nextcloud
Anonymous user group that has access to specific directories via single public link
Hello,
We have a real difficulty using Nextcloud : the lack of the concept of anonymous user. I am volunteer for a climate organisation, and we have over 150 volunteers. Some are very much active, so we create accounts for them. But some others are not, and for them we prefer to have a public link, allowing to read or write in each of the sub-folders (or even with no access to some sub-folders). It works very fine with GoogleDrive, but it is impossible to do with NextCloud.
Would GroupFolders allow to have this concept of anonymous user ? Someone to whom I could send the URL of a folder or doc and who would have the permissions which have been set to anonymous users. Including the important fact that I would need to have, for example, a general access to /MainFolder readable by anonymous, but then have :
- /MainFolder/Public writable by anonymous
- /MainFolder/Volutneers readable by anonymous
- /MainFolder/Private NOT readable by anonymous
@ischiros What about creating public links and sending them to your anonymous users? Isn't that also how GoogleDrive works?
No.
Public links provide the same credentials to all the subfolders. If you want to give access to the root folder of your organization but not to some of its subfolders, it is impossible with public links.
GoogleDrive is much more flexible. It allows to set, for each folder, if anonymous users have access to it or not. And then, you can create one unique public link to the root folder of your organisation. Public users will have access only to the authorized folders, while registered users while have access, with the same link, depending on their credentials.
I think this a really interesting feature request and something that NC would greatly benefit from. Maybe a dummy user group "anonymous" could be created per groupfolder or per instance. Then we could use ACL to manage permissions for this group and create a single public share link (again per instance or per groupfolder) that anonymous users can use for access.
Groupfolders has ACLs, but those are only for users/groups. A general ACL system does not exist, but would need to go into server anyway.
After reviewing this request and considering community feedback, it appears there hasn't been significant interest or engagement from other users. Additionally, this feature does not align with our current vision for Nextcloud.
We appreciate your suggestion and understand the value you see in it. However, at this time, we will not be pursuing its implementation.
If you're interested in developing this please feel free to contribute this feature, we will happily help with reviewing.
Thank you for your understanding.
