Welcome to Web Portal User Guide’s documentation!¶

Contents:

Getting Started¶

Introduction¶

Welcome to the Triofox Web Portal User Guide. This guide describes web portal functionality for users as well as administrators in Triofox.

Triofox helps businesses mobilize their file servers by enhancing existing Windows file servers with secure remote acccess, mobile file sharing, data protection and cloud migration, while addressing business concerns about security, privacy, compliance and control.

Triofox adds ransomware protection and automatic alert mechanism to your file servers. It continously monitors all the Triofox clients for any unusual activity and will automatically shut them down if it sees a possible attack.

Triofox removes any need for businesses to rely on a VPN or a company computer to securely access files. With Triofox, data sprawl is eliminated as data stays on local file servers and mobile productivity is balanced by centralized management and access controls.

Triofox natively integrates with Active Directory and maintains all the existing NTFS permissions and there is no need to recreate any user identities. With military grade encryption and secure connections, use existing users and permissions to save setup time and money. files stay on local file servers and encrypted at the end point cache.

Triofox includes the backend Triofox server, which runs on Windows server platform, and front end client applications for Microsoft Windows, Mac OSx, and mobile clients for the Android and Apple iOS operating systems.

The Web portal is an important part of the solution for the following reasons:

most of the management work is done on the web portal.

downloading other native client agent softwares starts from the web portal.

web browser file manager have rich and responsive feature to manage files, sharing and collaboration.

Other important features and functions of the web portal are also covered in this document.

Note

The web portal user guide is updated for version 11.9.9226.48971

Background¶

Architectural Background¶

Before we examine the capabilities of the solution, let’s review its architectural background. As illustrated in Figure 1, the CentreStack File Sync and Share platform has three primary components:

The Storage Layer and the Internal IT infrastructure such as Active Directory and File Server - to the right

The CentreStack Cluster (Server Farm) - at the center

The CentreStack access client agents - to the left

The web portal belongs to the client tier on the left. Web portal functionality includes

administration

files and folders management

download other client agent software

files and folders sharing

Two Deployment Scenarios¶

The services can be deployed in flexible combinations to meet different needs. There are two primary ways to deploy CentreStack.

Deploy in the same site as the File Servers and Active Directory domain controllers:

Deploy in a site remote, such as Amazon Web Services EC2, Microsoft Azure, or in a Data Center where the Managed Service Provider (MSP) hosts their infrastructure:

Existing Infrastructure¶

Active Directory¶

CentreStack can connect to existing IT infrastructure such as current file servers and existing Active Directory.

Data Storage¶

CentreStack Storage can actually be powered by any storage service, including:

Local File Server Network Share

CIFS/SMB Network Share

DFS (Microsoft Distributed File System)

Cloud Storage Services

Amazon S3 (or any S3 compatible service)

OpenStack Swift

Windows Azure Blob Storage

Windows Azure File Storage

Google Cloud Storage

Rackspace CloudFiles

When a new CentreStack account (Tenant Account) is created, any of these services can be selected to power the tenant’s root storage folder. And, regardless of which provider you select here, additional services can be mounted below the root of the tenants’ storage tree where they will appear as a sub-folder in the root folder.

CentreStack Server Farm (Cluster)¶

The CentreStack Cluster (One or more CentreStack servers) provides the access infrastructure and management services and acts as a liaison between the user-facing access clients and the backend storage services. It consists of a group of web services which include:

Account Management

Login and User Load Balancing

Web Portal UI

Generic Storage Services (powered by backend provider)

Data Persistence

Local Storage/Device Relay

These services can be deployed in flexible combinations to meet different needs.

CentreStack has an all-in-one installer, so it can easily be self-hosted by you or you can use the one hosted already in the cloud.

CentreStack Client Agent Software¶

The CentreStack Clients enable the use of CentreStack services. Supported clients include:

Desktop Client for Windows

Desktop Client for Mac

Server Agent for Windows Server (background sync)

iOS client for iPhone and iPad

Android Client

Windows Phone Client

Windows Tablet Client

Web Client (Internet Explorer, Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Opera and etc)

These clients allow native use of cloud storage on the corresponding device through a mapped drive, file share or whatever mechanism is commonly used to access files. This makes it easy for a user to access all their files with any device or share them with users of any device.

Each client tries to keep things familiar for the end user. For example, the server client integrates cloud storage with file shares so that shared cloud folders can be easily published as file shares with access controls that can be based on existing Active Directory identities and the desktop client maintains a mapped drive view of the cloud storage which operates like any other drive on the desktop.

Browser Requirements¶

The web portal runs inside compatible web browsers. We recommend using the following web browsers.

Google Chrome (Latest)

Firefox (Latest)

Safari (Latest)

Windows Edge (Latest)

Opera (Latest)

Internet Explorer (11)

Warning

For administration work, the Web Portal doesn’t support Internet Explorer 8 any more.

Note

Google Chrome and Firefox have self-update features so most of the time you are running the latest version. It is OK if these web browser are not the latest versions, as long as they were released after 2011.

For the best user experience, however, we recommend the latest version of web browsers.

Different Scope of Users¶

Tenant Administrator¶

Tenant is a management scope that typically map to a company or a group of users that collaborates on a set of documents. In CentreStack, it is referred to as the Tenant Account as well.

On a per-tenant basis, you can create team users inside the tenant; you can setup Active Directory connection per-tenant; you can setup team folder to share among users inside the tenant.

As a CentreStack administrator, you can think of a tenant as a company, who is your client/customer, which in turn may have some of its own users too.

Team User¶

Team user are users inside a tenant scope. They have credentials to login to CentreStack. They are regular users in a tenant that have home directory and storage quota assigned. If a tenant is a company, the team user are employees in the company.

Delegate Administrator¶

A delegated administrator is a team user most of the time. However, delegated administrators can be elevated to full tenant administrators by clicking on the “Manage Team Cloud” link. This link is only visible if you are logged in as a Delegate Administrator. To create this type of administrator follow these steps as Tenant Admin.

Logged in as Tenant Admin, you can delegate administrators through the Control Panel of the Tenant Dashboard (1).

TENANT ADMINISTRATORS SETTINGS

In the Tenant Administrators panel you can choose a user you want to add from the field upon clicking the “Edit” option (2). Choose “Update” (3) when finished.

Tenant administrators can be removed by clearing the field given in the “Edit” option.

DELEGATED ADMINISTRATORS

When a team user (with delegate administrator assignment) logs in, there will be a “Manage Team Cloud” link available (4).

MANAGE TEAM CLOUD ACCESS

And when the delegate administrator is finished managing the team cloud, they can return to their normal File Browser view by clicking “Return To My Cloud” (5).

Guest User¶

Guest user are users that have credentials to login to CentreStack, but these users don’t have home directory.

Anonymous User¶

If the public link and anonymous (no login required) sharing is enabled, users can use a link to come to the web portal and see files and folders that are shared.

PUBLIC LINK

Initial login¶

To get started, point your web browser at the CentreStack server.

If you are the system administrator for the CentreStack server and you are in the server’s console, you can point your web browser at http://localhost

If you are in the Local Area Network, you can point your web browser at the IP address of the CentreStack server - http://<ip-address>

Most common, and in production, you will be pointing your web browser at the CentreStack server’s DNS name, such as https://<DNS-Name-Of-Server>

Once you are in the web portal, you will be seeing the login page first.

CentreStack LOGIN

File Browser¶

After you log in to the web portal, the file and folder view (1) will show important settings and features that can be accessed by clicking the icons in the top right (2). The small down arrow icon (3) allows you to choose different icon sizes or switch to a detailed list view, which gives you access to more information about the files (4), such as versions.

IMPORTANT SETTINGS AND FEATURES

The small user icon (5) gives you access to template settings, connected devices, guest users, notifications storage information, feedback, and client download options. You can also change your password or logout.

TEMPLATE, DOWNLOAD AND OTHER SETTINGS

The question icon (6) takes you to the Web Portal Tutorial. The stacked bar icon (7) is for access to the Cluster Manager. The person icon (8) opens the user settings menu.

SETTINGS AND ICONS

The icon with the encircled “i” (9) opens up an additional panel for additional information and options, including sharing, downloading, and revision history. The icon with squares (10) allows you to change how the files are displayed. The three stacked dots (11) opens a menu for more options in the file manager.

Folder Legends in Web Interface¶

There are many different folders in the web interface.

Here is a list of them.

Mounted Storage

This folder represents mounted/attached storage. For example, a mounted file server network share or a connected Amazon S3 bucket will look like this.

Sync From Remote

This folder represents synchronization folders from remote PCs or Server Agents.

Received Shares

This folder represents the root folder of all the shared files and folders from other users.

Regular Folder

This folder represents a single shared folder received from other users.

Team Folder

This folder represent a team folder that is published to users and viewed from the users who received the team folder.

Version Control

Version folder represents folders that every files inside is under version control.

Note

If a folder doesn’t have the version folder icon, doesn’t mean it is not a version folder.

As long as one of the parent folder is a version folder, everything inside is under version control.

If the administrator setup the user as version control from the root, the team user may not see the version folder icon either when version control is on by default.

The Web Interface¶

The web client interface has three panels from left to right, the left tree panel, the middle file and folder panel, and the right information panel. Many of the management functionality are done over the web portal. The web client also has the files and folder’s view.

Normal Web Portal View¶

WEB PORTAL VIEW

Left Tree View and Right Info Panel¶

The left-tree view can be toggled by clicking the tree icon (1). You can access the “Info Panel” by either clicking the icon settings menu (2) at the top-right and selecting “Show/Hide Info Panel for file/folder” text, or the Show/Hide button (3) on the bottom-right of the File Browser window.

ACCESSING SIDE PANELS

Switch between Icon and List view¶

SWITCH BETWEEN ICON AND LIST VIEWS

When switched into list view, you get access to other icons such as version information (see inset “List View Example).

Color Themes¶

Users can customize their web portal theme by clicking the user settings icon (1) and then the down-arrow icon (2). There are 12 pre-defined Color Themes and one custom theme option.

CUSTOMIZE YOUR WEB PORTAL THEME

Create Folders¶

Folders Created in CentreStack are Versioned Folders.

CentreStack will maintain the version history of any files uploaded to versioned folders. From CentreStack, a user can download any previous versions of a file. From the CentreStack Desktop/Server Agent, a user can restore previous versions of files and recover deleted files.

To create a folder, go to the parent folder and click “New Folder” in the drop-down menu (1) or right click in the folder background and choose “New Folder” (2) from the context menu.

CREATING FOLDERS

Attach Folder from Clients¶

If you have the Windows Client installed, can also Attach a Local Folder from this client.

ATTACHING A FOLDER

These folders are the local folders from the local PC/Mac that CentreStack users have attached to CentreStack. Once a local folder is attached, a user can immediately access it in CentreStack. CentreStack will maintain the version history of files in the attached local folder. The local folder is also being synchronized with CentreStack (“cloud side”).

ATTACHED LOCAL FOLDER

Renaming/Deleting Folders¶

Renaming and deleting files and folders can be achieved by right-clicking the file in the “File Browser” and selecting the appropriate context-menu item or using the small icons in the Detailed View bar of the selected item.

RENAMING FILES

Upload Files/Folders¶

In CentreStack, you have different options to upload files and folders. You can upload one file at a time using the ‘Upload File’ option under Upload You can also upload folders using the ‘Upload Folder’ option under Upload. Last but not least you can also use ‘Upload Folders and Files’ to upload multiple files simultaneously, or drag & drop files from a local desktop to the CentreStack Cloud web portal to start the upload.

It is possible to upload multiple files at a time. This is supported on all browsers. The same is true for Upload Folder. To access these options you can click the “+” icon (1) or right click on the portal background (2) and select your upload option there.

UPLOADING FILES AND FOLDERS

After clicking the upload option, you can browse to the file or folder you want to upload. Use the Ctrl key to select multiple items.

SELECTING FILES FOR UPLOAD

Upload Using Local Uploader¶

(This is Windows only feature) When uploading big files and big folders, the “upload using local uploader” may be the best option for web browser based upload. If it is enabled by the Tenant Manager (deselected) (1) in the Group Policy Home > Web Portal settings. Clicking this option (2) will download a thin local uploader binary first and then the local uploader will do the upload. The local uploader has retry and other reliability measures to make sure the upload is successful. Basically it uses the web browser to download an executable, and the executable does the rest of the uploading work.

ENABLE “UPLOAD USING LOCAL UPLOADER” OPTION

Drag and Drop Upload¶

Latest web browsers that support HTML5 drag and drop upload will see “Drop Files Here” in an empty folder. These web browsers allow you to drag & drop multiple files directly to the CentreStack Cloud. In latest Google Chrome, Drag and drop folder is also supported while the other HTML5 based web browser support drag and drop multiple files.

DRAG AND DROP FILES FOR UPLOAD

Downloading Files¶

There are several ways to download files in CentreStack:

If you select a file in the “File Browser” you can use the download icon (1) in the top bar. You can also right-click a file and choose download (2) from the context menu. If you are in the “Detailed View” (3) you can select a file and download it in the same manner as in the icon view.

DOWNLOAD FILE OPTIONS

If your are in “Detailed View” (3) any files with previous versions will show a number in the selected bar (e.g. “V2”) (4) that you may click to open a list of all of the versions of that file.

Notifications¶

Subscribing To Change Notifications For Team Folders

Users can subscribe change notifications for Team Folders. Once subscribed, whenever a file or folder is changed in the team folder, the user will get an email with a list of changes. This notification only applies when the change is done by other users. It will not send out the notification email when the changes are done by the user himself/herself.

Visit the settings of the files page. Then go to the “Folder Change Subscriptions” tab, and click the “+” icon. This will lead to a menu that shows which folders the user is subscribed to, and offers the ability to change whether they want to be notified of changes or not.

ACTIVATE FOLDER NOTIFICATIONS

Tenant Administrator¶

Please reference the Admin Guide for full documentation of the tenant administration. Here we will go over several commonly touched areas for tenant administrators.

After you enter the “management console”, you will be in the dashboard. When you are at the dashboard, you can access the tenant by clicking on the desired tenant from the options.

Under Management Console, an admin can configure storage, monitor shared objects, create and manage team folders, manage users, configure granular group policies, add new tenant administrators, look at different reports, and under advanced configure AD etc.

The top two objects to manage are users (1) and folders (2). If you are using an Active Directory for importing users and permissions you can connect to your Active Directory by clicking the wrench icon (3).

MANAGE USERS AND FILES

User Manager¶

You can access the user manager by clicking one of these three items in the Management Console.

ACCESSING THE USER MANAGER

Active Directory - LDAP¶

In the AD Settings view you can add your local settings. Click Edit (1), then select “Enable Active Directory Integration” (2).

CONNECTING TO ACTIVE DIRECTORY (AD)

This gives you access to all the settings fields and the Advanced Settings Tab (3). Once you have filled in the settings with an Administrator User account from your Active Directory, click APPLY to accept your changes.

Active Directory - Remote¶

If the users are coming from remote locations, away from the CentreStack server (so it is not in the same Local Area Network), the first step to take is to install the “server agent” software on a remote file server, as long as the file server is in the same remote Active Directory domain. Log into CentreStack from your File Server and download your Server Agent client. You can access this by clicking the (+) icon. Once this is setup on your File Server, CentreStack can access it to connect to your Remote Active Directory.

ACCESS YOUR SERVER AGENT CLIENT

DOWNLOAD AND INSTALL

Note

“Server Agent” software can import remote file server network share, and also import remote Active Directory users. Once Server Agent is installed and setup in remote location, the tenant administrator can use the Client Management Console “Migrate CIFS Shares” and “Migrate Users” (1) to import shares and users from Active Directory. Other actions are availible through the dropdown menu (2).

MIGRATE SHARES AND USERS

Add Users¶

You can add users from within the User Manager or simply click the Add New User button to open the “Sources of New User” panel. In that panel you have several options: add a Native User, Batch Create Users, import Active Directory users and permissions, and if you have Server Agents actively connected, you will also see those servers listed here as well.

ADDING USERS

Native User

Native user refers to CentreStack user that is not related to any Active Directory.

Batch create users

These are native users in a comma separated file that can be paste into a text area so the users can be batch created.

Active Directory

Active Directory means users from Local Area Network (LAN) that is in the same network as the CentreStack server.

Server-Agent-Name

If you already have the “Server Agent” installed and the server agent is actively connected to CentreStack, you will also see the server agents listed by name in the Add User page.

Native Users¶

When a new user is created, the administrator will specify the amount of cloud storage that the new user is allowed to use. The email address will send a welcome email to the new user and will serve as his/her username.

ADDING A NATIVE USER

Note

When quota is left as zero, it means no limitation until the tenant quota limit is hit.

Active Directory Users from LDAP¶

If the Active Directory (LDAP) is not already configured, you will need to configure it first. Click the wrench icon in the right Local Active Directory panel to access the settings.

CONFIGURE YOUR ACTIVE DIRECTORY SETTINGS

If the Active Directory (LDAP) is already configured, you will see the Active Directory name at the bottom of the AD icon in the “Add User” view.

Add Active Directory Users where those users are from local area network.

ADDING ACTIVE DIRECTORY USERS

After the Active Directory is configured, you can use the Add User wizard to import Active Directory users into CentreStack.

Note

For best practice, you will only configure Active Directory via LDAP if the file server is also local in the same network as the Active Directory server.

Active Directory Users from Server Agent¶

When the Server Agent is available and connects to the specific tenant in CentreStack, the Server Agent will show up with the server’s name at the bottom of the icon.

Click through the Server Agent icon, you will see the “Add User” wizard and complete the wizard to add users. This is very similar to the add AD user from local LDAP process above.

Note

When the Active Directory is at a remote location, not directly connected to CentreStack server, Server Agent can be used to facilitate the communication. Server Agent doesn’t need to be installed directly on a remote Active Directory server, the Server Agent needs to be installed on a remote file server that is part of the remote Active Directory domain.

Deleting Users¶

When a user leaves the team, administrators can delete the user’s login. Just click the Delete icon in ‘User Manager’ window.

DELETING A USER

Managing User Quotas¶

Administrators can assign a quota to each user. A user will not be allowed to upload files to CentreStack once their quota has been reached.

If the quota is 0 for the user, there is no limit on how much storage the user can use.

Click the ‘Management Console’ and select ‘User Manager’. Click the “Manage User” menu on a user to manage and select “Set Quota”.

EDITING STORAGE QUOTA

Managing User Credentials¶

Admins can change user passwords and login emails, if needed.

Click ‘Management Console’ and select ‘User Manager’
Click the “manage user” menu icon in the user block
After that, can use “Reset Password” link to help the user.

RESET USER PASSWORD

After changing the login password, an email will be sent to notify the user of the change. Admins can choose to include the new password in the email, or exclude the new password from the email. If the password is not included, the admin will need to convey the new password to the user in some other way.

PASSWORD OPTIONS

When either the email or password is changed, please update the corresponding login credentials in the CentreStack Cloud Desktop or Cloud Server.

Warning

This only applies to a native CentreStack user. If you have Active Directory users, you will need to manage user’s credential the Active Directory way.

Team Folders¶

Adding files and folders can be accomplished by clicking “Create Team Folder”. Once the “Team Folder Storage Locations” view opens you can choose from many options: Existing Tenant Storage, File Servers in Local Area Network, Remote File Servers or Cloud Storage.

WAYS TO ADD STORAGE LOCATIONS

File Servers

If you have an existing file server in the Local Area Network (LAN), you can import the network share directly to CentreStack (1). Under Remote File Servers, you can install the Server Agent client (2) and access your file server remotely.

ADDING REMOTE FILES

Note

The Server Agent is only required when the remote file server doesn’t have direct LAN (local area network) access: to CentreStack. The Server Agent will be used in this case to facilitate communication between the CentreStack server to the remote file server.

CentreStack enables the creation of team folders which are owned by the administrator and published to other CentreStack users.

Once a folder is published, it is displayed as a team folder to the users who have access permissions. Users can access these folders from CentreStack Web or other client agents. The published folder will appear under the user’s root folder, and its name will be appended with “(Team Folder)”.

TEAM FOLDER TAG

Warning

Different upload methods may have different advantage and disadvantage on different web browsers and different web browser configuration, such as whether it is HTML5 enabled, Java enabled or Flash enabled.

By default, only one upload method was exposed in the web user interface. However, the tenant administrator, based on the kind of web browser the company is using and the kind of configuration the web browser has, can decide which upload method to expose to the end user (Team User).

Below is the Group Policy->Client Control->Web Portal setting administrator can control.

UPLOADER METHOD OPTIONS

Web Browser - Disable Java Uploader

Deselect this if your companies’ desktop system web browsers use a Java Uploader.

Web Browser - Disable Flash Uploader

Deselect this if your company uses browsers that require Flash uploader functionality.

Web Browser - Disable Local Uploader

Deselect this if your company allows the use of a local executable to upload files.

Welcome to Web Portal User Guide’s documentation!¶

Getting Started¶

Introduction¶

Background¶

Architectural Background¶

Two Deployment Scenarios¶

Existing Infrastructure¶

Active Directory¶

Data Storage¶

CentreStack Server Farm (Cluster)¶

CentreStack Client Agent Software¶

Browser Requirements¶

Different Scope of Users¶

Tenant Administrator¶

Team User¶

Delegate Administrator¶

Guest User¶

Anonymous User¶

Initial login¶

File Browser¶

Folder Legends in Web Interface¶

The Web Interface¶

Normal Web Portal View¶

Left Tree View and Right Info Panel¶

Switch between Icon and List view¶

Color Themes¶

Create Folders¶

Attach Folder from Clients¶

Renaming/Deleting Folders¶

Upload Files/Folders¶

Upload Using Local Uploader¶

Drag and Drop Upload¶

Downloading Files¶

Sharing¶

Sharing vs. Publishing¶

Sharing Files And Folders¶

File Sharing¶

Folder Sharing¶

Removing shares¶

Accessing ‘Files/Folders Shared With Me’¶

Web Portal¶

Windows Client¶

Notifications¶

Tenant Administrator¶

User Manager¶

Active Directory - LDAP¶

Active Directory - Remote¶

Add Users¶

Native Users¶

Active Directory Users from LDAP¶

Active Directory Users from Server Agent¶

Deleting Users¶

Managing User Quotas¶

Managing User Credentials¶

Team Folders¶

Sharing Security¶

Preventing Users From Sharing¶

Protecting Shares By Requiring Login¶

Indices and tables¶