The English School: Cloud and Webfiles Access THE ENGLISH SCHOOL: CLOUD AND WEBFILES ACCESS - DECEMBER 2014 1
System Summary Owncloud and Webfile access is a combination of two systems. OwnCloud is a file storage and sharing system for NON-SENSITIVE or TEMPORARY files. It is similar to Dropbox, OneDrive or Google Drive, with the exception that it is hosted on school premises. owncloud offers the following benefits No need to sign up. If you have an English School NetID you automatically have an account Secure sign in using your NetID 5GB of space for each person All Staff and All Teachers have access Ability to share files to anyone, regardless whether they have a NetID or not Free applications are available that can automatically sync your files from your computer to your owncloud storage. Webfiles offers the following benefits Minimal configuration from the user to have access to all the files on the school network visible in a friendly and easy to use interface. Ability to upload a document from home and have it appear in your My Documents folder on any windows workstation. Share any document with anyone regardless if the fact if they have an account. Objectives The objective of this system is to make everyone s access to their files as easy as possible. It will eliminate a number of issues like having to carry around a flash drive, worry about losing the flash drive and most important of all no one will have to worry about a flash drive that has just failed. All files will be safely stored on the school servers where they are backed up every night. owncloud Storage Information Each user will be allocated 5 gigabytes (GB) of cloud storage space with a maximum single file size of 5GB. Our owncloud implementation is to be used only as a temporary storage service to allow easy file sharing with other members with in The English School community. For permanent storage save a copy in The English School Files or just download to your workstation file system which will automatically save to our main file server. THE ENGLISH SCHOOL: CLOUD AND WEBFILES ACCESS - DECEMBER 2014 2
How to access owncloud web interface To access the web interface open a browser and enter the following URL in the address bar: https://cloud.englishschool.ac.cy A link will also be made available in the school website and in the IT Department s Support Page Section 1: Log in the owncloud interface Enter your ES NetID into the appropriate fields and press enter After successfully logging in. the owncloud web interface will be displayed. See the figure below for a detailed breakdown of the interface and functionality THE ENGLISH SCHOOL: CLOUD AND WEBFILES ACCESS - DECEMBER 2014 3
Section 2: Manually connecting your Workstation English School Files to owncloud. a. Go to the upper right hand corner and press on the NetID shown. After the click on Personal as indicated in the image below b. On the next page the will appear scroll down to the section called External Storage. It will look exactly as the image below. Now click on FTP and the fields will change in to the following image. Now you have to fill in the corresponding fields. Do not worry, if you have a NetID you are all set to go. The field should be filled as follows: Folder Name: TheEnglishSchoolFiles ( It can be anything but for consistency we give it that name) Configuration-Host: kepler (name of the server you will be connecting to) Username: <your-username> Password: <your-password> Root: / Secure ftps:// : this is optional, it will work either way The completed configuration will look like the image below. Once the connection has been successfully made you will see a green dot at the left hand side beginning the configuration line. THE ENGLISH SCHOOL: CLOUD AND WEBFILES ACCESS - DECEMBER 2014 4
Section 3: Accessing your Workstation English School Files. After successfully completing step 2 you are now ready to access your English School Files. Now click on the cloud icon in the top left corner. This will take you to the initial web interface. Now click on External Storage in the left Navigation Pane. The image below will appear. Just like a windows workstation desktop icon. Now just click on and your NetID will appear just like this stafftest account. Click on that and all your files will be listed on the screen. You can now download and upload files to and from your local computer. Section 4. Manually uploading files to owncloud A. Log in the system as described in Section 1 B. Following the image below click on All Files. Then select the destination folder. For this example we are going to select CloudStorage C. Select the destination folder or create a new one by pressing the button and then click on the Folder as shown below. Now give your folder and name and press Enter. Your folder will now be created. THE ENGLISH SCHOOL: CLOUD AND WEBFILES ACCESS - DECEMBER 2014 5
D. Now click on the newly created folder. In this example we call it MyWorkFiles E. Click on the upload button. A Windows file explorer window will appear as shown below. Now select the file you want to upload and click Open or double click the file. Once the file completes uploading it will be displayed in the list of Files as shown below: Section 4: Sharing files within owncloud Any ES-ownCloud user is able to share files and folders with users who have an owncloud account and with other people outside the ES owncloud system. Within the ES-ownCloud system, files can be shared between the all users and between people belonging to the following groups. 1 ADMINStaff 13 Greek 2 Academic Committee 14 History 3 All Staff 15 Maths 4 All Teachers 16 Modern Languages 5 Art 17 Music 6 Biology 18 Pastoral 7 Chemistry 19 Physical Education 8 Design & Technology 20 Physics 9 Economics 21 Religious Instruction 10 English 22 Turkish 11 Form Tutors Year 1 to 7 23 UCAS 12 Geography THE ENGLISH SCHOOL: CLOUD AND WEBFILES ACCESS - DECEMBER 2014 6
A file can be shared using the following procedure. For illustration purposes we are going to use the image below A. Move your mouse over the filer you want to share. You will be presented with additional options for the file. The options are: Download, Versions and Share. Click on the Share icon as in the red box above. A drop down menu will appear. Type the name of the user or the group you want to share with. The name or group will appear automatically. Now select the group you want to share with. Any user beloging to that group will have the file or the folder appear in their home screen. If you are sharing folders then you have more options. Permissions can be assigned to the user who will be accessing the folder. Enable and disable as needed. A share link can be created to allow people outside the ES-ownCloud system to access a file or folder A share link has a few attributes under your control. You can password protect the link so only people who know the password can access the file or the folder. If you will be collecting other files you can enable the Allow Public Upload feature. This will enable uses in possession of the link to upload files. THE ENGLISH SCHOOL: CLOUD AND WEBFILES ACCESS - DECEMBER 2014 7
People can be notified that they have a share by typing their email address in the email field and then press send or just copy the link and send it via normal email. For added security the public share can be password protected and also an expiration date can be set. This can be a great use when dated material needs to be uploaded. THE ENGLISH SCHOOL: CLOUD AND WEBFILES ACCESS - DECEMBER 2014 8