Wuala Blog

With Wuala, collaboration has just become a lot easier. The most common and best way to do it, is to create a group around a certain topic and start organizing all your files, from videos over music to powerpoint presentations and word files in it. In this post, I want to show you how to create a group and how to use it.

First, I'd like to give you some examples of how Wuala groups are being used today:

• Online Communities who want to share and access their files in one place


• Family members who are spread around the world and want to exchange photos


• Students who have running projects or study groups and want to exchange & collaborate on raw data, summaries, presentations, word docs, etc.


• Lecturers who want to provide their students with course material of all formats in one place (videos, images, documents, etc.)


• Private societies who want to centrally store their files and access them from anywhere (e.g. if the president changes, the successor will have access to all files in no time)

Creating a group
The first step to create a new group is to go to the "My Groups" tab. In this tab you can right click with your mouse anywhere in the blank area. A context menu will pop up in which you will find the option "create group" (see screenshot).


After you have clicked on "create group", a dialogue with some options will appear (see second screenshot). In this dialogue you have to first fill in a name for your group (example: online collaboration). Then you have to decide whether you want your group contents to be publicly accessible or if you want to keep it private. If you make your group private, only the members will be able to browse its contents while the contents of public groups can be viewed by all Wuala users.

Private groups still have the option to have a public profile, which means that they will be included in search results. Groups which don't have public profiles do not appear in search results, thus they are only known to actual and invited members.

Public groups can be open for anyone to join or you can require users to be accepted by an admin or moderator. I will show you in the next step why this option makes a difference.

Customizing groups
I have created a public group that requires new members to be accepted by an admin or moderator. The group then immediately appeared in my list of public groups (the standard logo for new groups is an orange butterfly). I double clicked on the group in order to get inside it. Then I decided to give the group a new image by clicking on "set image" in the top left corner just below the logo (the butterfly). I decided to use my own image by clicking "create icon", then "open image" and then used the scrollbar on the right to adjust the area of the image that I want to use as my group logo.



After inserting the logo, I added a description, some keywords and my imaginary website address to my group's profile in order for it to be found by other Wuala users. Then I pressed "save" in the bottom right corner of the grey area (see screenshot). Keywords are mostly important for the search function because users can find my group if they look for one of my group's keywords.

Inviting others to join & managing group members
My group is now ready for my friends to join in. If I do not want my friends to have to search for the group, I can simply invite them. To do so, I click on the large text "invite friends" and then tick all the friends I want to invite. As soon as I hit "ok", all the marked friends will be invited and appear in the "unconfirmed members" section (like "Carola" in the screenshot). Members who found my group in the search results and want to join it appear in the "member requests" section (like Sushi in the screenshot). Members who were invited and who accepted my invitation will appear next to me in the "members" section (like Luzius in the screenshot).



Files in groups are managed just like in the "My Files" section. I can create folders, add all types of files (videos, music, word docs, etc.) or links and my files will be available to all other group members as soon as I have finished uploading them. The main difference between the "My Files" section and groups is, that I can give moderation or administration rights to the group members. To do so, I can simply right click inside the white area in the group and choose "Roles and Permissions ...". After defining the standard role for new members and the rights for each role, I can assign roles to each member by right clicking on the member name, then moving the cursor over "change role" and chose the appropriate role for the member (like I do for Luzius in the screenshot).



Communicating in team projects
A specialty of Wuala is its comment function. This function enables you to comment on just about everything you can find inside the Wuala community. You can comment on files, folders, users and groups. Of course your friends can reply to these comments. In order to write comments I have to select a file, a folder or a friend by left clicking on it once and then chose "click here to comment" at the very bottom of the Wuala client (see screenshot). A comment box will immediately appear on the right side of the screen, where I can type my comment and click "add" to store it with the file, folder, friend, etc. My friends will be notified of my comment and they can reply next time they go into Wuala.



Summary
A short list of the steps to be taken in order to create a group for online collaboration:

• Go to the "My Groups" tab


• Right click in the white area and click "create group"


• Make your group public or private


• Start inviting people


• Set roles and permissions


• Assign roles to members


• Start uploading & commenting files

Advantages of using Wuala in teams, work groups or study groups:

• Files will immediately and always be available anywhere


• Easy communication through comments


• No file size or type limitation


• Joint editing on documents


• Full control: Easily set roles and permissions and assign them to members


• Collaborators can stream videos, they don't have to download them first


• I can harness the speed of a P2P network (fast up- and downloads)


• Several copies of files only use storage capacity of one (see last week's blog post for further info)