Since the announcement last week of ownCloud Enterprise Edition 5, I’ve been getting a lot of requests to dive a bit deeper into the new features. Today, I thought I’d cover the very handy anonymous upload feature.
With the new anonymous upload feature, collaboration with partners and contractors is much easier, and yet still fully managed, logged and audited by IT. The feature can even be shut off by IT if desires.
Anonymous upload works in conjunction with another ownCloud favorite, Anonymous Sharing – which allows users to send a Link to an email address with a link to a shared document or folder to download. Anonymous upload builds on the shared public folder, allowing external users to upload or download files as needed. Why is this a good thing? In certain circumstances, enterprises need to not only send files, but also to receive files from partners. Take, for example, a situation where you are working with a contractor to create a sales kickoff presentation. That presentation could get pretty big, so email sending is out – how do you share it back and forth? In this case, you upload the file using the anonymous upload feature. The file will be placed into the folder owner’s directory, and then be treated as any other ownCloud file.
For this to work, the recipient needs only a valid email to receive the link, and then a browser to access the folder. The recipient can now upload or download files. It’s that easy.
Of course, while all this is happening, the files uploaded and downloaded are subject to the same auditing and governance as any others. And, as I mentioned above, IT can choose to shut off this capability.
That’s the new Anonymous Upload feature, why not try it out?
