Sharing a folder between users

Question

A question we're often asked is:

Can you please help me set up a folder that a group can access? I can't figure out how to get the users to it. When we use FileZilla to connect, we go directly to our home drive. I'm not sure how to get from there to the shared folder.

 

 

Answer 1

I suggest this structure:
 

+- Files
 +- Home
 |  +- UserA
 |  +- UserB
 |  +- UserC
 +- Shared

To do this:

1. Add a root folder called something like 'Files'. To do this, go to the Folders panel, click 'Add folder' and select 'Root folder' and then 'Virtual folder'. This will add a folder called 'Virtual folder 1'. To rename this, right-click on the folder and select Properties. This will show the Properties panel where you can select the Name field and add the new name. Note that a virtual folder is a folder that exists only in CompleteFTP's virtual file system. It can't contain any files. You may choose to make this a Windows folder if you'd like to put files in there.
2. Drag the existing 'Home' folder into the Files folder that you just created.
3. Right-click on the Files folder, select 'Add folder' and then 'Windows folder'. Now find the shared folder in your Windows file-system and add that. If you've already created it in CompleteFTP you can just drag it into the Files folder.

So now you have the basic structure. Next thing is to set the permissions.

You need your users to have 'list folder contents' and 'change into folder' permission for Files so that they can navigate to that folder in FileZilla. For the Shared folder you want users to have those permissions as well as 'download files' permission. All users are members of the inbuilt 'users' group. If you know you want all users to have the same permissions for Files, Home and Shared then you can just go ahead and user the users group for these three folders. So set this to be the group for Files, Home and Shared, and set the permissions for the group as described above. You shouldn't need to set the permissions of the Home folder and users' individual home folders as the default setting should suffice for those.

When UserA first logs in they'll see only the folders, Files, Home and UserA. The question-mark on the icon for Files implies that FileZilla hasn't yet retrieved a listing for that directory and therefore doesn't know if that directory has subdirectories other than Home. When the user selects Files FileZilla will get a listing of Files and thus find the Shared folder.