Improving support for "Make Available Offline"

Questions and information regarding the iOS app - Fragen und Informationen zur iOS-Applikation

Improving support for "Make Available Offline"

Postby paulreddy » 13 Dec 2012, 05:38

I want to carry all of my files with me on my iOS devices.
You have a "Make Available Offline" button, but it doesn't work right.
It seems to me that there are two problems. (If I've misunderstood this
feature, I'd appreciate being corrected).

a) It only works on files that are currently known to exist in a folder.
So if I ever add a file to a folder, it wont get made available offline.

This is painful because... during the day, I work on my PC. I add and remove files
all over the place.

I then have to hunt out these files on my iPad and set the
file's "Available Offline" flag, usually by finding the parent folder and hitting
"Make Available Offline".

This really should be a flag on a folder, and any files/folders added get made
available offline. That is, I should be able to set "Make Available Offline" on a
folder, and have every file/folder under that available offline, including new
files/folders that appear.

A workaround is that I could just select "Make Available Offline" on all top level folders
at the end of each days work to set the offline flag for each file underneath,
BUT item b) below means this is painful as well.

b) You cannot "Make Available Offline" on a space.
You have to do it on the folders within a space. Therefore you *dont* want to
have spaces that have many folders, otherwise you have to go to each folder, get its
properties, and "Make Available Offline".
Because of a) above, it needs to be done daily.

The workaround is to have 1 folder inside 1 space, with all your stuff under that.
Which is a poor use of the concept of spaces.

The fix to this is to have an action to make a space available offline.


My preference would be to address these as follows:
Change the "Make available offline" button from an action
(do once for currently known files) to a flag (permanent).
Then any file or folder that gets added at the server underneath that
folder or space is copied to the device. (i.e. Offline set to True). You
could just do this on a space, although it would be nice to support it on folders too.


Cheers.
Paul
paulreddy
 
Posts: 28
Joined: 13 Dec 2012, 05:07

Re: Improving support for "Make Available Offline"

Postby Kenneth » 13 Dec 2012, 14:26

paulreddy wrote:a) It only works on files that are currently known to exist in a folder.
So if I ever add a file to a folder, it wont get made available offline.

This is painful because... during the day, I work on my PC. I add and remove files
all over the place.

I then have to hunt out these files on my iPad and set the
file's "Available Offline" flag, usually by finding the parent folder and hitting
"Make Available Offline".

This really should be a flag on a folder, and any files/folders added get made
available offline. That is, I should be able to set "Make Available Offline" on a
folder, and have every file/folder under that available offline, including new
files/folders that appear.

A workaround is that I could just select "Make Available Offline" on all top level folders
at the end of each days work to set the offline flag for each file underneath,
BUT item b) below means this is painful as well.

This is how the feature is designed to work. Only the files currently in the folder at the time will be made available offline. All newly synced data has to be manually made available offline. While this may appear as inconvenient there is, however, a method to the madness. For example, you are a graphic designer working in a team. You're working on a new billboard design and you set the file to be available offline on your mobile device. Let's say, at the moment, the file is 350MB. The entire day, you are editing and changing the file. Adding bigger graphics, adding new features, adding new text, etc. Every time you change something, save it and have it synced with the server, 350MB are synced (but of course the file is getting larger).

Let's say at the end of the day the file is 1.2GB. You look at the file and realize you spelled wrote "synchronise" when you want to use the American spelling "synchronize". You make the change and, yes, 1.2GBs are synced again, just for that one change. Why? Because this is a new version of the file. So, on an mobile device you most likely have a data plan. If your device is constantly syncing 350MB 10 times because you've made 10 changes then that's 3500MBs of data you've synced just for one file. Unless you have an unlimited data plan you may have already reached your limit. On top of that, "unlimited" data plans are sometimes only "unlimited" until you've reached a certain limit. This is a) why the mobile devices are designed to initially sync only the metadata of files and b) while only the current version of a file is made available offline. And my example is only for 1 file. If you have multiple files you are working on, who knows what could happen to your data plan. So, I said all that to help explain the reasoning behind the design of the feature. If a person is syncing hundreds of small files then this may not be an issue for them (going over their data allowance).


paulreddy wrote:b) You cannot "Make Available Offline" on a space.
You have to do it on the folders within a space. Therefore you *dont* want to
have spaces that have many folders, otherwise you have to go to each folder, get its
properties, and "Make Available Offline".
Because of a) above, it needs to be done daily.

The workaround is to have 1 folder inside 1 space, with all your stuff under that.
Which is a poor use of the concept of spaces.
This is also the way the feature is designed to work. You are unable to make Space folders available offline. Only sub-folders.

I agree the workaround you suggested would be a poor use of the concept of Spaces. The actual concept of Spaces is to give the user the ability to have different types of data stored in a specific (or one) location and allow others the ability to access that data without allowing them access to ALL of their data. For example, family photos, contracts, license agreements, reunion videos, etc., can all be stored in one location on a server. But just because it's in one location on a server does not mean you want to share ALL of that data with whomever you invite. Thus you create Space folders and organize what data is visible where. Then you invite users, at your will, and give them certain access rights to the Space. Thus you can have users who have access to some data while at the same time not knowing other data stored on your server exists.

I hope I've been in some way helpful.

Regards,

Kenneth
Kenneth
 
Posts: 1277
Joined: 29 Aug 2012, 15:11

Re: Improving support for "Make Available Offline"

Postby paulreddy » 14 Dec 2012, 00:22

Hi Kenneth.

Kenneth wrote:
paulreddy wrote:a) It only works on files that are currently known to exist in a folder.
So if I ever add a file to a folder, it wont get made available offline.

This is painful because... during the day, I work on my PC. I add and remove files
all over the place.

I then have to hunt out these files on my iPad and set the
file's "Available Offline" flag, usually by finding the parent folder and hitting
"Make Available Offline".

This really should be a flag on a folder, and any files/folders added get made
available offline. That is, I should be able to set "Make Available Offline" on a
folder, and have every file/folder under that available offline, including new
files/folders that appear.

A workaround is that I could just select "Make Available Offline" on all top level folders
at the end of each days work to set the offline flag for each file underneath,
BUT item b) below means this is painful as well.

This is how the feature is designed to work. Only the files currently in the folder at the time will be made available offline. All newly synced data has to be manually made available offline. While this may appear as inconvenient there is, however, a method to the madness. For example, you are a graphic designer working in a team. You're working on a new billboard design and you set the file to be available offline on your mobile device. Let's say, at the moment, the file is 350MB. The entire day, you are editing and changing the file. Adding bigger graphics, adding new features, adding new text, etc. Every time you change something, save it and have it synced with the server, 350MB are synced (but of course the file is getting larger).

Let's say at the end of the day the file is 1.2GB. You look at the file and realize you spelled wrote "synchronise" when you want to use the American spelling "synchronize". You make the change and, yes, 1.2GBs are synced again, just for that one change. Why? Because this is a new version of the file. So, on an mobile device you most likely have a data plan. If your device is constantly syncing 350MB 10 times because you've made 10 changes then that's 3500MBs of data you've synced just for one file. Unless you have an unlimited data plan you may have already reached your limit. On top of that, "unlimited" data plans are sometimes only "unlimited" until you've reached a certain limit. This is a) why the mobile devices are designed to initially sync only the metadata of files and b) while only the current version of a file is made available offline. And my example is only for 1 file. If you have multiple files you are working on, who knows what could happen to your data plan. So, I said all that to help explain the reasoning behind the design of the feature. If a person is syncing hundreds of small files then this may not be an issue for them (going over their data allowance).


I think we are missing each other here. You are right that you can individually select large files (or versions) to bring them
down ONCE. The file/version shows a green circle when it is held locally.

You are right in that there are types of very large files that you dont want to sync repeatedly. That's fine.

What I am after is the case where I *want* all files in a folder kept up to date.
If there are specific files I dont want to keep up to date, then I can turn off "Available Offline".
But right now, the default action for new files is not Available Offline.
I think I should be able to choose to default to Available Offline.

To clarify:
there are two file operations:
- click on the file or version. This brings it down ONCE and displays it.
- click "Available Offline". This means the file is kept sync'd always.

There is ONE folder operation:
- "Make Available Offline", which is actually a hybrid of the above.
it sets *current* files to be "Available Offline", but not future files.
Thats confusing - it should sync the folder, like it does for files,
i.e. keep all current and future files synced.

Is that clearer?


paulreddy wrote:b) You cannot "Make Available Offline" on a space.
You have to do it on the folders within a space. Therefore you *dont* want to
have spaces that have many folders, otherwise you have to go to each folder, get its
properties, and "Make Available Offline".
Because of a) above, it needs to be done daily.

The workaround is to have 1 folder inside 1 space, with all your stuff under that.
Which is a poor use of the concept of spaces.
This is also the way the feature is designed to work. You are unable to make Space folders available offline. Only sub-folders.

I agree the workaround you suggested would be a poor use of the concept of Spaces. The actual concept of Spaces is to give the user the ability to have different types of data stored in a specific (or one) location and allow others the ability to access that data without allowing them access to ALL of their data. For example, family photos, contracts, license agreements, reunion videos, etc., can all be stored in one location on a server. But just because it's in one location on a server does not mean you want to share ALL of that data with whomever you invite. Thus you create Space folders and organize what data is visible where. Then you invite users, at your will, and give them certain access rights to the Space. Thus you can have users who have access to some data while at the same time not knowing other data stored on your server exists.

I hope I've been in some way helpful.

Regards,

Kenneth


Thanks for your comment, I think I understand the concept of spaces.
The issue is that I can't select "Make Available Offline" on a space as a quick way
of selecting every folder and doing a "Make Available Offline" all files in the space on my iPad.
The end result is that anyone who wants to sync all new files has to select each and every folder
and select "Make Available Offline". Since (due to the issue above) you need to do this regularly,
it means that it is more efficient to have a single folder in a space.

In my case (and I dont think its usual), and the end of a days work, I want to capture all new
files in all projects. Therefore, I need to either hunt for the files on the iPad, or
go to the folders underneath the space, and for each reselect "Make Available Offline".

Hope that's clearer?
Thanks for the feedback/response.

Cheers.
Paul
paulreddy
 
Posts: 28
Joined: 13 Dec 2012, 05:07

Re: Improving support for "Make Available Offline"

Postby Kenneth » 14 Dec 2012, 15:49

Yes, no worries, we're on the same page. As of now the application does not allow that. The features you mentioned in your latter post are already on the board for consideration. Mainly, an "on/off" switch. The devs will of course have to decide whether or not this is feasible.
Kenneth
 
Posts: 1277
Joined: 29 Aug 2012, 15:11

Re: Improving support for "Make Available Offline"

Postby Kenneth » 20 Dec 2012, 15:59

The next version will also allow the possibility to make Spaces available offline. So you'll now have the option to make a file, sub-folder, or entire Space available offline. All data made available offline will also be automatically updated with the latest version once the device has a chance to sync with the server.
Kenneth
 
Posts: 1277
Joined: 29 Aug 2012, 15:11

Re: Improving support for "Make Available Offline"

Postby paulreddy » 25 Jan 2013, 00:48

I just noticed this comment about making spaces offline.
That's fantastic.

Can I ask... does this mean *new* files added to the space will also
get updated? It seems that your description below looks similar to the way
it works now, but you have made it possible to apply 'offline' to the files in the space.

Thanks.

p.s. I hate to ask... but do you have a date for the next version?
paulreddy
 
Posts: 28
Joined: 13 Dec 2012, 05:07

Re: Improving support for "Make Available Offline"

Postby Kenneth » 01 Feb 2013, 16:37

Sorry for my late reply. The new version was released a few days ago for both iOS (Jan 29) and Android (Jan 31).

If you make a Space available offline the files in the Space are updated when you reconnect to the internet. New files added to the Space are also automatically made available offline. This is not true if you only make a folder available offline. When you add new files to a folder you have made available offline you have to go in and make the file available offline OR turn off offline availability for the folder and turn it back on. This should not re-download all the previous data made available offline because it should already be in the cache.
Kenneth
 
Posts: 1277
Joined: 29 Aug 2012, 15:11

Re: Improving support for "Make Available Offline"

Postby paulreddy » 18 Feb 2013, 01:41

Kenneth,

I've been using the new feature for a while now, and I can say its working *perfectly*.
I've marked my key spaces as Available Offline, and now carry all my files with me all
the time.

Just awesome!
Thx.
paulreddy
 
Posts: 28
Joined: 13 Dec 2012, 05:07


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