Help:File sharing
Internal documents are available on SharePoint at https://umanitoba.sharepoint.com/sites/DriedFishMattersProject. Any documents containing private or sensitive information should be stored here, including contracts, bank account details, copies of passports, etc.
Membership in the "Dried Fish Matters Project" group should be updated as project personnel changes. Do NOT assign ownership to dried.fish.matters@umanitoba.ca, as this account does not have SharePoint access privileges.
Files and folders can be shared with others using the "share" icon in SharePoint or OneDrive. By default, shared files are read-only; select the checkbox "allow editing" to let users edit the document. Note that anonymous links cannot be shared with users external to the University of Manitoba. You can create a secure link that will work for specific email addresses that must be specified in the link settings dialog box; the link needs to be emailed manually, and the recipient may need to validate their email address by entering a validation code sent by Microsoft on behalf of the University of Manitoba.
Please see Help:File naming convention for guidance on how to name files. Using a consistent file naming pattern makes it much easier to locate documents.
File server
We have the ability to share files on our web server in the directory https://driedfishmatters.org/files. For outside users this will be read-only; clicking on any filename will cause that file to be downloaded. It is possible to create arbitrary subdirectories as needed.
To manage files, type the URL listed below into the file explorer on your computer (NOT a web browser) and you should be prompted to enter your login ID and password. The web server directory should open up, allowing you to add, move, delete, and rename files.
Note that opening server files from the file manager will not always work. (Word documents will typically not open, and may cause Word to crash; plain text files will work fine.)
Do not rename or delete the file .htaccess or the directory theme/ as these are needed for the formatted file listing to work in web view.
- url: webdisk.driedfishmatters.org
- login: ********@driedfishmatters.org
- password: ********
Open collaboration
Collaboration among team members across different institutions MAY be done using Word documents managed in SharePoint.
In general, the DFM Wiki is a superior platform for collaborative authorship of documents that do not contain or rely on sensitive information, especially when a larger team of authors is involved. The wiki provides very robust mechanisms for reviewing and managing changes, including the ability to undo a series of changes or to revert the edits made by a particular user.
Background
Originally we purchased 1 TB of OneDrive storage through a 4-year Microsoft Office 365 University subscription (associated with the account driedfishmatters@outlook.com), which expired on May 17, 2022. We had been using approximately 21 GB of storage. Although the University of Manitoba now provides Microsoft 365 subscriptions including OneDrive, this was not the case at the inception of our project, which led us to acquire this subscription independently from the University of Manitoba infrastructure. It is no longer possible, however, to purchase or renew the Office 365 University product.
OneDrive has separate and mutually incompatible consumer and enterprise versions. University of Manitoba email accounts (including dried.fish.matters@umanitoba.ca) are associated with the Microsoft enterprise service. Unfortunately, this has led to some compatibility issues with users who have tried to access DFM files while logged into institutional accounts.
Given that most of the files on the OneDrive file server were being used internally, we have migrated everything to SharePoint on expiry of the OneDrive subscription. Files that should be accessible to people outside the University of Manitoba team can be moved into the DFM Wiki, Zotero, Dataverse, or other storage locations as needed.
