Purpose

The purpose of this tutorial is to teach you how to use the drive. By the end of the tutorial, you should be able to upload, create, delete, and share files on the Drive

How to access the drive

A Drive is a file-storage and synchronisation service. It allows users to store files, synchronise them across devices, and share them.

In order to access the Drive, click on the "Drive" item in the navigation panel of the collab, once you have done this, you will see the Drive, as shown in the figure below.

NOTE: you need to be a member of the collab to be able to access the Drive.

Upload

Upload can be achieved by using the "Upload" button or by dragging-and-dropping a file or folder from your computer to the Drive. Note that you need write permissions to the collab (i.e., to be an editor or admin of the collab) to upload files to its Drive.

Creating files and folders

Files and folders can be created using the "New" button:

• New folder: Create a folder in order to structure your documents.

• New file: Create a file with no predetermined extension.

• New Markdown File: Create a file with a ".md" extension to use the Markdown syntax.

• New Excel / PowerPoint / Word File: Create a Microsoft Open XML Format document which can be edited collaboratively.

Sharing documents

The preferred way to share documents is to place them in a collab and to manage who has access to the collab through its Team app.

• Viewers of the collab have read-only access to the collab and its Drive.
• Editors of the collab have read, modify, create and delete access to the collab's content, including its Drive.
• Admins have the same permission as Editors and can also modify the Team of the collab.

A user is only a viewer or editor or admin. Adding a user to one role removes the user from other roles.

Users can also be added via the units or groups to which they belong.

Users can also create links to documents or folders.

• Public links created with the share button  bypass the collab's team permissions and give read-only access to any person with the link (read-only including for Editors and Admins of the collab's team).
• Smart links created with the internal link button  provide read or write access according to the collab's team permissions.

Editing documents collaboratively

Excel, PowerPoint and Word files can be edited collaboratively online. To do so, simply click on the file in the Drive interface.

Please refer to the OnlyOffice user documentation for information on how to use these editors.

Known limitations of OnlyOffice

OnlyOffice is compatible with most features of Microsoft Office. The most hindering limitations are listed below.

• Excel spreadsheets do not have the pull-down list (validation) option. If this feature is important for your work, we recommend either validating the document offline or editing it offline. 
• Users working independently on large Word documents can see the page content move as content is being added/removed in pages preceding the page being viewed. A simple workaround is to cut large files into smaller files for the main editing phase of the work.

Versioning

The Drive maintains a number of older versions of all its files. It is easy to see when the versions were saved, by whom, to retrieve any version for comparison, and to rollback to a prior version.

To see all available versions of a file, select History from the additional drop down menu of each file.

The other options in the menu (“Rename,” “Move,” “Copy,” “Comment,” and “Details”) should be self-explanatory.

The “Open via Client” option refers to the possibility of running a Seafile client on your computer.

Guidelines

When editing a file, start by checking the "Collaboration" menu in OnlyOffice. The "Co-Editing Mode" is usually better in Fast mode. The "Display Mode" is usually better in Markup mode. Note the "Track Changes" option too.

With versioning of files, it is better practice not to use filenames which include the date and the initials of the person having edited the file. These are workarounds for people who do not have access to a file versioning system.

Avoid sending files by email; point users to files in a collab instead. Every time you send a file by email, it is a potential fork in the evolution of that file, that is, it creates yet another copy of the file which might evolve into a separate branch which then needs to be merged back. Sending files also fills up quota of Inboxes.

Conclusion

By now, you should be able to upload, create, delete, and share files on the Drive. In addition, you should know some of the intricacies of using the Drive such as versioning.