As a business user and someone trying to advocate for more use in a large non-profit, NGO environment, our shares are about 1TB which is unusable for laptop users. We have to quite carefully train users on selective syncing but it would be a major leap in usability to have something like dropbox infinite or the virtual file system that’s discussed here:
Failing that it would be awesome in the client to be able to specify files, not just folders for sync, as it can take a lot of time if my users are somewhere in DR Congo and they select a folder when all they want is a file - dodgy connected satelite links are expensive as well as slow!
Wouldn’t it be much simpler if you just work with the web interface then?
Because if you travel from country to country and always select and deselect files you need or don’t, you’ll produce much more traffic and even spend much more time as if you select it from the web interface.
I know there might be some use cases, that do not prefer that method (programs which synchronize with files in NC), but in most cases I would recommend to go with the web interface.
Wonderful though the web interface is, it’s not the greatest for offline working. So in one of the scenarios our Programme managers faces, they will be working on a subset of files within a Project folder. Under this folder may also be files they do not want, or half-trained comms staff may have put video/photos in there.
Ideally I’d like them to be able to work off a subset of files offline without having to worry if they’re connected or not.
I suspect (and maybe I don’t know of other ways of working) is that with the web interface, wouldn’t they need to access the files online? Then save them somewhere on their computer (not necessarily on the nextcloud directory) for offline working, then re-upload them when they are finished, which takes away some of the key advantages of sync.
If they save them to the nextcloud folder, I’m not sure what happens - does the (in this case Windows) client then keep just that file in sync? does it attempt to overwrite the online files? How does it work if that folder structure is listed as ‘do not sync’ in the client - possibly due to the ‘ask if folder is over X MB size’ setting?
It’s probably a workflow question as much as anything else. It’s possible to use the web interface but it seems to be a work around when I’m trying to make life easier for my users as much as possible. They have more important concerns!
Does that help explain why I’m asking? Is it just me?
