Sharing

If Sharing is enabled on your system you can send out an email so that others can get a secure link to the media so that they can review the clip. If the share recipient is logged in they will also be sent to the same area, but they can get a link to the item that has been shared out so they can view it in the normal item page.

Sharing is managed under the Manage menu.

The first step for sharing is to set up the email settings in portal.conf.

Example portal.conf configuration to send email to local e-mail server on port 25 without authentication:

[email]
EMAIL_SUBJECT_PREFIX = releasetest-rh
SERVER_EMAIL = no-reply@example.com
REQUIRE_EMAIL_VERIFICATION = false
CONTACT_EMAIL = no-reply@example.com
DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL = no-reply@example.com
EMAIL_USE_TLS = false
EMAIL_PORT = 25
SENDING_EMAIL = no-reply@example.com
EMAIL_HOST = localhost

Example portal.conf configuration to send email to GMail:

[email]
EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD = secret
EMAIL_SUBJECT_PREFIX = portal.example.com
SERVER_EMAIL = no-reply@example.com
REQUIRE_EMAIL_VERIFICATION = false
CONTACT_EMAIL = no-reply@example.com
DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL = no-reply@example.com
EMAIL_USE_TLS = true
EMAIL_PORT = 587
SENDING_EMAIL = no-reply@example.com
EMAIL_HOST_USER = no-reply@example.com
EMAIL_HOST = smtp.googlemail.com

Sharing Configuration

On the sharing overview page you can configure the following attributes:

Enabled:

This is say whether the system is able to share out. But this will also will stop any external users accessing any existing shared out links. They will get a Not Found Error until it is enabled again.

Minimum Timeout and Maximum Timeout:

The links sent out by the sharing functionality are secure links, one for each recipient of each share. They are also designed to timeout after a set amount of time. The user when sharing out can set how long they think that the link should be live, but only within the limitations that an admin can set here. For instance you might want a link to last at least one day but a maximum of one week.

Add a number to the min and/or maximum amounts then set the units.

Note

You can’t set just the units without setting a number.

Comments Enabled:

The Cantemo page that users (by default) are sent to when clicking on the share link is different from the main item page. If comments are enabled it will let the share recipient see any public comments and also leave comments. These comments are stored with the email address of the recipient.

Enforce Password:

Forces the user that is sharing out media to define a password that the recipient must enter when going to a share page.

Download Enabled:

Enables a download button allowing all recipients of the share link to easily download the content to their local machine.

Sharing Message

When entering a share the user enters a subject and message. This subject and message can be used as context in the templates that create the emails that get sent out.

For instance you might want to add a company wide footer to the message, or a prefix to the subject line.

Using Django template language you can alter the message that gets sent out in both the text and html versions of the message. The following variables are available for you to use:

  • message - the message as entered by the user.

  • link - the unique link created by the system for the share.

  • user - the user that is sending out the emails.

  • item - a reference to the VSItem that the share is being done on.

For more information on how you can use Django Template language, VSItem and context variables please refer to the Django Documentation and our own developers guide.

List Shares.

Shares are stored each time a user presses submit on the sharing functionality. One share has multiple recipients, and each recipient has individual unique share links.

When listing the shares we show the following:

  • Date Created - A timestamp of when the user sent the share out.

  • Date Timeout - When the share links are expected to timeout.

  • User - The user that sent out the share.

  • Subject - The subject that was set.

  • Item - The item that was used.

  • Recipients - A truncated list of some of the recipients of the share.

Clicking on the Date Created / Date Timeout / Subject - will take you to the detail page for the share. This lists all the individual share recipients with their unique link that was sent out. It also shows the number of times that link has been accessed, the date that it was last accessed and whether that link it active or not.

You can click on the Active link to change between True and False - Active or not Active. A recipient that follows a link to a non-active share link will get a Not Found error.

You can also change the following parameters on the share:

  • Timeout - The date when these sharelinks will become non-active.

  • Password - The password that a user must enter before accessing the share.

The other parameters are read only.

Changing/Extending Sharing functionality.

The Share functionality is designed to be flexible you can change the messages that get sent and whether users can enter comments or not as well as other parameters.

However we have also added plugin interfaces to some of the major places in the sharing functionality so that developers can easily change and extend it.

For example when a user sends out a share; the process for creating the link can be changed, and the messages that get sent out changed, plus extra actions could be put in place. This would allow Cantemo to trigger an upload a low resolution copy of the item that is being shared out into the cloud, and the unique link will be changed to send the user to that external cloud system.

If you are interested in this please consult the developers documentation or get in touch with your reseller.