Managing Attachments, Files and Photos

Part 2: Settings and their Appearance

(In Preparation)

This page is designed to provide Owners, Moderators and Members with guidance about what the various users will see when different settings are applied.

ATTACHMENTS:

Is there a way to limit the allowable size of an email sent to the group?

No, you can't limit the size sent if you allow attachments. Currently, the only way to do this is to set the group to moderate emails containing attachments and manually reject those that fail to meet your requirements.

Can I keep big attachments from clogging up my personal email system?

Open your own member record (Subscriptions) and click open the Advanced Preferences block. Set Max Attachment Size to something other than Unlimited and save. Anything larger will only include a link in the message that is sent to you. You can also set your preference to 0 and then read them online.

This won't keep people from sending large attachments to the group and using up storage space, but at least it will keep groups.io from attempting to deliver them to you via email (a hyperlink to the attachment will be sent instead).

What about the group members?

You can make this setting the default for new group members at https://groups.io/g/GROUPNAME/defaultsubsettings (click Default Sub Settings button at the top of your Settings page).
Any existing members will have to be changed one by one. You'd have to go to each person's member record, go into Advanced Preferences, change it, then scroll down to Save.  Might not be too bad for a few members or send them instructions.

What else can I do?

• An owner can set Moderated for all attachments in Admin, Settings, Message Formatting area.  
• If a large attachment has been sent and you succeed in downloading it, consider moving the document to Files for others to fetch if they want to.
• Inform the Group about how to change Max Attachment Size in their own accounts.
• Set  the Group to allow Members to do File uploads if larger documents are needed by members.

FILES:

Members can view and upload: 

The following screenshot is a section of what is seen when a Moderator opens a Files Tab. This is a heavily cropped view to anonymize the group from which the screenshot was taken,

Screenshot 1

Note that one Folder has been created by a Moderator, and one by a Member. As the above is a Moderators view there is access to the four editing tabs shown in blue to the right of each folder title; from left to right they are Update, Move, Delete and Report. 

The next screenshot shows the same Files section when opened by a Member.  

Screenshot 2

Note that while the Member has access to the same New Folder and Upload File tabs, there is no access to the editing tools for the Moderator's Folder, other than Report; the editing tools for the Member's own Folder remain accessible. Members can only edit Folders and Files of their own creation; Moderators have full editing privileges. The same situation occurs with Files within Folders; Members can only edit material they have uploaded, not that uploaded by others. They can, however, move their Files into a different Folder; while Files have "owners" Folders do not. This can be seen from a real files section (as opposed to screenshots cropped for anonymity).,

Note: If the Storage Allowance for any given group is exceeded the blue Upload File tab will be greyed out.

Members can view, moderators can upload:

With this setting the Moderator's view is the same as shown in Screenshot 1 above.

Members cannot view, Moderators can upload: In this mode the Files and Photos Tabs in the left hand Menu column are removed from Members' web UIs but are visible and active for Moderators. The facilities available to Moderators are the same as for settings described above and will not be repeated here.

Files (or Photos) are Disabled: Although Files & Photos being disabled may well not be the norm it is one of the easiest situations to describe. Disabling either feature removes the respective Tab from the Menu down the left hand side of the web UI. Although any content in either archive at the time of disablement becomes inaccessible, it is not deleted and if the feature is later restored the content will once again be accessible.

It is worth noting that attached photos still work correctly even if the Photos section is disabled; a thumbnail appears in the text of the message and when clicked an enlarged version appears as normal. If the photos section is re-enabled the photo concerned will be found in the Emailed Photos Album as expected.

Photos

To be continued...