New Mars Forums

tahanson43206

Moderator

Registered: 2018-04-27

Posts: 19,263

Google Drive Collaboration via NewMarsMember

Once again, SpaceNut has opened a pathway for members to work together on projects ...

A few minutes ago, new member daGeck0 began to edit a document (a Webrunlog) while I was online looking at it.

What I saw was a highlighted text segment, with a little flag identifying the editor as daGeck0.

This takes me back ten years, when I was part of a group working on a Google Drive document.  In that instance, we had members from every corner of the US working on the document, or at least looking at it.

In trying to deliver the Webrunlog to SpaceNut, I have re-learned the power of Google Drive.

This new topic is offered for members who might wish to use Google Drive to share files, or to work on them together.

(th)

tahanson43206

Moderator

Registered: 2018-04-27

Posts: 19,263

Re: Google Drive Collaboration via NewMarsMember

Procedure:

Assuming (for the moment) that members want to use NewMarsMember as a base of operations on Google Drive:

1) Create a gmail account if you do not already have one.
2) Write to the NewMarsMember portal and indicate you want to offer a document or work on one
3) I will check NewMarsMember once a day and reply shortly after log in, depending upon the work load for that day

At this point I am still relearning skills from 2011, so things will probably not go as smoothly as they might.

On the other hand, we (this forum) have never attempted anything like this before, so compared to nothing, whatever we do has gotta be good!

(th)

tahanson43206

Moderator

Registered: 2018-04-27

Posts: 19,263

Re: Google Drive Collaboration via NewMarsMember

Update at 13:34 local time ...

While we wait for SpaceNut to either create a new Gmail account, or recover the old one, with the help of daGeck0 I am continuing to re-learn how to work with Google Drive.

Today I re-learned that Google provides three modes of access to shared documents.

The default mode is Edit.

That is the mode we started out with, for a Webrunlog from December 2nd.

However, there are two other modes that can be assigned by the document owner:

View appears to allow the permission to see a file but not to edit or comment.

Comment appears to allow permission to see the file **and** to make comments, but ** not ** to change it.

daGeck0 will be testing the View mode in the next day or so.

After we have ** that ** mode in operation, we'll move on to try comment mode.

(th)

tahanson43206

Moderator

Registered: 2018-04-27

Posts: 19,263

Re: Google Drive Collaboration via NewMarsMember

Thanks to daGeck0 for assistance as I try to re-learn how to work with Google Drive.

Today, I discovered that my attempt to change permissions to what I thought was the new file resulted in a change from Editor to Viewer.

However, the change was made to the original file.

With that feedback, I went back to try to understand what happened, and I discovered that while I had copied the new file into the file folder of the local machine, I had ** not ** uploaded it to Google Drive.

After making ** that ** change, I set permissions to Commentor for the new file, and sent a note to daGeck0 asking him to test ** that ** feature.

Here is a summary of the procedure for the creator of a document, as I understand it now:

1) Logged in as a gmail user... copy a file from media into local storage
2) Upload the file to Google Drive
3) Share the file with folks from a drop down list or add new ones
4) Set permission on the share for each participant (ie, Editor, Viewer or Commentor)
This step should provide a message option to notify the person of availability of the file.
(th)

tahanson43206

Moderator

Registered: 2018-04-27

Posts: 19,263

Re: Google Drive Collaboration via NewMarsMember

Thanks (again) to daGeck0 for taking the time to try to help me to re-learn how to use the Google Drive / Google Docs system.

The first experiment with Editor status seemed to go smoothly.

However, the experiment yesterday, attempting to use Commenter mode, was a mixed bag of results.

I tried again today:

Share with people and groups
Share with people settings

(you)
newmarsmember@gmail.com

daGeck0
dageck0@

Get link
Restricted Only people added can open with this link

What I can report is receiving an email from Google, that daGeck0 had written a comment, but in the message daGeck0 also reported that Google was saying he did not have comment privileges.

In any case, the message from Google was marked with Do not Reply text.

When I opened the document in Google Docs, I found no shares.

Today, I redid the shares, and then re-opened the document to confirm the shares were still there.

***
In the mean time, SpaceNut is hard at work attempting to communicate using gmail.  We may see some progress on that front in the next day or so, since it is (of course) not a high priority in the grand scheme of things!

*** Note ... if there is anyone else in the membership who has a gmail account and who would like to participate in the learning process, the document we are examining is one of the log files from the current Posts Repair initiative.

This is historical data from the earliest days of the forum.  Arthur C. Clarke came up in the discussion processed on December 8th.  The NewMars member observed that Clarke had imagined a human mining settlement on Mercury, and something on Venus, although what that might have been was not clear. 

(th)

tahanson43206

Moderator

Registered: 2018-04-27

Posts: 19,263

Re: Google Drive Collaboration via NewMarsMember

This initiative appears to have been successfully replaced by Dropbox.

NewMars has a Dropbox account, and several members have accounts, as well as files in place for viewing from the forum posts.

A notable example is GW Johnson, whose 11 complete presentation document sets are available for viewing from the GW Johnson Postings topic.

(th)