Sharing Files Via the Webdrive

Email is perhaps the most common way for sharing data files, but it is not well suited to sharing large data files, particularly with more than a few people. Emory provides an often superior alternative method for sharing files, the webdrive service. This document describes how to use it, using as an example, uploading a set of FACS data and FlowJo workspace files so that they are available to technical support personnel at Treestar. This document describes the following steps.

  1. Create an archive of your data.
  2. Open a web browser go the the Emory webdrive page.
    1. Login to your personal webdrive space.
  3. Navigate to the upload page.
  4. Upload your archive.
  5. Create a Tinyurl link to your file.
    1. Email the Tinyurl to the people you want to share your file with

Create an archive of your data

Before you upload a set of data files (or even a single file), it is often helpful to create an archive of the data. This allows you to place multiple files and folders into a single file, and is often the only way to distribute FCS files.

Mac OS 10.3 (and maybe earlier versions of OS X, I don't know) have the ability to create a .zip archive built into the operating system. You can access the Zip utility in one of two ways:

  1. Select the folder or file you'd like to archive. Select the command "Create Archive" from the File menu.

  2. Alternatively, select the folder you'd like to archive, activate a contextual menu associated with it, and select "Create archive". You can activate the contextual menu in one of two ways:

    1. Hold down the control key and click on the file or folder.
    2. With a two button mouse, right-click on the file or folder.

Open a web browser and to to the Emory Webdrive page

Open a web browser and go the Emory Webdrive page. Bookmark it for future use. Take a few minutes to look around at the instructions provided. Then scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the link "Jump to my personal space". This will open up a dialog box that will ask your for a login name and a password.

Navigate to the upload page

When you first login to your webdrive space, you will see something that looks like this:

Click on the "folders" link to get to the upload page, which looks like this:

Upload your archive

After you've navigated to the upload page, click on the "Browse" button. This will take you to a dialog box that allows you to select a file, just like any other such dialog box on your computer. Navigate to the archive you created at the beginning and select it. Then, click on the "Upload" button. Click on the link for your home directory to get you back to the file listing.

Set access permissions

The default settings for your webdrive space probably do not allow other users to access the file you just uploaded. If you are using the webdrive to distribute files, you will need to change that. You have two options:

  1. You can allow access to anyone on the internet.
  2. You can allow access to only specified users with Emory network ID's

I don't know if you can specify users outside of Emory.

In any case, when you are on a page like in the image above, hit the "Edit Read" under "ACCESS" in the left hand column. This gets you to a page like this:

Click on the radio button corresponding to "The contents of this folder may be viewed by the entire internet", and hit the OK button.

Of course, you are free to make folders and set access priveleges to them separately. That is beyond the scope of this page.

Create a TinyURL for your uploaded file

The URLs for files you've uploaded are generally very long; for example, the URL for one of the files currently on my webdrive is:

https://webdrive.service.emory.edu/users/jaltman/YFV%20Working%20Group%20December%202004_Altman.ppt.zip

when you paste them into your email message, they will most like automatically "wrap", and many recipients will not know how to handle this situation. Don't despair! There is a handy remedy, via the wonderful folks at TinyURL. Before you go to TinyURL, copy the URL of interest onto your clipboard. Here's how to do it.

  1. Scroll so that the file you're interested in is visible. Either control-click or right-click on it to activate a contextual menu, and select the command "Copy Link to Clipboard" or "Copy Link Location" (the exact command will vary from browser to browser; I'm using Firefox below).

  2. Open a new browser window, and navigate to the TinyURL page.
  3. Paste the contents of your clipboard into the TinyURL field for your long URL. Then click the "Make TinyURL" button.

  4. After you've hit the "Make TinyURL!" button, the site will return the new URL, which is just a code for your long URL. Select the new TinyURL and copy it to your clipboard. Then, go to your email package and paste it into an email message. Alternatively, bookmark the link for future use. That's all there is to it.