NetDrive - Any One Used It?
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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.
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@scottalanmiller said:
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.
If and only if the searching revealed any and all files with the tag, not just those limited to the open application. Currently Excel limits its search to Excel (and related) files only. This is why my push for the document management system instead.
But, change that default behavior of the apps, and I'd be happy with that.
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
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.
If and only if the searching revealed any and all files with the tag, not just those limited to the open application. Currently Excel limits its search to Excel (and related) files only. This is why my push for the document management system instead.
But, change that default behavior of the apps, and I'd be happy with that.
I feel like you are obsessed with this one idea. It really doesn't happen to other people. Have you ever seen or heard of this problem outside of this one user one time? I feel like everything around data storage comes down to the one story that happened one time. None of this applies in the real world that I have seen. Not once, ever. Do you actually see people not knowing what they were doing constantly?
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@Dashrender said:
Currently Excel limits its search to Excel (and related) files only. This is why my push for the document management system instead.
Honestly anything else would be crazy. It's BEFORE you only want to open the apps that are for the function that you want to perform that you don't want to just work with files. What you define as the one need of your storage system, I think you will find the rest of the world has already defined as the one thing they don't want to see happen.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
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.
If and only if the searching revealed any and all files with the tag, not just those limited to the open application. Currently Excel limits its search to Excel (and related) files only. This is why my push for the document management system instead.
But, change that default behavior of the apps, and I'd be happy with that.
I feel like you are obsessed with this one idea. It really doesn't happen to other people. Have you ever seen or heard of this problem outside of this one user one time? I feel like everything around data storage comes down to the one story that happened one time. None of this applies in the real world that I have seen. Not once, ever. Do you actually see people not knowing what they were doing constantly?
Sadly yes - a lot, no, of course not.. but enough to the point where I am concerned about it.
I'm sure I'm also biased because I personally never launch a program to open a file on my computer, I use explorer to find the file in question, double click and it opens the associated program. Of course on mobile, that's not how things work... so I do your method.
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
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.
If and only if the searching revealed any and all files with the tag, not just those limited to the open application. Currently Excel limits its search to Excel (and related) files only. This is why my push for the document management system instead.
But, change that default behavior of the apps, and I'd be happy with that.
I feel like you are obsessed with this one idea. It really doesn't happen to other people. Have you ever seen or heard of this problem outside of this one user one time? I feel like everything around data storage comes down to the one story that happened one time. None of this applies in the real world that I have seen. Not once, ever. Do you actually see people not knowing what they were doing constantly?
Sadly yes - a lot, no, of course not.. but enough to the point where I am concerned about it.
I'm sure I'm also biased because I personally never launch a program to open a file on my computer, I use explorer to find the file in question, double click and it opens the associated program. Of course on mobile, that's not how things work... so I do your method.
Right, mobile is taking over so nearly everyone is used to that method now. But even on Windows I know that everything in the MS ecosystem is designed around launching from within the apps and let me tell you, it makes things so much easier when you are dealing with data all over the place and all you care about is getting things done. Having to understand, know and navigate storage to do tasks is cumbersome, slow and difficult for end users.
What I want to know is... how do users run into this problem? What is causing this. What is unique about what they are doing that they are driven by files and not functionality? I'm unclear how the workflow could confuse anyone in that way - the natural thing is to know what you want to do but not know the name of a file. How do they remember a file but have no idea what it is for and yet still care about doing something with it?
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Mostly because many people use the wrong app for whatever they are doing...
Like making a list in Word instead of Excel, etc...
I know I made these notes about the board meeting... But I could have sworn I did it in excel... Nope found it was a word file.
I have users who have no idea how to open an app without a shortcut on the desktop.. Can't figure out the start menu, etc.
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@Dashrender said:
Mostly because many people use the wrong app for whatever they are doing...
Like making a list in Word instead of Excel, etc...
I know I made these notes about the board meeting... But I could have sworn I did it in excel... Nope found it was a word file.
I have users who have no idea how to open an app without a shortcut on the desktop.. Can't figure out the start menu, etc.
I get that they are clueless, but it seems like there must be a good answer to this. Maybe the answer is taking these tools away and only letting them have OneNote
It just seems amazing that they can remember enough to find something but not know what it was or how they worked on it. -
@scottalanmiller said:
I get that they are clueless, but it seems like there must be a good answer to this. Maybe the answer is taking these tools away and only letting them have OneNote
One Note is too complicated for End-Users...I recommend good, old fashioned Notepad for those users. :-B
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Scott is right, even though I've experienced this issue, and I (the IT Person) need to have solutions to help find things, this doesn't mean we need to complicate the entire environment because of the minority.
Deities know - I hate kowtowing to the minority. Have a plan for them when possible, but don't make massive sweeping changing because of them if possible.
