Shared OS folders

[KirbyLeeper]

Great app so far!  To make this a real killer app we need the www.foldershare.com like native folder sharing OUTSIDE the database.  We need to have folders wathced and synched just like FolderSahre and Goove.  This would allow me to drop the other apps altogether!

[Steven Tedjamulia]

Thanks for using our product.  We are glad to get your feedback.  We will be working on this feature this year.

We plan to allow users to turn any Collanos folder into file system folder (win, mac, linux).  We also plan to allow users to turn file system folders into Collanos Workspace folders.  This could be a part of a workspace or a whole new workspace. 

One thing I would like to know is if you want to be able to turn all your Collanos folders into file system folders at once.  I do not know if customers really want to do this since this would add a lot more folders in their file system.  Let me know.

Cheers,

Steven Tedjamulia
Head of Product Management 

[KirbyLeeper]

Perfect!  No I do not want ALL folders as real shared OS folders.  Just the option to P2P *certain* OS folders.  And PLEASE do it on all three win/osx/linux (as this is Eclipse based I assume you are usign one code base).

This way you will match Groove 2007 but with a free version.
The world will beat a path to your door when they figure out all the uses for p2p like this.

[santo]

Any news on this yet ?
I'm also waiting for this functionality to become available.

Especially in cases where files aren't manually created, this functionality is a must have
Some examples:
- when developing projects in eclipse:
  whenever a class is created in eclipse, a new file is created on the file system
-> manually updating a colanos workspace each time isn't an option in this case
-> If colanos could "watch" such folders and sync all changes to all other users (i.e. co-developers in this case), that would be fantastic

- Whenever I import new pictures from my digital camera on my computer, I place them in a "waiting" folder.
  Each night a scheduled job (a simple (java) program) reads the exif data of those pictures and places them in appropriate subfolders, based on date and timestamp.
-> manually updating the colanos workspace each time isn't an option in this case
-> If colanos could watch those folders and sync them to all other users -> would be fantastic

etc, etc...

In short: I definitely need this feature

[KirbyLeeper]

Moderator, Any progress on this very important wish?

[wzeller]

This is an important enough feature that I decided to go ahead and register on the forum here just so I could bump it again and ask if it might be implemented any time soon.

Moderator?

w

[KirbyLeeper]

Thank you very much for your attention to this feature!  I agree that I do *not* see a need for a "convert all folders" to OS File System Folders link.  I don't even really see the absolute need for converting any Collanos worspace folders to OS folders although it would be nice.  The real need is one of taking an *existing* OS folder and causing it to become a synced folder among 1) various devices of a single login or 2) various logins.  That fundamental feature puts you into play in my world.  If you also were to add conversion options to and from Collanos/OS that would be very nice but more the cherry than the whipped cream so to speak.

Thank you again and do not hesitate to contact me more on this topic.
(Note: MS FolderShare, while it does work nicely for Mac and Win, has a hard coded limit of 10 "libraries" or share trees you can run from one login as well as a 10,000 file limit from one login.  The former is much too small for small business with distributed sales reps or regional offices or any topology where the hub user wants more that 10 discreet spokes while maintaining privacy and separation between the spoke nodes.  The 10,000 file limit per library is not a major problem to me but it is to others. See http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/009750.html but the 10 library limit is a killer to me.  You can fix all of these and become the Open Groove champion!

[Scott]

This is a real-big-deal feature for me. Right now I'm on a multi-person project where we're all spread out and need to share files. The project manager has it set up so we share files over an ftp server, which has obvious drawbacks. Mainly, it requires us to upload and download. Essentially, without sharing OS features, Collanos has the same problem. We would still have to copy files between the OS and Collanos, which means the timeliness of the files still depends on people remembering to upload their latest.

Drag-and-drop makes copying easy, but still has a downside in Collanos. If I drag a folder to my workspace, it doesn't overwrite the old files. It just creates new copies, so duplicate files exist in the folder on Collanos, even if the files are identical.

Ideally, our working directories would automatically sync with our workspaces.

This is keeping at least four people on my project from wanting to join the Collanos family.

[KirbyLeeper]

Scott, if only Win and OSX then MS FolderShare will do nicely for now.  My team uses it every day until Collanos provides it.  Then we will convert to Collanos for everything and drop Groove and Foldershare.

[santo]

I was hoping this would be part of 1.3, but apparently not.

How much longer do we have to wait for this (obvious) feature to become available ?

[KirbyLeeper]

Thanks for you vote!  Let's keep our fingers crossed that this gets in asap.

[Gregg]

I'd like to add my vote for this feature.  Until recently, I was using FolderShare.  Since it stores files in native, unencrypted, format on the hard drive, I could backup my documents on a regular basis.  I could also use operating system or third party utilities to locate a document based on the contents.  I could also use other programs that operated on several files simultaneously (without remembering to export the files and re-import them).  It would be nice if I could tell Collanos to store some (or all) folders in unencrypted format on the native file system.

[KirbyLeeper]

Gregg, thanks for the vote.  No word so far...