Virtual Data Rooms

CREATING VIRTUAL DATA ROOMS WITH ODRIVE

The odrive Spaces feature can be used to quicky set up a virtual data room for two or more parties to contribute and consume documents.

Key advantages:

• Use any storage you've linked to odrive as the backend storage provider for the files. Guests invited to the data room won't have access to any other locations in your storage, and they won't even know what kind of storage you're using.
• Send out Space invitation emails conveniently--just by entering a list of email addresses--for guests to sign up and access your Space.
• You and your guests can optionally download the desktop sync app and get powerful sync access to your data room.
• Price: FREE

See our step-by-step setup guide below to get started quickly. You can also learn more about odrive in general from our main usage guide documentation.

SETUP OVERVIEW

The general step-by-step flow to set this up looks like this:

1. Sign up for odrive (if you haven't already) and link the storage account you want to use to support your data room.
2. Create an odrive Space and pick a particular folder in the linked storage to hold the data.
3. Invite your guests to join the Space.
4. Guests can use the invite email to sign up if they haven't done so already. Once they accept the Space invitation, they will see your Space in their odrive folder.
5. Space members can use the odrive web client to access the data.
6. (Optional) additionally, a Space member can download and install the desktop sync app and be able to sync the data room as if it were any other storage that they've linked to their odrive account.

SIGN UP AND LINK YOUR STORAGE

Go to our website to sign up or click here to open the sign-up link directly.

Choose a sign-in provider which you'll use to sign in to odrive.

After finishing the sign-up process, you will be able to link any additional storage accounts you wish to link. Be sure you link the storage account that you want to use to be the backend for the virtual data room.

CREATE AN ODRIVE SPACE

In your odrive home, click on the SPACES tab. Click on the + Share Storage link in order to create a new Space.

When the Share Storage form comes up, give your project a Name that will be recognizable to the people you're inviting since it will appear in any future space invitation emails that go out. You can then pick a specific folder in any storage you've linked to odrive to hold the data room's files.

Finally, you can specify a set of email addresses to invite your guests at this time if you want, but you will have an opportunity to do so later on if that is more convenient for you.

Once you finish and click on SHARE, you'll be able to see the new Space in your SPACES tab.

INVITE YOUR GUESTS TO JOIN THE SPACE

To edit your space or invite more people to join, you can go to the dropdown menu for Space and select an option such as the MEMBERS option.

Managing space memberships is straightforward, as is clicking on the INVITE MEMBERS option to specify more email addresses for which to send an invite.

YOUR GUESTS ACCEPT YOUR SPACE INVITATION

Your invited guests will receive an email similar to the one below.

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Do invited guests need to sign up for odrive before you send them an invite?

When the invited guest clicks on the acceptance link in the invitation email, they will be able to sign up for odrive if they have not done so previously.

There is no need to sign up ahead of receiving the invite.

Once a user has accepted the space invite, they will see your Space in their odrive folders at the top level, just like any other storage of their own they've linked to their odrive account.

GUESTS USE THE WEB CLIENT TO ACCESS THE DATA ROOM

Your new Space member can now browse the space, download files, share weblinks, delete files, and more through our fully featured web client. There are buttons in the upper-right to create folder and upload new files.

Clicking on the Add Files button will bring up an easy drag-and-drop dialog for your collaborators to add content to the data room.

(OPTIONAL) GUESTS USE THE SYNC APP TO SYNC THE DATA ROOM

odrive offers a desktop sync app on Mac and Windows that is fully integrated with Finder and Windows Explorer. There is also a Linux command-line sync agent available as well.

Files and folders initially show up as placeholder cloud files so you don't have to download any file content until you need to access a particular file. This saves you network bandwidth and local disk space, even allowing you to sync large cloud storage repositories (by seeing placeholders for what's available) with only limited hard drive capacity on your laptop. To learn more about how odrive sync works, visit our Sync feature documentation page.

Since a Space shows up in the top-level odrive folder, any Space member can use our desktop sync app with their space, allowing for even deeper and more efficient means of collaboration.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Here are some other places to look for more information about odrive:

• Watch our instructional videos, including an Essentials video on how to use the desktop sync app on Mac or Windows.
• Review our usage guide for a quick overview of how to get started with odrive outside of the above instructions for creating your first data room.
• Get help or ask questions by going to our user forum or by emailing [email protected]. We'd love to hear from you.
• Take a look at our Features documentation for more information about what else odrive can do. There is also a Premium vs. Free capabilities table that you may find useful.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Is a Premium subscription required to set up a data room or to join one?

No, you can create Spaces with the free plan. Similarly, those with a free plan can accept Space invitations and use the web client and the desktop sync app to access your Space.

What kinds of storage can I use for my data room?

Over 20+ different storage types are supported. You can choose any specific folder inside any storage that you've linked to odrive for your storage backend.

Can I control read/write permissions on the Space?

Not currently. Everyone has write access to the space by default right now. You could alternatively send someone a secure weblink to distribute content from any storage in odrive if you don't need two-way collaboration.

Let us know on the forum or email [email protected] if read/write permission control on Spaces is important to you.

Where are my spaces located in my odrive folder?

If another user accepts your space invitation, they would see it in their top-level odrive folder directly, just as if it was one of their own storage links. So they might see paths such as the following within their odrive folder:

/Dropbox
/Google Drive
/Huntington Data Room
/Joss LLC Data Room

...where Dropbox and Google Drive above are your guest's own storage they've linked to their own odrive accounts and the Huntington Data Room and Joss LLC Data Rooms come from space invitations they've accepted.

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Where are the Spaces that I create?

Spaces that you create to share with others are located in the Spaces folder of your odrive top-level folder. So you'd see these example paths in your odrive folder:

/Spaces/Huntington Data Room
/Spaces/Joss LLC Data Room

Can I designate Admins to help me manage my odrive Space?

Not currently. The Space owner is the only one who can manage members and other Space settings. Let us know on the forum or email [email protected] if this feature is important to you.

How does odrive make money?

Our free plan offers a lot of powerful features out of the box. After unifying all of your storage accounts under one login, you may find that some of the universal storage capabilities that odrive unlocks for any linked storage may be useful for you to get things done. Some of these storage capabilities, such as direct sync relationships, unsync to turn synced files back into placeholder cloud files, backup to any storage, encryption, and advanced configuration options are only available with a Premium subscription to odrive.

A full list of free vs. premium capabilities is available for reference. Also, when you sign up for odrive, you are automatically enrolled in a 7-day free trial of Premium (no credit card required).

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30-day cancellation for a full refund

In addition to the free 7-day trial, odrive offers a satisfaction guarantee in the form of a 30-day window to cancel for a full refund. If this is your first purchase with odrive, you can benefit from this grace period to make sure that odrive Premium capabilities will be able to meet your use cases to your satisfaction.

You can also take advantage of this offer to try out any Premium features you didn't get a chance to try during your 7-day trial.