Wednesday, September 1, 2021

BY HOOK OR BY CROOK

When I called the UMass OIT help desk to figure out how to get access to all the things I have archived on box.net, I was told that they had put in a work order and I would hear from the folks handling this sort of thing. When I did not hear, I called again and was told that the people who answered the phone have absolutely no contact the people who are actually doing the work, even though they are in the same building (!!). But a nice young man told me how to get access to my materials, and it worked. So I have put a URL at the top of my blog under the heading "my stuff" and it works. The only problem is it is not a link so instead of clicking on it, you have to copy it and put it in your command line and then you can get to my stuff. This is roughly the equivalent of driving across country by hooking up a team of oxen to your Jaguar but if it works, it works. So my stuff is again available. At some point, the inaccessible folks handling these sorts of things will get around to it and then presumably I can substitute a link and be marginally a resident of the 21st century.


Enjoy.

7 comments:

  1. Let me explain how you can get a link to your stuff.

    I have to write some of it out because otherwise the html code will be interpreted in the comment and thus not be visible here.

    So, I will write LESS THAN SIGN when you should instead type the symbol for that: <.
    Similarly for GREATER THAN SIGN: >. Notice that (because I am spelling out these symbols) words run into other things, e.g. LESS THAN SIGNa would look like <a


    If you want a link, replace the text you have now,

    My Stuff

    with the following

    LESS THAN SIGNa href="https://umass-my.sharepoint.com/personal/rwolff_umass_edu/_layouts/15/onedrive.aspx"GREATER THAN SIGNMy StuffLESS THAN SIGN/aGREATER THAN SIGN

    Don't get rid of anything surrounding

    My Stuff

    (e.g. where it currently read as

    LESS THAN SIGNh2 class="title"GREATER THAN SIGN

    or

    LESS THAN SIGN/h2GREATER THAN SIGN

    It does not matter whether everything is on one line or not.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Noting that there are links on the same page, right? I see the link to amazon, for which the code is like this:

    The following books by Robert Paul Wolff are available on Amazon.com

    Also noting, this 'mystuff' link requires a username/password for the umass-my.sharepoint.com directory. This is to say that nobody gets in. Sharepoint, what is it? It's better suited for medium and large organizations, mostly aimed at companies.

    It doesn't 'work'. Not to be too directive about this, but I'm curious -- file sharing with Dropbox is quick and simple?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Rats. So I can get in but no one else can? Back to the drawingbaord.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Achim Kriechel (A.K.)September 2, 2021 at 2:58 AM

    Its easy to copy and paste
    I guess most people will do this automatically if a link doesnt work

    ReplyDelete
  5. May be a case of asking your IT support people if they have a way of making the files publicly accessible. They may think that they are private university resources if they do not already know otherwise.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I gather that UMass Amherst’s legacy online file storage and sharing service has been retired as of July 26, 2021. This, I take it, has created your issue, because your Box data was be automatically moved to Microsoft OneDrive. This is, it seems, UMass Amherst's new preferred online storage platform.

    So the issue now, is how to share OneDrive files with people who don't have a Microsoft Cloud account. Or: can you share OneDrive files externally? -- with external users (guests)? -- with or without a Microsoft 365 subscription, OneDrive, or SharePoint account?

    Well, I think, that if you want anyone who receives the sharing link to be able to access the content, you can select Anyone with the link option in Link settings.

    Something like this: 'Who would you like this link to wor for? -- 'Anyone with the link'

    Note: Anyone option may not be available in your organization depending on the settings your admin has selected.

    ReplyDelete
  7. These files currently reside on a Sharepoint server at UMass, and as such are not accessible to anyone outside the 'enterprise'. I can see two solutions (1) request the UMass IT folks to migrate the files to a site or a server which is accessible to the public; this may benefit from a push from a department chair or dean to move it up the IT queue; (2) Copy the files you want onto your own machine and then upload them to a site (server) which is accessible to the public. The latter is perhaps labor-intensive for you, but option #1 may turn out to be infeasible.

    ReplyDelete