Small Biz usecases

[peetervois]

Hi. First, thank you for the wonderful BTSync application. On today's form I see it to be very useful already. I was searching a place where BTSync feature development roadmap kind of thing would be and was unable to find one. So, I decided to post here some usecases that I today do not have in BTSync and which ones would give me more what I am searching for.

UC1(available today). I as entrepreneur want to have the top secret documents folder to be backuped on multiple backup nodes around the world, because I want to reduce the risk of data and work effort loss on destruction of one node.

UC2(na today). I as entrepreneur want to let some people to sync only a limited set of the subfolders in my top secret documents folder tree to reduce the risk of sensitive data leak. Also I might have different projects going on and I would not like to let everyone to see them. At the same time I want that all the folders are backuped in the way of UC1.

UC3(na today). I as entrepreneur want to remove some people from haveing right to sync some folders they had right before for, because their assignement have been changed. At the same time I want that the remote folder he has will be destroyed permanently. I trust my people but I want that there will be additionnal system free from human error thad performs the task and I would like feedback in my admin node about the success of the operation. I want that the backup in UC1 will stay running without working on new secrets.

UC4(na today). I as regular user of the system would like to share one single file with external client, to let him download the file using the secret I send him over e-mail. I want that the operation will be for him as easy as one click on the secret. I know that I can create sync folder with each external client but that is for longer cooperation, not for single download and requires high amount of administration by the external client. Maybe BitTorrent previous way of sharing torrents will do, I would like it to be integrated ito sync then.

[nils]

UC4 is available in the iOS version, where you can select files to be sent to another mobile device from the photos and shared folders on the client. What happens behind the scene probably works this way:

1) copy selected files to temp folder

2) create new share on the iOS client using the temp folder

3) generate link/QR code

4) other mobile grabs the QR code and connects

5) leaving the screen deletes the share and the temp folder.

The QR code secrets are already quite neat with a format like btsync://<your secret here>?n=<your share name here>

edit:

"all" that is necessary would be porting this to the desktop version and you would have instant file transfer through btsync

UC3 will probably never make it into btsync, because as soon as you even have a one time secret, that person can make a copy of the shared folder upon sync completion, without you knowing it. If this will ever be realised, then with btsync as backbone through an API used in a 3rd party program.

[GreatMarko]

Your UC2 can already be achieved - rather than adding a single root folder to Sync, simply add each sub-folder as its own sync - then just distribute the relevant sub-folder secrets to appropriate users. If you wish then wish to "backup" all the sub-folders to another device, you could sync each individual sub-folder to that "backup" device also.

Your UC3, where remote data is "permanently destroyed" would be near impossible to implement! Even if data within a sync folder could be "destroyed", what would stop a user copying files out of a sync folder first to another non-sync location?

UC4 is available in the iOS version

UC4 is available in the Android version also

[peetervois]

Hi, thank you all for the feedback and taking time to think about it. Most of the cases I wrote here are achievable. What I am worried about is that the amount of maintenance work will raise rapidly without haveing implemented usecases for these. See following example of setup:

Folder1 - users Backup, A,B,C,D,E

Folder2 - users Backup, C,D,E,F,G

\ Folder2a - users Backup, C,D,E,F,G,MrX

Folder3 - users Backup, A,C,H,J,K,L

UC2 reduces lots of confinguring all day around if new folder is needed to create. We migth have more than one Backup machiene and then all backup machienes need to be configured for the new folder.

Folder2a would be easy to create and assign additionally only MrX to it. As it is subfolder for Folder2, the users of Folder2 will have access to it without any configuration.

UC3 reduces the same configuring overload when the user C no longer needs to have right for syncing the folders. He ofcourse can simply delete the foders and remove the sync.

It is clear that if the user C is corrupt and does not follow agreement then there will be trouble. This kind of human factor stays always out of IT to solve. But it will make lot less fuzz when people keep secret documents in synced folder and are ohnest. They might still have some folders that they need to sync and the system takes care of which ones he does have active. I think it is enough when the remote synced folder can be destroyed when user will no longer have right to sync it.