You create an archive to transfer many or very large files as quickly and inexpensively as possible. This involves transforming copies of a set of objects (folders, documents, discussion forums, etc.) into a compact document that saves storage space and transfer time. You can also encode the resulting archive document - usually with the aim of reducing the file size of the archive document even further.
You may archive objects in BSCW to upload the archive to the local machine and extract the original files there or to send the archive, as well as pack files and folders on your local machine into an archive (Zip or Tar) to upload it to a BSCW workspace and extract these files and folders there. You may also archive entire BSCW workspaces to extract them again later on the same or another BSCW server.
You may optionally archive BSCW metadata as well. The optional archiving of metadata in the form of an XML file provides additional information about the archived objects and may be evaluated automatically by other programs. When extracting an archive created with metadata on a BSCW server version 5.0 or higher, the archived objects are restored with their stored metadata.
When archiving, you should keep in mind that not all BSCW objects can be archived and that not all BSCW metadata such as event history, attachments or ratings are archived either, i.e. that a completely lossless archiving is not possible. Details about archivable object types and metadata can be found later in this section.
To archive a set of objects, proceed as follows:
•Select the check boxes of the objects from which you want to create an archive.
•Open the 
context menu on a selected item to call the 'Archive' form. It contains
a list of archive types that your BSCW server may create and encoding methods
that may be applied to the archive file. The available archive types and
encoding methods depend on the configuration of your BSCW server.
•Enter a name for the archive.
•Determine whether and where to save the archive by selecting an option under 'Save': download only, save to clipboard or save to current folder.
•At 'Options' you can select additional functions for the creation of the archive:
o Activate the option 'Create
index file' if BSCW should create an index file of the archived entries. The
index.html file is a table of contents of the archive with BSCW
meta information like descriptions.
o Activate the option 'Create
BSCW archive' if you want BSCW to create an additional file (.bscw)
with further information about the archived objects (so-called metadata) in the
archive. This allows for a more lossless extraction of the archive on another or
even the same BSCW server. Which metadata can be archived at all is explained below.
o Activate the 'Include document versions in archive' option if the versions of versioned documents are to be archived as well. If this option is not active, only the last version of versioned documents will be included in the archive.
o Activate the option 'Automatically select character set for filenames' if you want BSCW to automatically select the appropriate character set for encoding the filenames. If you deactivate this option, the Unicode character set UTF-8 will be used, which may cause problems when unpacking the archive on some operating systems.
•Choose the archive type that matches your local computer platform and select the encoding/compression to apply, if necessary.
•Start the archiving with [OK].
In the case of smaller archives, the message 'Archiving successfully performed' appears with a reference to the archive and an indication of the objects that cannot be archived. Which object types cannot be archived is described below. If the saving option 'Do not save, download only' has been selected, the created archive is immediately offered for download.
For larger archives, the archiving process is executed in the background. In this case, the message 'Archiving in progress' appears and you will receive an email message to your primary email address when the archiving process is complete. This contains a reference to the location of the archive and a list of all objects that could not be archived.
If the 'Do not save, download only' saving option has been selected for larger archives, the archive will be attached to the notification email or - for very large archives - saved to the clipboard; in the latter case, the notification will contain a reference to the archive.
Note: To open archives downloaded to a local computer, the necessary extraction programs must be installed and the web browser must be configured to launch these programs when it encounters the file type of an archive. If encoding is applied, the appropriate decoding programs must be installed and the web browser must be configured to launch these programs when it encounters the file type of an encoded archive.
To transfer local files to a BSCW workspace using an archive, proceed as follows:
•Create an archive on your local computer of those files you want to transfer to your BSCW server (zip or tar archive depending on your platform; also an email message with documents as attachments may be considered as RFC822 archive).
•Load the archive document into one of your workspaces.
•Extract the original files to your clipboard by calling in the context menu of the archive
document.
For smaller archives, the message 'Archive extracted' appears with the list of extracted objects.
For larger archives, the extraction is performed in the background and the message 'Extraction in progress' appears. You will then be informed by another message from your browser when the extraction is complete.
•The extracted objects in the clipboard can be pasted to a suitable place in your workspaces after extraction.
The following object types can be archived:
•Folder
•Documents
•Contact lists and contacts
•Calendar and dates
•Blogs and discussion forums with notes
•Website folder
•URL objects and RSS folders
If the metadata is archived at the same time, such objects can essentially be recovered during extraction. For other object types, e.g. tasks or flow folders, many details are missing during a subsequent extraction.
The following object types are not archived:
•Surveys, polls and appointment polls
•Workspace home pages and their widgets
The following metadata may optionally be archived (option 'BSCW archive'):
•Name, description and further details of the archived objects
•Information about the producer and the date of creation
•BSCW specific information like object type and object number
The following metadata is never captured during archiving and is no longer available in BSCW after an archive has been extracted:
•Events/History (apart from the creation and extraction itself),
•Members and access rights, i.e. workspaces are archived as simple folders,
•Attachments and ratings,
•Settings for automatic versioning for folders and documents,
•Locking and versions of documents,
•Attendees, reminders, tags and custom attributes of appointments,
•Start and end times of projects, phases and tasks,
•Responsible, condition and task details for tasks and flow folders.