Data Infrastructure

Starts at:

Friday, 14:00

Slides

Objectives

💡 You know what Nextcloud is and its capabilities.
💡 You can navigate the Nextcloud web interface and describe its main areas.
💡 You know the typical features of Nextcloud, including file management, sharing, versioning, and collaborative editing.
💡 You understand the different access methods for Nextcloud (web, desktop clients, mobile apps, WebDAV/API).
💡 You can integrate Nextcloud with DataLad using WebDAV for automated research data workflows.

Exercises

Task: Explore the Nextcloud web interface.

  1. Log in to your institutional Nextcloud instance

  2. Familiarise yourself with the main areas of the interface:

    • Dashboard: What widgets are displayed? Can you customise them?
    • App switcher (top-left): Which apps are available?
    • Top-right icons: Locate the Search, Notifications, Contacts, and Profile functions.

  3. Try out the following file operations:

    • Upload a file or folder
    • Share a file with a colleague (set appropriate access rights)
    • Create a new text document and edit it online
    • Check the version history of a file

  4. Discuss with your neighbour:

    • For which tasks in your research workflow could Nextcloud be useful?
    • What are the advantages compared to storing files only on your local machine?

Slides

To export the slides to PDF, do the following:

  1. Toggle into Print View using the E key (or using the Navigation Menu).
  2. Open the in-browser print dialog (CTRL/CMD+P).
  3. Change the Destination setting to Save as PDF.
  4. Change the Layout to Landscape.
  5. Change the Margins to None.
  6. Enable the Background graphics option.
  7. Click Save.

Note: This feature has been confirmed to work in Google Chrome, Chromium as well as in Firefox.

These instructions were copied from the Quarto documentation (MIT License) and slightly modified.

Resources

Nextcloud

DataLad Integration