- In this section of the course,
I'm going to talk about some of the things
that you can be doing right now
that will provide immediate benefits to you
and highlight the value of using collaborative technologies
and tools.
Let's start with one of my personal pet peeves,
emails with attachments.
How many of you have been stuck in email jail
where you couldn't send or receive any more messages
because you went over the size limit for your account?
How many times was that because somebody
sent you a huge file as an attachment?
I won't even get into the subject of file
and image size optimization,
but if you're like me,
this has happened to you more than once.
What's the alternative?
Well, almost every modern file sharing tool has the ability
to send a link to a file rather than the file itself.
The file is stored in a central repository,
either online or on-premise,
and the link allows people to access the file
where it lives rather than on their computer.
This has two major advantages.
Number one, obviously email messages will be a lot smaller
meaning less time in email jail.
Number two is a little less obvious.
Do you realize that every time you attach a document
to an email,
you're essentially creating another copy of it?
When you share links to files instead
of the files themselves,
you direct everyone back to the actual file itself.
This gives you much better version control.
You're basically restricting things to one single version
of the truth.
You also have the ability to grant or restrict permissions
for the document.
Do you want people to read, edit, have full control,
including the ability to delete?
These are all possibilities open to you.
Often, like in SharePoint, you even have the ability
to block people from downloading the document.
Very nice if you need something to stay confidential.
Let me show you this in action.
Here's a SharePoint document library.
I'm going to share this document here,
so I click to select a document and I click share
in the menu bar.
This dialogue pops up,
prompting me to enter the email address or addresses
of whom I want to share it with.
Now, notice this.
It currently says that anyone with the link can view,
share, or edit.
If I click that, I get a few more options.
Now, I can choose to restrict this to just people
who already have access as granted through SharePoint
or to anyone who has the link.
I can allow or disallow editing and this is nice.
If I'm sending it to someone
who doesn't normally have access,
I can even set an expiration date.
After this, they'll no longer be able to get to the file.
Controls like these are pretty typical
in file sharing tools.
Look, I'm not saying that it's never appropriate
to attach a file.
Just last week,
I had to send a couple of forms to someone
that I don't share with on a regular basis,
so attaching them was a simpler option.
Also in this case, version control wasn't an issue,
but you should absolutely be thinking about
what that file is, how it's going to be used,
and how the content needs to be protected
before you attach a document at work.