The journalists will receive their file sharing passwords via email. They will need to sign into biscu.com and assign the shares we made for them a name. Suppose a journalist in Paris named "Pierre Luke Ouellette" logs in. He’ll see an empty file manager screen just as we did. All Pierre needs to do to start sharing files with Headquarters is assign a name to the share we granted him above. This share will then appear in his file manager as a folder. When he completes his article on the Mid-East economic summit in Paris, all he needs to do is upload it to this folder and Headquarters will have immediate access to it from their account. Pierre can also create his own private folders for drafts, notes, contacts and anything else.

Suppose a huge story breaks, "Spain Falls into the Atlantic", and we need to give multiple teams access to the same set of information (i.e. the same folder). We can create a new folder, "Spain", in our Headquarters account. Turn on sharing for this folder. Bind this folder to each team that needs access to the information. Now all these teams will have access to the same share at the same time.

Creating and Logging in to your Account

Creating an account on biscu.com is fast, easy and free for the first week. To create a file sharing account, click "Register" at the top of this page and follow the onscreen instructions. Your E-Mail address will serve as your login name and your password will be sent via email within minutes. Once you’ve received your password, click "Secure Login". When you log in you will be taken to the file manager.

Creating Sub-Accounts

Free sub-accounts can be created for people you wish to share files with. Sub accounts work almost exactly like administrative accounts. To create a sub-account sign in to your administrative account (see above). Click "My Account" then "Quota" at the top of the page. A list of accounts will appear. Click "Add Subaccnts" at the bottom of the list. Follow the on-screen instructions for entering sub-account information and click "Click ONCE to complete Registration" on the toolbar.

Creating Folders

Folders can be used to organize information and share files (file sharing from the root folder directly is not possible). To create a folder, click the first icon on the toolbar labeled "Return to the Root Folder" and, optionally, navigate from there to the location you want the new folder to be saved to. Click "Create New Folder in Current Folder" on the toolbar. In the popup window, enter a name for the new folder and click OK. The new folder will appear.

Uploading Files

Files can be uploaded by clicking "Upload files into the current folder" on the toolbar. A form allowing up to ten files to be selected will appear. Select one or more files and click "Start uploading selected files". File uploads may take a few minutes depending on the speed of your internet connection and the size of the files. Alternatively, files can by E-Mailed to your account by sending an E-Mail to files@biscu.com with your account name as the subject line and the file(s) attached as attachments.

Sharing a Folder

To share a folder you must turn on file sharing for that folder. To turn on file sharing click the checkbox next to the folder(s) you want to share and click "Share the selected folders with other users". Each share can have one or more user-groups associated with it and specified access rights. To change these settings see Binding User-Groups to a Share and Changing Share Access Rights below.

Binding User-Groups to a Share

To select user-groups which will have access to a shared folder click "Go to the shares maintenance screen" on the toolbar. A list of shares will appear. Click the name of the share you want to bind user-groups to. A list of user-groups will appear (this is empty by default). Select a user-group from the drop-down menu below the list. Click "Bind the selected group to the current share". Multiple user-groups can be granted access to the same share by repeating the above process. Individual users can also be added to a share by clicking "Add member to share" on the toolbar.

Changing Share Access Rights

To change the operations that can be performed on shared folders click "Go to the shares maintenance screen" on the toolbar. A list of shares will appear. Each share will have four checkboxes to its right: "Public", "Read", "Write" and "Delete". Check the boxes for operations you wish to allow. Read, Write and Delete have obvious implications. Enabling Public will allow anyone to access this folder by using its URL. Public file sharing may be dangerous if the files are copyrighted or sensitive in any way. Always use care when changing access rights. Read-only access is the safest method of file sharing.

Mapping Shares

It is possible to map folders shared by other accounts to folders in your own account. Creating a map allows you to access that shared folder. To create a map, click "Go to the maps maintenance screen" on the toolbar. A list of available shares will appear. Shares that have no maps associated with them will have a textbox labeled "enter name here" to their right. Type in a name for each share you wish to map a folder to and click "Save the changes" on the toolbar. Each created map will appear as a folder in your root folder.