GTeam Basics 03: Collaboration and Sync

now that we've covered the basics of g-team and working in 3d let's show how we can use g-team to collaborate we'll introduce how typical users work with g-team as well as the requirements for administrators we'll also talk a little bit about setting up projects for before we talk about collaboration let's review simple sharing the last video we showed how to share files by uploading and organizing in folders drag and drop is the easiest way to share files but there are also buttons for that like upload and download if you select multiple files then they're downloaded as a single zip file each time you upload a file with the same name it creates a new version of this file when you roll over a file you can see the number of versions you can view these versions in detail when you view the file in the versions tab on the left hand side you can also rename files when you do all the versions of that file are also renamed finally you can add tags to organize files simply roll over edit tags add the tags that you like and then those tags are instantly searchable if you're working on a small project without a lot of changes it's just fine to upload and download files as changes happen but if you have multiple users working together on the same project or if a project has a lot of iterations you may want to be sure that nobody else is changing a file that you're working on or uploading a new version so we added what we call check in and check out it's like a library if you want to work with a file exclusively you can check out or lock that file it means that nobody else can upload a new copy of that file if they try they'll be blocked all the files that are currently checked out will have a small lock by them if you roll over the lock you'll see who's working with that file that way you can contact them if you need to checking out a file doesn't stop others from viewing or downloading the last version it only stops them from uploading new versions another way to see checked out files is to go to settings when you go to settings you can list checkouts by user if you're an administrator on a project you can actually undo checkouts this means that you're actually checking the file back in for the user you may want to do this if someone has left a project or if another user needs to modify the file once you're done with a file you can check it back in so that others can modify it by default checking in and out files is strictly optional you can always modify a file just by uploading a new version if it's not checked out but if you're an administrator you may want to require that users check out files when they modify them you can adjust this in settings this option is actually related to sync which we're going to talk about next it's always possible to share files just by uploading and downloading and many gtm users do this to get started but after a while it'd be simpler just have a folder on your computer that would stay up to date with the folders on the web that's exactly what sync does sync connects a folder on your computer to a project on the web if you've made changes it uploads them if there have been changes on the web it downloads them for larger projects or projects where you're making a lot of changes it's a better way to work than constant uploads and downloads there are two ways to use sync there's a version of sync that's built into the gteam web application which means you never have to install anything on your desktop this version of sync is on demand meaning it only syncs up when you specifically tell it to when you sync this way you can choose what files and folders to upload or download this really helps if you're working on a large project but you only really need to edit a few files or folders to use the web sync you'll need to have java installed when you first hit sync it'll ask you which folder you want to download project files to after that it'll tell you which files are available to download you can choose which files you want to download to continue hit sync and it will download all of the project content that you've selected the second version of sync is the desktop sync this always keeps your projects up to date desktop sync checks g-team with a specific frequency and then updates files for you in the background you have complete control over which projects you sync and how often

to use desktop sync you'll need to install it on your computer the installer is available in support go to support and search for desktop sync you'll see the complete instructions for how to set it up you'll see installers for both mac and windows once you've installed desktop sync you'll see an icon in your windows tray right click and click sync when you click this you'll be prompted for your gt name and password once you've logged in you'll see a list of sync items that you've already scheduled to add a new one just click new you'll see a list of g team projects select one of those g team projects to add it to your sync queue if there are multiple folders you can select which folders you want to sync you can also specify which file types you want to upload or download you can specify how frequently you want to sync finally save the changes and this new project will be added to your queue you can make modifications at any time or sync on demand as well you can also adjust settings such as proxy settings or the speed at which you'd like to make the file transfers let's go through a simple scenario for working with sync to collaborate on a project i'll begin with a revit model that i need to work with to get started i'll sync down the project to a specific folder on my computer okay it looks like all of my files are current and those files are in this folder i'll open the revit model if i know i'm the only one working on the file i can just open it on my computer begin modifying it and save the changes if i want to be sure that nobody else will modify the file on the web while i work with it i can check it out once i've saved the changes on my own computer i can hit rescan sync sees that i have some new files to upload now a new version of the model has been created on the web and everyone else in the project can see these changes you'll see that a new version of the file has now been created of course i can browse these versions by going to the model and looking in the revisions tab if you need to notify certain users about the changes that's easy to do you can just check the files and use the message functionality to send an email notification these are some of the basics of collaboration gtm also offers you a lot of control over file organization who sees which files and folders and who can send files to whom and so forth we'll be covering all of these aspects of security and more in the next training video