NetDrive - Any One Used It?
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@coliver said:
It depends on how heavily network mounts and shared drives are utilized. I think you'd be surprised at how change adverse a lot of end users can be even for technologies that I see as beneficial to everyone.
But I think most users are seeing this already and it is so transparent that they do not even realize. Like on phones.
I don't consider that the same.
The system you're talking about has been there since day one on the iPhone, and nearly so on Android. But on Windows instead of looking for files in Explorer or searching through the programs (I'd say my users are 50/50), now you're telling them to use this brand new thing called document manager (sharepoint/owndrive/etc).
Did I say that? Where? I think that that is an "in between" step. I'm talking about not using that at all, use the apps. If you need to manage documents, it's too complicated.
You didn't say use document manager that was Coliver when he was calling be out on giving up. But he was responding to my retort about using only the apps to find files you want/need to work on. Sure the other day you said the user has to take responsibility at some point, at the same time I say we as admins have to find ways to ensure they can find their files.
I think using apps is about the worst way to manage that, but at the same time I understand why it can be seen as better.
Perhaps the best option is the pure document management with tags setup. The user searches for what they want in the document management system, click and it launches the needed application.
We definitely should be able to say the user is a lot of responsibility here, but in the end that rarely works out, especially when the boss was SURE her file was a Word doc only for you to find that it was in fact an Excel sheet.
I think the training part that will make this a tough sell is getting the users to use tags. Unless there is a way to make it so you can't save the file until at least one tag is added, I just don't see users doing it. Just look at posts here - Scott follows behind me and I'm sure countless others adding tags to our OPs so they are searchable later.
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@Dashrender said:
I think using apps is about the worst way to manage that, but at the same time I understand why it can be seen as better.
Well you either have to use files to manage the app or the app to manage the files or worse... make end users do both which is really rough.
What is the downside to the app approach?
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@Dashrender said:
Perhaps the best option is the pure document management with tags setup. The user searches for what they want in the document management system, click and it launches the needed application.
Why? That's extra work and exposing the "guts" to the end users. We want to make it simpler, not harder.
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@Dashrender said:
We definitely should be able to say the user is a lot of responsibility here, but in the end that rarely works out, especially when the boss was SURE her file was a Word doc only for you to find that it was in fact an Excel sheet.
One confused user should not define all workflows. The end user HAS TO take some responsibility. This is not an opinion, its just fact. It's not about being nice or whatever, it HAS TO BE. The only way to not have this be the case is to fire the end user and do the work ourselves.
If the end user can't remember the application, the filename, the location, the reason, why they are at work.... we can't help them. At least by starting from an app we have the most opportunity to find things by function. What do you want? Why do you want it?
That users need to think about files at all is too complicated.
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@Dashrender said:
I think the training part that will make this a tough sell is getting the users to use tags. Unless there is a way to make it so you can't save the file until at least one tag is added, I just don't see users doing it.
I can't imagine having something like Sharepoint while disabling the tagging requirement. Would just lead to a mess.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
I think the training part that will make this a tough sell is getting the users to use tags. Unless there is a way to make it so you can't save the file until at least one tag is added, I just don't see users doing it.
I can't imagine having something like Sharepoint while disabling the tagging requirement. Would just lead to a mess.
He's saying he wants a way to ENFORCE tagging, not disable it.
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@dafyre said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
I think the training part that will make this a tough sell is getting the users to use tags. Unless there is a way to make it so you can't save the file until at least one tag is added, I just don't see users doing it.
I can't imagine having something like Sharepoint while disabling the tagging requirement. Would just lead to a mess.
He's saying he wants a way to ENFORCE tagging, not disable it.
It's standard to force in on Sharepoint. Not on by default, but standard. You'd effectively have to disable to not have it enforced.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
I think using apps is about the worst way to manage that, but at the same time I understand why it can be seen as better.
Well you either have to use files to manage the app or the app to manage the files or worse... make end users do both which is really rough.
What is the downside to the app approach?
Lost files because you're the wrong app.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@dafyre said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
I think the training part that will make this a tough sell is getting the users to use tags. Unless there is a way to make it so you can't save the file until at least one tag is added, I just don't see users doing it.
I can't imagine having something like Sharepoint while disabling the tagging requirement. Would just lead to a mess.
He's saying he wants a way to ENFORCE tagging, not disable it.
It's standard to force in on Sharepoint. Not on by default, but standard. You'd effectively have to disable to not have it enforced.
I could see it working much better for the end user to use something like SharePoint as their only means to accessing files. Then no apps matter. The correct app is choose when you launch the file you want. Also hopefully through something like SharePoint, you can force users to not use folder structure, instead everything is in one root folder. You want to find something.. you find it by tags.. or the file name.. not because you stuck it in xyz folder.
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
I think using apps is about the worst way to manage that, but at the same time I understand why it can be seen as better.
Well you either have to use files to manage the app or the app to manage the files or worse... make end users do both which is really rough.
What is the downside to the app approach?
Lost files because you're the wrong app.
But outside of that one woman, one time does anyone actually run into this problem? And, more importantly, doesn't it introduce lots of other problems? Remembering EVERY file rather than every app seems insane. You would need to know hundreds of things instead of a handful. If she can't remember the app but can remember the file, maybe that is because she has too many things to remember.
Since she couldn't remember if it was a letter or a spreadsheet... how did she find it in the end anyway?
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
I think using apps is about the worst way to manage that, but at the same time I understand why it can be seen as better.
Well you either have to use files to manage the app or the app to manage the files or worse... make end users do both which is really rough.
What is the downside to the app approach?
Lost files because you're the wrong app.
The problem here, presumably, is that she does not have any idea what she was looking for. At some point... she forgot everything about what she was doing. Why did she need it at all if she didn't even know what it was? What was the goal?
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@dafyre said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
I think the training part that will make this a tough sell is getting the users to use tags. Unless there is a way to make it so you can't save the file until at least one tag is added, I just don't see users doing it.
I can't imagine having something like Sharepoint while disabling the tagging requirement. Would just lead to a mess.
He's saying he wants a way to ENFORCE tagging, not disable it.
It's standard to force in on Sharepoint. Not on by default, but standard. You'd effectively have to disable to not have it enforced.
I could see it working much better for the end user to use something like SharePoint as their only means to accessing files. Then no apps matter. The correct app is choose when you launch the file you want. Also hopefully through something like SharePoint, you can force users to not use folder structure, instead everything is in one root folder. You want to find something.. you find it by tags.. or the file name.. not because you stuck it in xyz folder.
I'm finding the idea that users shouldn't know apps and should let files drive everything absurd. I've literally never in my career heard of this as a concern or issue. It sounds completely crazy. I realize how it "could happen" but to design all technology around this one totally off the wall use case seems like a huge leap to make. You make everything much harder for everyone everywhere in exchange for one person to one time not have to remember in any way what they want to do? It just doesn't make sense.
Without that one anecdote, what's the downside? Users have to open an app, that can never go away. So since they are in an app, why make them go to a file management system at all to manage files? It's all unnecessary complication.
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Sharepoint is certainly an improvement over the old file systems. Tags blow away folders. That's a given.
But I really can't think of a need for end users to be managing files at all. It's just so much work that they don't need to do.
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But you should still be using tags when using direct applications to find files.
Can you search tags inside Excel?
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@Dashrender said:
But you should still be using tags when using direct applications to find files.
Can you search tags inside Excel?
That I am not sure as I don't use it. No need to tag it as Excel, though
Actually, tags would have stopped the person in your example as she would have filtered out the file she needed. So would keeping things in folders as she would have chosen the wrong folder.If Excel doesn't, it should be added. Would suck to lose that functionality. But that is application by application.
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I don't mean a tag with the program.. I mean tags of content of the file, just like tags here.
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@Dashrender said:
I don't mean a tag with the program.. I mean tags of content of the file, just like tags here.
Why would they not be one and the same?
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@scottalanmiller Well of course the list could be the same. and for this particular user if they would have searched for a Word file with say BOD in it... they would have failed to find what they wanted.... but with a small tweak to their searching pattern, dropping the app portion of the search, and only searching for BOD, they would have found what they wanted.
My point is that using the tags is an awesome feature, but why would you tag a file with the application name? I suppose that tag could be added automatically so one could sort/search through only, for example, excel files, but I don't see that being overly common or even needed.. instead just search for the terms you know, don't worry about the application type.
As for your point being that this is a one off type situation - I beg to differ. Around here this kind of problem has been pretty common.
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@Dashrender said:
My point is that using the tags is an awesome feature, but why would you tag a file with the application name? I suppose that tag could be added automatically so one could sort/search through only, for example, excel files, but I don't see that being overly common or even needed.. instead just search for the terms you know, don't worry about the application type.
No need to tag because it is an intrinsic aspect of the file. And searching/sorting on it is so common it is practically assumed.
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But I don't see what the point was... I'm saying that an app, like Excel, could read the tags. And then any tag searching you would do from a file management system you would do instead from the application in which you wish to work.
