FolderGrid Guide¶

This Guide is openly developed and community editable documentation. Notice the “Improve this Doc” button in the upper right-hand corner; it will direct you to the BitBucket project where you can easily contribute any additions, deletions, or corrections to the documentation as pull requests.

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Getting Help¶

If you’re stuck, you can search our Knowledgebase and contact FolderGrid Support here.

First Steps for Account Administrators¶

Tip

This section is intended for the individual who created a FolderGrid account by completing our new account signup form. If instead you have received an invitation to join an existing FolderGrid Domain, then you should reference our User Manual.

As the person who completed our new account form. to create a FolderGrid Account, you will be both the exclusive Account Administrator (able to update billing information) and the first Domain Administrator (a member of the “Administrators” group) with the ability to manage all Domain content.

This guide will provide you with a brief introduction to the FolderGrid service and walk you through a step-by-step process to get started securing & sharing content on your new Domain.

Review Your Home Page¶

First, note that your welcome email includes a custom link to your new Domain where you can Sign In using the FolderGrid credentials you established during account SignUp. If instead you navigate to the general Sign In page on FolderGrid.com you’ll be prompted for both your credentials and your Domain name. To avoid the need to enter your Domain name during Sign In we recommend that you bookmark your custom link and ensure other users of your Domain do the same.

After you Sign In from your custom link, you will be presented with your personalized home page. Every user’s home page is a jumping off point for interacting with the content you have secured on your FolderGrid Domain using any of our available interfaces. Your home page also includes convenient links to change your email address, reset your password, and other user account maintenance operations. As the Account Administrator - your home page will also include links useful for administering account-wide settings described in our Administrator Manual such as your billing information and any add-on Domains.

Setup Users & Groups¶

Next, we recommend that you start your account setup by creating the initial set of Users and Groups that you’ll need for your primary Domain. Every human or system that will manipulate the secure data on your domain should be designated as a “User” of your Domain and assigned a uniquely identifying email address and password.

To create a user, select “Manage Users” from the “Admin Tools” menu on the top menu bar of the WebApp as depicted here. Select “Add,” and fill in the email address and name for the new user. After the new user is successfully created, FolderGrid will send the new user an email with instructions on how to get started.

Warning

Like many online services, the security of each Domain user account is dependent upon the security of the email account to which it is registered. Be certain to take appropriate measures to secure each email account before allocating a FolderGrid user to it.

Once you have an initial set of users created for your Domain, you’ll want to create groups of those users for use when establishing access permissions for folders and files in your Domain.

Tip

Although FolderGrid supports assigning permissions to individual users, we strongly recommend that you always use Groups. Even if there is only one user in a group initially, assigning permissions through groups will grealy simplify administrative tasks as your Domain grows.

To create a group, select “Manage Groups” from the “Admin Tools” menu on the top menu bar of the WebApp just under the Manage Users selection used previously. Then click the “Add” button as depicted here and enter a name for the new group.

Tip

If you have lots of users or groups that you want to create at the outset, you’ll be pleased to learn that FolderGrid supports the bulk import of Users & Groups through simple comma separated files (CSV). You can access the bulk import facilities through the link from your home page.

Configure Default Permissions Scheme¶

After your Users and Groups have been created or imported, you’ll next want to look at how permissions should be set for your content initially. By default, only the folder creator and Domain Administrators have access to any newly created folder and the content (files) within it. This default scheme is the most secure permissions scheme and it requires that Groups be explicitly granted access to any new content on your Domain before they can interact with it.

However, you can change this default for any folder so that new subfolders inherit the permissions of their parent and therefore all users who can access the parent can also access the new subfolder - this option is called “Folder Permission Inheritance” and is described further here.

Which permission scheme you select is highly dependent upon your organization’s needs. We recommend that you stick with the default behavior unless you have a use case that specifically requires the more permissive “Folder Permission Inheritance”.

More advanced permissions scheme topics such as setting User Home folders are covered in our Administrator Manual.

Migrate Initial Content¶

If you intend to import an initial batch of existing folders and files, we recommend taking this opportunity to reorganize your folder structure (don’t worry, we’re not judging, most organization’s folder structures are in dire need of a refresh) by manually migrating your existing content into new folders created inside our WebApp. As you create your new folder structure you can thoughtfully grant appropriate permissions to user Groups.

However, if you’re in a hurry, or that task is too daunting, you can use any FTPS capable client (Transmit, Cyberduck, Filezilla, lftp, etc..) to connect to your FolderGrid domain and upload all your existing content in a single batch. After your content is cloned into your FolderGrid Domain, you’ll need to open our WebApp and apply appropriate user Group permissions to grant access to your users.

Facilitate User Acceptance¶

There are many more features available to you in FolderGrid and far more to learn, but you now have your initial Users, Groups, Folders, and Files created on your Domain. As your final “Getting Started” step you simply need to encourage adoption within your organization.

We encourage the use of our WebApp as your default since it functions on any modern workstation with nothing to install. For more advanced features, you can install FolderSync to support seamless document editing directly from your web browser. Finally, Microsoft Windows users also have WinMount as a user-friendly option which maps your FolderGrid Domain as a networked drive directly in File Explorer.

We encourage you to read more about each of these interfaces and how they can be used to meet specific workflow needs within your organization. Feel free to contact us at FolderGrid support with any queries and thanks for using FolderGrid!