Safe Share User's Guide
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Accessing secure content

To access secure content, you can:

  • View, print or download personally owned files which you had previously uploaded and stored securely with the Safe Share web application, including Safe Share for Windows, OS X, iOS and Android applications. These actions can also be performed on files that you had uploaded to share through another user's folder with any of these Safe Share applications.
  • View files which someone else has stored securely and shared with you using the Safe Share web application, including Safe Share for Windows, OS X, iOS and Android applications. You can only print or download these files if the owners who shared the files have granted you permission to perform these actions.

Viewing and printing secure content

The Safe Share web application has a content viewer which allows you to view and optionally print files that other people have shared with you (including personally owned files which you had previously uploaded). (See File formats supported by the content viewer for a list of file types that the content viewer supports.)

The ability to view and/or print + download files is based on the permissions that the owners of these files granted their collaborators (i.e. you) when the files were shared. The content viewer is useful when the owner of a file wants to share the file's content but not allow the content to be printed and downloaded.

To view and print secure content:

If you sign in to the Safe Share web application via a link provided in a 'file has been shared with you' email message, you are taken directly to the file's content viewer (below). Otherwise...

  1. Sign in to the Safe Share web application.
  2. If the Home icon at the top-left indicates the word 'Home' and no drop-down icon is indicated, skip to the next step. (This indicates that you are a member of only one organization.)
    Otherwise, the name of your current organization is indicated, from which you can either:
    • skip to the next step to view/print an item from this organization, or
    • view/print an item from a different organization (you are a member of) by changing your organization before continuing on.
  3. Locate the file to be viewed/printed.
  4. Do one of the following to begin viewing this file:
    • Right-click on the file's row and choose View from the pop-up menu:
      Right-clicking a file as a collaborator with Manage permissions - context menu

      Note: This menu option will not be available in the following if it is not possible to view or print this type of file in Safe Share. See File formats supported by the content viewer for a list of file types that the content viewer supports. Instead, you will only be able to download the file to access its content, on the proviso that the owner of this file has granted you (as a collaborator) Download permissions on the file.
      OR
    1. Either focus on the item, by hovering your mouse pointer over the item's row, or select the item, by clicking on the item's row (to the right of its name if a folder):
      Selecting an item as a collaborator with Manage permissions
    2. If you:
      • Focussed on the item, click the 'View' icon
        View icon
        in its row.
      • Selected the item, click the 'View' icon
        View icon
        either in its row or in the toolbar area near the top of the page.
      Note that the View icons will not be available if it is not possible to view or print this file in Safe Share; downloading this file is your only option to access the file's content.
    Tip: If navigating to a file in a folder (by having clicked through one or more folder names), then in the breadcrumb (e.g.
    Breadcrumb
    ) near the top of the main Safe Share page, you can click the:
    • Ellipsis symbol ('...') to expand the entire folder hierarchy (i.e. to reveal Shared Folder in the example above), since only the root and current (i.e. Other above) folder locations are indicated after each change in folder location.
    • Link of a parent folder's name (i.e. Shared Folder from Other above) to go to that folder's location.
    • Home link (or the name of your current organization) to go to the root location of your file area.
    The content viewer opens, showing a read-only view of your file's content:
    • If your file is an image, the content viewer and its controls will look similar to this:
      Content viewer for image files
    • If your file is a document-like file (i.e. which may contain more than one page), the content viewer and its controls will look similar to this:
      Content viewer for document files
    Tips on using the content viewer:
    • Click the 'Print' icon
      Print icon
      on the content viewer to print the file's content.
      Note: This icon will be disabled if the file you are viewing was shared with you and the owner of that file did not grant you (as a collaborator) Download permissions, which in addition to downloading the file's content, allows you to print it directly from the content viewer.
    • Click the 'Download' icon
      Download icon
      on the content viewer to download the file's content, which can also be performed from the main Safe Share page.
      Note: This icon will not be available if the file you are viewing was shared with you and the owner of that file did not grant you (as a collaborator) Download permissions.
    • If you are the owner of the file you are currently viewing, click the 'Share' icon
      Share icon
      to open the 'Share' dialog box, which allows you to add new collaborators and/or modify existing collaborators (including their permissions) on this file.
      Note: This icon will not be visible if you are not the owner of this file.
    • If you are viewing an image file, click the 'Toggle scaled or actual size of image' icon
      Toggle between scaled and actual size icon
      on the content viewer to switch between viewing the image in its entirety (i.e. scaled) or at its actual/original size.
    • The following features are only available when viewing document-like files:
      • Use the 'Zoom In' (plus) and 'Zoom Out' (minus) icons to zoom in and out of the content view. The adjacent drop-down can also be used to select an appropriate zoom level.
      • Click the 'Switch To Presentation Mode' icon
        Full screen icon
        to expand the size of the content to fill the entire screen (using the web browser's own 'full screen' feature).
        Note: Some web browsers may not support this feature (e.g. Safari) and therefore, clicking this icon has no effect.
      • If your content consists of multiple pages, you can navigate to different pages by:
        • Clicking the 'Next page' (down arrow) and 'Previous Page' (up arrow) icons to respectively move forward and back one page at a time.
        • Clicking the 'Toggle sidebar' icon
          Toggle sidebar icon
          to open the sidebar on the left on the left of the content viewer and in this sidebar, scrolling to and clicking the corresponding thumbnails for specific pages.
        • Typing a page number in the Page field (followed by the 'return/enter' key).
      • Click the 'Tools' icon
        Tools icon
        to open a drop-down menu of additional controls:
        • Jump/go to the first and last pages of content (consisting of multiple pages).
        • Rotate content clockwise and counterclockwise.
        • Enable/disable the hand/move tool.
    • To go back to the main Safe Share page, click the x at the top-right of the content viewer.

Note: If (one of) your organization's Safe Share Organization administrator/s has enabled the watermarking feature through Safe Share Organization Administration properties, then when you view a file's content (as a collaborator on this file) through the content viewer, you will observe a watermark covering (each page of) the file's content. The watermarking feature:

  • Is intended to discourage collaborators from copying file views by other means (e.g. using screenshot capturing tools, etc).
  • Covers a file's view with large semi-transparent text that consists of the email address of the currently signed-in collaborator viewing the file, the Covata Platform's URL, the ID of the file/Secure Object, the classification applied to the file by its owner (if applicable) and the date/time when the file was viewed.

For more information about this feature and Safe Share Safe Share Organization Administration properties, see Configuring Safe Share Organization Administration properties in the Organization Administrator's Guide.

File formats supported by the content viewer

The content viewer supports the following file formats, which are determined by file name extensions:

File-type category Supported file formats (file name extensions)
Image files bmp, gif, jpeg, jpg, png
Word processing/text documents doc, docx, html, mhtml, odt, ooxml, rtf, txt, xhtml, xml
Documents with static content pdf
Presentation files odp, pot, potx, pps, ppsx, ppt, pptx
Spreadhsheet/data files csv, ods, xls, xlsb, xlsm, xlsx, xltm, xltx, xlxm

Downloading secure content

Note: This feature is not available if a file you can view was shared with you and the owner of that file did not grant you permissions to download the file's content.

To download secure content:

  1. Sign in to the Safe Share web application.
  2. If the Home icon at the top-left indicates the word 'Home' and no drop-down icon is indicated, skip to the next step. (This indicates that you are a member of only one organization.)
    Otherwise, the name of your current organization is indicated, from which you can either:
    • skip to the next step to download an item from this organization, or
    • download an item from a different organization (you are a member of) by changing your organization before continuing on.
  3. Locate the file to be downloaded.
  4. Do one of the following to begin downloading this file:
    • Right-click on the file's row and choose Download from the pop-up menu:
      Right-clicking a file as an owner - context menu

      Note: If this menu option is not available, then it is not possible to download this file since its owner did not grant Download permissions when they shared the file (or one of its ancestral folders) with you.
      OR
    1. Either focus on the item, by hovering your mouse pointer over the item's row, or select the item, by clicking on the item's row (to the right of its name if a folder):
      Selecting an item as its owner
    2. If you:
      • Focussed on the item, click the 'Download' icon
        Download icon
        in its row.
      • Selected the item, click the 'Download' icon
        Download icon
        either in its row or in the toolbar area near the top of the page.
      Note that this option will not be available if the owner did not grant Download permissions when they shared the file (or one of its ancestral folders) with you.
    The file is downloaded through your web browser's usual download feature.
    Tip: You can also download a file's content through the content viewer.

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