Uploading documents
BSCW lets you upload a local file to a folder as a document on the BSCW server. If you use a Web browser with integrated file uploading functionality (e.g. Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Internet Explorer or Apple’s Safari), you need no additional software to upload documents.
If you have to upload large documents or a great number of documents regularly, you should consider using one of the BSCW upload helpers available (for details see 9.5 BSCW upload helpers).
For uploading files via your browser,
• select to display the ‘Upload Document’ form, which has three sections ‘General’, ‘Auto-Versioning’ and ‘Attributes’.
• In the ‘General’ section you may select a file from your local file system, using the usual ‘Open file’ dialog. The directory path and the name of the file you select are automatically copied into the form. The name will be used by BSCW as the document name unless you enter a different name in the ‘Name’ field. Choose a telling document name, so the other members of the workspace will know what the document is about.
Special characters in the document name like accents or umlauts should be avoided when you plan to cooperate across different platforms, e.g. Windows and Macintosh. The file extension used to indicate the file type on some platforms should be kept in the document name, because it facilitates the recognition of the file type when the document is downloaded again by other members of the workspace: the BSCW document name is the default local file name!
• You may enter freely chosen keywords in the ‘Tags’ field to characterize the new documents. These tags may be used in searches. Several tags are separated by blanks. There is no distinction between upper and lower case in tags.
• In the ‘Description’ field you may enter a description of the document’s contents or instructions for its use.
• You
may provide an assessment of the document’s quality by selecting
one of the ratings offered. You may also rate the document later or change your
rating using 
.
BSCW shows all ratings in the document’s info page; the median of all ratings is
shown as an icon in the ‘Rating’ column of the document entry (with only two
ratings, the average rating is taken).
• In
addition, you may specify the MIME type of the document
(standardized designation of a file type on the Internet). In general,
Web browsers and BSCW uploaders will detect the correct MIME type and
attach it to the document automatically. Sometimes, however, it may be
necessary to select the correct MIME type explicitly. Similarly, a
possible encoding applied to the file is detected correctly in
most cases. Occasionally you may need to specify the encoding in the respective
field. You may change MIME type and encoding later on, using
in the action menu of the document.
• The section ‘Auto-Versioning’ will only appear if you are to become the owner of the new document, i.e. if you are the owner of the folder in which the new document is created. In this section, you may enter the versioning options for the new document that may differ from the automatic versioning options valid for the current folder. For further details see 5.3.7 Automatic versioning.
• In
the section ‘Attributes’ you may specify metadata attributes for the new
document. These attributes may also be used in searches. The first set of attributes is predefined: the
key and recipient attributes are used for encryption and the DC-attributes
for document classification according to the Dublin Core (see 3.7.1 Metadata attributes). With these
attributes you may add further values by clicking on the add icon 
. The
category and priority attributes are indicated in folder listings in which the
document appears, when the respective columns are activated via
in the top menu.
• You may also define your own attributes by giving name and value of the attribute. Add more attributes by clicking on [New attribute]. Delete attributes already entered by deleting the name. Also user-defined attributes may be used in searches.
• Hit [OK] to finally upload the new document.
You may change all the information you entered about the
new document by selecting
in the action menu of the document, which uses the same action form as the
uploading action above.
After uploading, an additional PDF presentation of the new document may be generated if conversion to PDF has been configured for the document’s MIME type on your BSCW server.
•
Select
in the action menu of the document.
• In section ‘General’, unfold the ‘MIME type’ field if not unfold already.
• Check the check box ‘Generate a PDF presentation for the document’ and confirm with [OK].
The PDF representation of a document is maintained along
with the original document within BSCW. Whenever you click on the document name
in a folder listing, this PDF representation is shown. When you, however, use
or
in the action menu of the document, you get the original document in the
appropriate application or for download. The PDF representation may be
revoked by unchecking the respective check box again.
Attention: If you upload a document to a folder, that already contains a document with the same name and the same MIME type, the existing document is replaced by the uploaded document. To prevent overwriting of a document
•
select
in the action menu of the document to set a
(removable) lock.
If a document is under version control it cannot be overwritten by uploading a document with the same name and MIME type; instead, a new version of the document is created.
Note: When you upload documents to a shared workspace that you do not own, the uploaded documents will belong to the owner of the workspace and not to you, the creator. The disk space used by these documents is added to the disk quota of the workspace owner. When disk space control (‘quota system’) has been activated for your BSCW server, the upload of large documents by members of a workspace may lead to problems for the owner (violation of the disk space limit). Because workspace owners are in general also workspace managers, they can of course destroy large documents, should problems arise. If disk space control is activated for your BSCW server, select in the top menu of your home folder to inspect the disk space used by all objects that you own.