How to migrate windows share experience to nextcloud?

Hi all,

I have briefly dabbled in nextcloud some time back, when implementing it i faced resistance with the users used to windows share style where the file is never saved on the local computer and only retrieved when needed.
Is there anyway to simulate the same experience for the users where they open my computer, see the share, open it find the files they have access to, edit and save all without having to store them on their computer in a stable manner?
Is it possible for the changes through this method to be tracked?
Could it be possible to prevent files from being copied?

Apologies if this is a noob question :slight_smile:

the closest experience would be to mount your Nextcloud as windows network drive (find out your webdav address in files > settings and use it connect webdav drive 1 or connect webdav drive 2)

Interesting, seems it will work like a windows share using webdav, thank you ill explore this!

Yeah, the only caveat to be aware of is that the windoze webdav client is hopelessly broken and has been for MANY years. Its one of those hostile things that M$ does to make open source software and open protocols look broken and unreliable.

oh my, broken how? u mean itd have more problems then a simple network share?

Hi @TommyD

He means the WebDAV implementation in Windows, which is not the same thing you refer to, when you say “simple network share”. Windows normaly uses the SMB protocol to connect to file servers. Anyways you can use WebDAV in Windows, but It might not be as performant and reliable as you would expect from “normal” SMB shares. Your mileage may vary depending on what filetypes, file sizes and applications you use in combination with it. In the end, you have to test it, whether it fits your needs for everyday use. A probably better alternative, instead of connecting your Nextcloud as a network drive in Windows, would be to use the Nextcloud client with the new Virtual Files feature… Nextcloud desktop client 3.2 with status feature and Virtual Files available now – Nextcloud

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Ah i see… i did some googling on WebDAV and there were all sorts of problems with it and windows indeed… this would not be a stable use in an organization.
As for the desktop client i did try implementing it before the virtual files feature even existed, but there was one major drawback with it… After awhile some useers files would randomly stop synching and i would end up having to delete the original file on the server to allow the new file to overwrite it or the file would have to be renamed to a totally new file, saved in outside the nextcloud synced folder then pasted into the synced folder…
Many users did not even realise their documents were not syncing even though there was a red x next to the documents, i mean theyre end users right? This eventually became a nightmare for me as the admin as there were multiple different versions being used at the same time and merging them became complicated when the documents were excel sheets…
is anyone aware of such issues and if they were fixed? My usage on nextcloud is about 2 years old… in fact initially when we tested it out the issue did not even surface… it only came to light later on when it was rolled out.

There are various companies provide their own webdav client software for ms.

As an example (and I do NOT endorse this, I’ve never used it, and to be honest, I haven’t used windoze in decades), there is this; WebDAV Client for Windows and Mac | WebDrive® | Mount, Map Drives

And there are others as well.

I did explore those back then but the users are soooooo used to clicking my computer opening drive that they did not find the gui of the client interface intuitive… again this was years ago, possibly may have improved gui’s…
Does anyone have any experience in the syncing client in windows if the issue of stop synching of file due to duplicate or errors still exists?

I have worked with nextcloud and i only faced 1 issue how to make the experience seamless for the users. Apart from that there were no other issues or bugs noticed despite having scaled it to 10 users with over 1 tb of data with extensive read writes.

No database corruption, slow speed etc.

Its my understanding that they DO mount as a “drive letter” if you configure them correctly.

From the writeup in the link I gave you:
“By mapping persistent drive letters to your WebDAV servers…”

So I don’t see anything that should be overly confusing to your users.