This Guide walks through the basic use of the Pliant SDX website.
Prior to using Pliant SDX, a valid user account must be created. If your organization does not currently have an account, please contact [email protected]. If your organization is already setup, please contact your Pliant SDX administrator, or open a ticket at support.pliantcloud.com.
Home
The HOME Page is the main navigation screen and presents a menu bar for site navigation, as well as a few simple “getting started” tasks.
File Manager
File Manager is the tool used for managing files. From the menu bar at the top of the screen, you can open the file browser, manage tags or metadata ascribed to files, search files, manage individually created organizational groups, and view all SDX related file tasks.
New Folder
To create a new folder and upload files, select the files option and browse to “My Cloud Files” and create a new folder by selecting the “Create folder” option.
Double click the newly created folder, and drag a file from your local desktop onto the browser window to upload the file.
Share File
Highlight the newly uploaded file and a file level menu will now be displayed that allows you to download the file, favorite, preview, edit, comment, share the file with a quick link, or move the file to the trash.
Select fast generate a shared link to share the file.
Copy the link to you clipboard, which will allow you to paste the link into an email, or document. Alternatively selecting “sharefiles/folders” from the sub-menu bar will allow you to share a fileby URL or email, share with a user-defined group, or make a file publicly viewable.
By selecting the “By URL or Email” option, you will be presented with 2 tabs that allow you to generate a link or send link by email. Several options are presented beneath each tab, allowing you to define how the file is shared, set a link expiration, view any existing links, limit the number of times the file can be downloaded, and set a password.
Drop Folder
Alternatively, a folder can also be shared if the appropriate organizational level permissions have been set. To share a folder within the file manager, highlight the folder you wish to share, select “Sharefiles/folders” from the sub-menu bar. Several additional items appear that were not present on the file sharing view, notably the “Set as Drop Folder” and “Hide Files” options. “Set as Drop Folder” will enable those that receive the link to upload files to the folder location. If the “Hide files”checkbox is selected, they will be able to upload files, but will not be able to view any files in the share (including their own uploaded files).
When a user accesses a newly created drop folder and selects to send an email, the following is received by the user that the invite is sent to:
Upon clicking the link, the user recipient will be required to enter the password provided if one was set, and they will then have access to File Manager Lite in order to upload and download files.
To view and delete links that have been previously shared, select the stack menu item in the top right hand corner of the file manager window, and select “My Shared Links”. From the list of links, you are able to delete a given link by selecting the red X at the far right of the listed link.
Tags
To tag a file with metadata, select a file from within the File Manager-Files tool, and select the more “. . .” menu item, and “Tags” option. Type in your tag, or click the small blue tag to list existing tags and select them.
From the main menu bar, navigate to the “Tags” screen. All tags in use will be listed at the top of the screen. Select at tag to search for all files that have been tagged with that particular item. In our example, 1 file has been tagged with “non-production”, called Sample.txt.
Search
The Search tool allows you to search for files based on file name or extension.
Groups
The Groups feature is designed for users to organize sharing permissions of their own personal files and folders with members of their organization. Individuals added as members of any group must have a Pliant SDX account in order to login and collaborate as a group member using this feature. Members will receive an email asking them to login to SDX and confirm membership. After creating a group and adding users, the group must also be granted permission to the folder/files you wish to share by navigating to the file manager, selecting a file or folder, selecting the share icon, and share with group option.
Tasks
The tasks view allows you to view all sync, upload, copy, or move tasks that are in progress, or that have completed.
Organization
Within the “Organization” view, administrative users have the ability to create users and roles, shared team folders, view audit logs, and view all organizational members, and assign folder level administrative roles to members of their organization.
Users
To manage users, select the “Users” menu option from the Organization dropdown menu. Users can be added by selecting “With email confirmation” or “Without confirmation”. From each respective screen, a series of options are provided that allow you to define the login account, set or generate a password, and input an email address. Once a user has been added, you can assign the user a role by selecting the check-box next to the account(s), and within the “Assign role” section, either add the role to their existing roles (aggregates roles), or assign a role (removes any existing roles).
In order to create a new role, select Organization from the to menu and select roles. Roles allow permissions to be assigned to organization members. For this demo we are creating a role called “Accounting” that we will use to grant rights to a Team Share called “Accounting”. After creating the role, navigate back to the organization-users view, select User1, and beneath Assign role we pick “Accounting from the dropdown menu and click “Add Role”. User1 is now a member of both “Member” and “Accounting”.
To organizationally create a team share, we navigate to the File Manager, Create a new folder called “Accounting”, select the “Shared Team Folder” checkbox, and click “Create new folder”. To add the Accounting group to this newly created folder, we navigate back to Organization-Shared Team Folders, select the checkbox next to the “Accounting” folder, and click the small users and folder icon on the right side of the table to manage folder permissions. Within the permissions for accounting pop up box, select Accounting from the dropdown box in the lower left, and select the appropriate permissions level for the accounting group. If there is a particular user who will act as the administrator for this group, we can also select them and assign them the “manage permissions right” which will allow them to add individuals to the shared team folder.
From the “Who Can Create/Delete Shared Folders” tab, you can optionally select who is able to create and delete Team Folders within your organization.
When User1 logs into the system, they will now see a shared folder beneath “My Cloud Files”. If the user has the local windows client installed, then the drive letter specified during the client install will provide a mapped drive to all cloud content, including shared team folders.
Audit Logs
The Organization – Audit Logs function option allows an administrator to view and search all events that occur within the environment, including account creation, login, file sharing, downloads, etc. Events can be filtered based on event type. Audit logs can also be exported as a ZIP, CSV or XLS file.
