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Managing a shared drive🔗

This page is for the members of a shared drive who have the role Manager. A Manager changes the settings of the drive, manages its members and looks after its trash. For what the other roles allow, see Working in a shared drive.

The Manager role🔗

The role Manager has all the permissions of the role Content manager. A Manager can also:

• change the name, the description and the permissions of the drive
• add members, change their roles and remove them
• open the trash of the drive, restore items and delete them for good

Only the members of a shared drive can have this role.

These people can give the role Manager:

• the admin of the drive, in the control panel
• the superuser, in the control panel
• every administrator who can manage shared drives, when the drive has no admin
• every Manager of the drive

When a group has the role Manager, every user of the group is a Manager of the drive.

A guest never has the powers of a Manager, even when it has the role.

Your own account permissions still apply. For example, a Manager whose account does not have User can delete files cannot delete in the drive.

Creating a shared drive🔗

You can create a shared drive in the file manager when your account has the permission User can create shared drives. An account that has a storage quota cannot have this permission.

1. Right-click Shared drives in the panel on the left, and choose New shared drive. The command is also in the toolbar when Shared drives is open.
2. In the General tab, type the Name of the drive. The Description is optional.
3. In the Permissions tab, choose the permissions of the drive. See The settings of the drive.
4. Click Create shared drive.

The new drive has these properties:

• You are its first member, with the role Manager.
• It has no admin.
• It has no quota.

Every administrator who can manage shared drives sees the new drive in the control panel, as a drive without an admin. Each of these administrators can set the quota of the drive. An administrator can also take the drive and become its admin. See Drives without an admin.

The settings of the drive🔗

Right-click the drive, in the panel on the left or in the list of Shared drives, and choose Drive settings. This command is shown only to the members who have the role Manager. The window Shared drive settings has three tabs.

General:

• Name: at most 100 characters.
• Description: at most 255 characters. In the file manager, only the Managers see the description. The administrators who manage the drive also see it in the control panel.
• Admin: the name of the admin of the drive. This field is shown only when the drive has an admin, and you cannot change it.

Permissions:

• Read-only: "The members can only read the content of the drive." Nobody can then upload, edit, rename, move, delete or change metadata. The members can still comment. The drive has no trash while it is read-only. See Read-only drives.
• The members can share files and folders with other users.
• The members can share files and folders with links.

Storage:

• Space quota: the quota of the drive, or No limit.
• Space used: the space that the drive uses, its trash included.

Click Save.

Only the admin of the drive can change the quota, disable or enable the drive, and choose its admin. The window does not show these fields to a Manager. A Manager who is also the admin of the drive sees two more fields: the Enabled checkbox in the General tab, and a Space quota that can be changed.

Turning off sharing and links🔗

The two sharing permissions also act on what already exists:

• When you turn off sharing with other users, the existing shares of the drive stop working. Their receivers see "The permissions prevent access to this share!".
• When you turn off links, the existing web links of the members stop working.

Nothing is deleted. The shares and the links work again when you turn the permission on again.

Adding members🔗

You add the members in the share window of the drive. There are two ways to open it:

• Right-click the drive and choose Share. This command is shown only when you can create web links in the drive.
• Select the drive, open Who has access in the Details panel, and click Manage access.

The share window of a file or a folder inside the drive also has a Manage button, which opens the share window of the drive.

1. In the field Add by name, group or e-mail address, type a name and choose a user or a group. You can choose several.
2. Choose the role with the role button. The default role is Viewer.
3. Leave Notify people checked to send an e-mail, and type a Message if you want.
4. Click Send. Without Notify people, the button is Add.

Who you can add🔗

You can add only the users and the groups that your account is allowed to interact with. The permission Can interact with of your account sets them. The field lists only these users and groups, and only the active accounts.

A user or a group that is already a member cannot be added again. To change the role of an existing member, see Changing a role.

The e-mail to the new members🔗

• With Notify people, every user that the new membership reaches receives an e-mail with a link to the drive and your message. For a group, this is every user of the group, except you and the users who have no e-mail address. The e-mail is in the language of each user.
• Without Notify people, only the guests receive an e-mail, without your message.
• The replies to the e-mail go to you.
• Every user that the new membership reaches, except you, also gets the entry "New shared drive available" in its activity log.

When the administrator turned on the setting Automatic share e-mail notifications, every user that the new membership reaches is subscribed to the folder notifications of the drive. For a group, this applies only to the users who are in the group at that moment. A user who joins the group later is a member of the drive, but receives no e-mail, no subscription and no activity entry.

Inviting a guest🔗

You can invite a person who has no account, by e-mail address:

1. Type the e-mail address in the field Add by name, group or e-mail address.
2. Choose Invite as guest user.
3. Choose the role, and click Send.

FileRun creates a guest account and sends the invitation. The guest always receives the e-mail. When the administrator allows guests to sign in by link, the link in the e-mail signs the guest in and opens the drive.

An invitation needs these settings and permissions:

• The administrator turned on Enable guest user accounts and Enable the invitation of new guest users.
• Your account has the permission User can share with other users and its option User can add guest users.
• Your account also has a home folder and the permission to download files.

Without them, the field does not offer Invite as guest user.

The role menu does not offer Contributor, Content manager and Manager for a guest. When an account already uses the e-mail address, FileRun shows "There is already a user account registered with the e-mail address "%1"! Please select it from the list of existing users instead.".

Changing a role🔗

In the share window of the drive, click the role of the member and choose another role. The member keeps its links, its stars and its notification rules in the drive.

In the share window, the role of another Manager has no menu. So you cannot change or remove another Manager. A group that has the role Manager also counts as another Manager. The admin of the drive can change or remove a Manager, in the control panel. When the drive has no admin, every administrator who can manage shared drives can do it.

So you can make another member a Manager, but you cannot undo it. Ask the admin of the drive. When the drive has no admin, ask an administrator who can manage shared drives.

You can change your own role. You then lose the powers of a Manager, unless a group that you are in has the role Manager.

Removing a member🔗

In the share window of the drive, click the role of the member, choose Remove access, and confirm.

When a member is removed:

• The web links, the folder notification rules and the stars that the member's users had in the drive are deleted. They are deleted even when such a user still has access to the drive through another membership.
• The shares that the member made from the drive stay, because they belong to the drive.
• A guest that has nothing else shared with it is deleted.

You cannot remove another Manager. See Changing a role.

Leaving a drive🔗

You can remove your own membership. When you are a Manager through a group, you cannot leave in this way. The members who have another role cannot leave a drive by themselves.

FileRun does not stop the last Manager from leaving, or from taking a lower role. After that, the members can be managed in the control panel:

• by the admin of the drive
• by every administrator who can manage shared drives, when the drive has no admin

The trash of the drive🔗

What the members delete goes to the trash of the drive. The trash is a Trash entry under the drive, in the panel on the left. Only the Managers see it.

The Details panel shows Deleted from and Deleted by for the selected item. Deleted by is the name of the member who deleted the item. The same values are available as columns of the list, under Trash, with Date deleted.

• Restore: select the items and choose Restore. Each item goes back to the folder it was deleted from. When that folder no longer exists, the item goes to the top folder of the drive.
• Delete forever: select the items and choose Delete forever.
• Empty trash: open the Trash entry of the drive, and click Empty trash in the toolbar. Your own trash is not affected.

Delete forever and Empty trash need the permission User can delete files and folders permanently on your own account, and a drive that allows permanent deletion.

More facts about the trash of a drive:

• The trash counts against the quota of the drive. Emptying it frees space in the drive.
• A read-only drive has no trash, not even for its Managers. The items come back when the drive is no longer read-only.
• The members with the role Content manager can delete, but they cannot open the trash. They cannot restore what they deleted.
• When the administrator schedules the automatic emptying of the trash, the trash of the drives is emptied too. See Command line tools.
• The trash of a drive is not available over WebDAV.

What a Manager cannot do🔗

• set the quota of the drive
• disable or enable the drive
• choose the admin of the drive
• set the path of the folder of the drive, which only the superuser can do
• delete the drive. Only an administrator who can manage the drive can delete it.
• change or remove another Manager
• unlock a file that another member locked, unless the Manager's account is an administrator account
• delete the comments of another member

A Manager does not receive the warnings about the quota of the drive. Only the admin of the drive receives them.