Zextras Drive

Warning! This wiki is outdated and not maintained anymore, please refer to the new Zextras Documentation Hub at https://docs.zextras.com

This documentation is outdated.

Please refer to https://docs.zextras.com

Introduction

Zextras Drive is a new Zextras module that provides both a fully fledged file storage system integrated with the Zimbra WebClient and a replacement to the old “Briefcase” component.

Warning! Zextras Drive has been introduced in Zextras Suite 2.14.0 and requires Zimbra 8.8.11 or higher.

General Information

Licensing

Zextras Drive is available for free to all Zextras Suite customers with a "Zextras Bundle" license, and only to those customer. Zextras Drive is not available for purchase independently, neither as a separate module nor as a separate package.

System Requirements

Zextras Drive is included in Zextras Suite starting from version 2.14.0, and requires Zimbra 8.8.11 or higher.

Zextras Drive Zimlet

The Zextras Drive Zimlet provides the user interface of Zextras Drive: to deploy it simply use the dedicated button in the "Core" section of the Zextras Administration Console or run `zxsuite drive doDeployDriveZimlet` as the zimbra user.

Features

• Upload, manage and download files
• Organize files within navigable folders
• Preview files
• Mark files as “preferred” for quick access
• Add custom notes (descriptions) to files
• Share files to internal users
• Share files to external users
• File search
• Folder-based navigation
• Quick “stateful” navigation
• Option to store files on dedicated Zimbra volumes
• zxsuite drive CLI

Differences between Briefcase and Drive

Zextras Drive does not follow the usual mailbox-driven behaviours when it comes to file storage, navigation, sharing and item deletion. See each feature’s dedicated paragraph for a complete explaination of the differences and of the features themselves.

Zextras Drive User interface

1. Quick Access navigation panel;
2. Folder navigation panel;
3. InfoBox control;
4. New, Upload and Search features;
5. Folder list;
6. File list;

User Guide

Upload and Download

To upload a file to Drive , either click on the “Upload” button above the file list or drag and drop any number of files from your computer to the main Drive window.

To download a file from Drive , right-click on it and select “Download”:

Any file and folder in Drive can be renamed by right-clicking on it and selecting the “Rename” option in the context menu.

Navigation

Briefcase items are part of the mailbox’s folder and item hierarchy, while Drive has its own internal folder structure and navigation. Navigating through Drive folders is done through the Navigation Bar on top of the UI instead of through a tree view and folders are visible in the main section of the UI above files.

On top of the standard folder-based navigation, a “Quick Access” menu is available on the left side of the UI, which allows to quickly view the following types of items: • “Preferred Items” – items marked with the “Star” option available in the right-click context menu; • “Recently Edited” – items edited recently, sorted from the most recently edited; • “Shared with me” – items shared by other users • “Shared by me” – items shared to other users • “Marked for deletion” – items marked for deletion

Folder Creation

To create a folder in Drive , click on the “New” button above the file list and select “Folder”:

Sharing

Being separated from the mailbox’s item hierarchy, Drive files and folders can be shared independently. Sharing permissions can be chosen among 3 options: “View”, “Edit” and “Edit and Share” – the latter two options include the “View” right by default.

To share a file or a folder, right-click on it and select “Edit Shares”. After entering the email address of the destination user and selecting the sharing permissions, click the (+) button to add the share to the list:

To edit or delete a share, simply click on the dropdown permission selector to change the sharing permissions of the file/folder or click the trash bin icon to delete the share:

In Drive sharing rights are only “positive”, so it’s not possible to share an item with a lower permission than its parent, e.g. if a folder is shared with “Edit” permissions it’s not possible to share one of its items with “View” rights with the same person.

External Sharing

Zextras Drives also allows to share files with people who don't have a local Zimbra account in the form of a direct download link - which can also be password protected for additional safety.

In order to share a link with an outside party, access the "Edit Shares" menu of a file as shown above and then lclick the "link" icon under "Link" -> "Generate public link":

Doing so will generate a direct link for the file, and the link options will appear:

Item Deletion

When deleted, Drive items are not put into the Trash like every other item type in Zimbra, as such items are marked for deletion instead. To mark a file or a folder for deletion, right-click on it and select “Mark for Deletion”:

Items marked for deletion are displayed on the bottom of the file list with a strikethrough line and can be deleted permanently clicking on the “Delete Permanently” entry within the right-click context menu of a file marked for deletion while the “Restore” entry will unmark the file:

While any user with “Edit” or “Edit and Share” rights on an item or folder can mark it for deletion, only the original owner can delete it permanently.

Items marked for deletion cannot be accessed, so should a user try to do so a pop-up message will ask whether to restore the item and access it or to stop the attempt and leave it as marked for deletion.

InfoBox

The InfoBox is a collapsible element that contains all information and controls for the selected file or folder, as well as a preview of the file itself if in a compatible format (pictures, PDFs and more).

To display the Infobox, click on the “(i)” button on the top-right of the Drive UI:

The infobox will appear on the right side of the screen:

Top-to-bottom, the InfoBox contains:

• The name of the selected file
• The preview of the file (or a format icon for unsupported formats)
• All action items available in the right-click context menu
• Share information
• Creation and edit information
• A customizable “Description” field

Technical information

File Storage

While Briefcase files are stored as mail-like items within the mailbox’s folder tree, Drive features a detached folder hierarchy based on nodes: thus, Drive folders do not appear as mailbox folders (e.g. in the output of zmmailbox getAllFolders). Drive metadata are stored in a dedicated HSQL Database while all files (including previous file versions and file previews) are stored in a dedicated folder within a volume’s root. File naming is now hash-based instead of id-based to achieve native deduplication, compression rules follow the volume’s settings

e.g.

Filesystem path for a briefcase file: /opt/zimbra/store/0/[mID]/msg/0/[itemid]-[revision].msg

Filesystem path for a Drive file: /opt/zimbra/store/drive/[hash]-[revision]

Volumes

Drive files are stored in the Current Primary volume as any other item and fall under the "Document" itemtype in HSM policies.

Zextras Drive Backup and HSM

Zextras Backup

Drive files are included in Zextras Backup, and both the RealTime Scanner and the SmartScan are aware of those and no additional actions must be taken in order to ensure the files' safety.

The Restore on New Account and External Restore modes will also restore Drive files, while other restore modes such as the Undelete Restore do not operate on such files.

Zextras Powerstore

Drive can store its data on a different volume than the default Current Primary one, and HSM policies can move Drive files on a different volume than the Current Secondary one, thus effectively allowing independent storage management for Drive files.

When an HSM policy is applied, Drive files will be handled under the "document" item type.

This setting is applied at server level so that different mailbox servers can use different volumes.

Setting the Drive Primary volume

To set the Drive Primary volume, first find out the volumeID of the target volume by running zxsuite powerstore getAllVolumes.

Once the volumeID has been identified, simply run

zxsuite config server set `zmhostname` attribute driveStore value [volumeID]

(where [volumeID] is the ID found with the previous command)

Setting the Drive Secondary volume

To set the Drive Secondary volume, find out the volumeID of the target volume as described on the previous paragrapgh and then run the following command

zxsuite config server set `zmhostname` attribute driveSecondaryStore value [volumeID]

Briefcase Migration

Briefcase data can be migrated to Drive using the dedicated doImport CLI command:

zimbra@test:~$ zxsuite drive doImport

Syntax:
 zxsuite drive doImport {john@example.com,test.com[,...]} [attr1 value1 [attr2 value2...]]

The command accepts a comma separated lists of targets to migrate, which can be either mailboxes or domains, and different target types can be used on the same command.

The following attributes can be used to customize the migration:

NAME	TYPE	EXPECTED VALUES	DEFAULT	DESCRIPTION
targets(M)	String[,..]	john@example.com,test.com[,…​]		Comma separated list of targets to migrate
dryRun(O)	Boolean	true or false	false	Only perform a test run without affecting the data
allVersions(O)	Boolean	true or false	false	Migrate all versions of every file
deleteSources(O)	Boolean	true or false	false	Delete migrated files from the Briefcase
overwrite(O)	Boolean	true or false	false	Overwrite existing files
showIgnoredAccounts(O)	Boolean	true or false	false
ignoreQuota(O)	Boolean	true or false	false	Ignore mailbox quota when migrating