MySite drop box
From ctowiki
Using A Drop Box
Dropping something off
Access the user's drop box, upload your document. In the "My Submissions" view you will see the items you have deposited.
Drop Box privacy
The drop box has many-to-one privacy. The owner can see everything. People who drop something off can see their own item. To maintain this status, owners should not "approve" documents. Approved documents are visible/editable by all.
Re-editing something you dropped off
You can return to the other person's drop box and re-edit your submission
Locking a Drop Box against re-editing
The owner of the dropbox can change the access permissions to the drop box and stop all users from further dropping and further editing. It is not clear if this can be done on a user-by-user basis in a mySite.
Giving feedback to a person who dropped something off
The owner can give feedback to the original contributor. There are two mechanisms.
- For feedback limited to general comments and <255 characters, use the Document Approve/Reject option -- leave the document's status as "pending" and add a comment. **It is worth exploring what happens if you "reject" and item.**
- For detailed feedback in a Word document, use track changes in the document and return the edited document. *This seems to work for Macintosh users who have to download and re-upload the document
Getting Notified that you have feedback
You can set an alert on the Dropbox and learn when it, or individual items, get changed. This has not been fully explored in a multi-person submission environment.
Versions of a Drop Box Item
Versioning can be turned on. If it is, the administrator and the person who submitted the item can see the version history.
Making a Drop Box item public
The administrator can approve an item in a drop box. This makes it visible (and editable) by others. If edited, it returns to pending approval state.
Administrators depositing items into Drop Boxes
The item is set to "approved" be default and thus visible/editable by all. Probably not intended or useful. To share a document, use the "Public Documents" library on your mySite.
Making a Quick Link to a Drop Box
If you visit a drop box regularly, you can use "Add to My Links" to make a quick link in your mySite to the dropbox.
Other views of the Drop Box
There are several views of the Drop Box.
- All Documents
- Everyone sees this, it shows your items and all approved items from anyone else.
- Explorer View
- Everyone sees this (but it only works for IE users). It shows all documents, regardless of approval status. All documents are editable by any viewer, regardless of approval status. For a drop box, this view should be deleted.
- Approve/reject Items
- Only the administrator(s) of the Drop Box see this view. It allows management of approvals.
- My submissions
- Everyone sees this, it shows all the items you contributed.
Security Concerns
Note that the content approval mechanism used to provide the drop box functionality is NOT a security feature. It only controls the visibility of documents in certain views. Other methods of access (e.g., WebDAV or "Web Folders", guessing the URL) can give any user who is authorized for the library access to any document in the library, regardless of its approval status.
Suggestion: Users should consider setting an alert on their drop box and moving/ deleting things from their box shortly after dropping. This could provide a security work around, but might limit the utility of the dropbox for online class application and for collaboration over time around the dropped item.
Creating A Drop Box
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