Configuration
Once the HighQ Office plugin has been installed and connected to your Collaborate account, you may configure default settings that are used each time you send an attachment.
Some of these options may not be available, depending on certain system-level configuration settings.
Either during the initial installation and setup, or at any point in the future by accessing the Office plugin settings option, the Preferences tab is displayed by default:
The settings on this tab govern how attachments added to emails will be handled by default. Depending on how the settings are configured, each time an email is sent, it may be possible to apply different settings to the attachments in that email.
Default security options
The first section of the Preferences tab governs the security settings that will be applied by default when attachments are sent to Collaborate and replaced with links:
There are three security settings:
- Accessible by - This setting determines who can access an attachment when clicking on the link to the attachment that is added to the email. These are the same settings that are applied when using the Secure File Transfer settings from within Collaborate:
The available values are:
- Anyone with the link - As implied, any user who has the link can access the associated file. That means if the recipient of the email forwards it to someone else, that other person will be able to access the file from the link. In other words, there is no control over who can access the attachment.
- Users in my organisation only - Note that the Outlook plugin can only be used by internal Collaborate users. As a result, this setting will only permit other users in the same internal organisation to access the attachments. (If a recipient of the email is not a Collaborate user, they will need to create an account first.)
- Any registered system user - In order to access an attachment, the recipient must have a full Collaborate account. This ensures that attachment links cannot be forwarded and anonymously accessed.
- Download rights - What rights the recipient has to the files that have been shared: whether the files can be downloaded without restriction, or whether the files can only be previewed in the browser:
- Link expires - How long attachments can be accessed from the date they are shared. The link can be set to never expire, to expire 2, 7 or 30 days later:
Attachment links inserted at
This setting merely determines whether by default the attachment links that replace attachments are added to the beginning or end of the email body:
Default attachment handling
The "Default attachment handling" section contains settings that govern how the plugin interacts with the use of Outlook, such as whether all attachments are automatically replaced with links or some other approach is taken:
There are three mutually exclusive options:
- Manually upload and attach files - If this radio button selected, the typical Outlook behaviour with regard to attachments will be followed and attachments will not be replaced with links. In that case, in order to replace attachments with links, a user must manually upload the attachments to Collaborate first, either using the "Upload and Attach" feature (discussed below) or using the "Attach from HighQ" feature in which files have been added to the user's My files in Collaborate through the web interface.
- Automatically upload all files to HighQ and attach - With this setting, all attachments added to Outlook, whether by using the "Attach File" feature in Outlook or by dragging and dropping files into the email, will automatically be replaced by links when the email is sent, using the default options configured above.
- Automatically upload and attach files greater than ___ MB - With this setting, all attachments over the selected size that are added to Outlook, whether by using the "Attach File" feature in Outlook or by dragging and dropping files into the email, will automatically be replaced by links when the email is sent, using the default options configured above. This is useful where the primary concern is large attachments clogging a sender or recipients' email systems. In that case, only large attachments will be replaced with links. The setting permits the user to set the threshold in MB's. If this setting is used and an attachment below the threshold size should be replaced with a link, use the "Upload and Attach" feature discussed below.
There are two other settings in this section:
- Confirm before automatically sending attachments via HighQ - With this option selected, the user will be given the opportunity to either (a) choose not to replace the attachments with links or (b) change the security settings applied to the attachments in the current email.
- Do not automatically upload attachments with the following file types - For example, it may preferable to always include image files as regular attachments. In that case, simply include a list of the file types that should not be automatically attached, in this format:
.png,.jpg,.gif
with each file suffix preceded by a period, and commas used to separate each file type. If this setting is used and an attachment of an excluded type should be replaced with a link, use the "Upload and Attach" feature discussed below.
Default attachment locations
The settings in this section govern the default locations where attachments are saved in a user's My files:
As described further below, there are three principal methods for sharing attachments by uploading them to Collaborate and inserting links instead. For two of these methods - "Upload and Attach" and automatically replace attachments with links -- there is the option to select the default location in a user's My files where the attachments will be saved. By default, these attachments are stored in a user's Shared items folder, but this could be changed to be in any other folder in the user's My files space:
To choose a different location, select "Custom folder" and a window will appear showing all of the folders in the user's My files space:
From there, the user can select a different default folder or can create a new folder where the files can be saved.
One reason to select a location different from "Shared Items" is that the user can add new versions to the files saved to My files (the recipient will only have access to the most recent version). New versions cannot be added to files in "Shared Items."
If email attachments are saved anywhere in My files and My files has been synchronised using the HighQ Drive, then every email attachment will be synchronised back to the user's computer.
File email preferences
The settings here dictate whether the emails are filed or the emails with their corresponding attachments.
At the bottom of the window, there are further options where you can choose if you want to synchronise with Collaborate, enable email filing, choose to enable large file sharing or the auto filing pane.
Click Save to keep any changes made or Cancel to close the window.
