Help Desk Geek – Help Desk Tips For IT Pros

Imagine this situation:  You run a small business with a couple of remote locations, aside from your main office.  You do not have the budget for for full blown implementation of Active Directory, and Windows Server based File Shares.  You have one Windows workstation that will be working as a file server for the company and you want an easy way for everyone to share files across your local and wide area network.

For this type of solution, you are keeping an eye on two main factors, budget and ease of use.  Everyone seems familiar with file sharing through instant messaging applications, but that method is not very secure.  You could sign up for an Internet based file sharing service, but that can incur monthly usage fees.

Why not setup your own in-house file sharing service?  Sounds complicated from the get go?  It actually is not, provided you find the right software selection.  One such “do-it-yourself” type package is called Easy File Sharing Web Server (found here).

Though Easy File Sharing Web Server (EFSWS) is not fool proof for the user (a little technical knowledge helps), the setup of the program is pretty close.  You do not have to have a web server platform (Apache, or IIS) in place.  You do not need an existing database installation (MySQL, or MS SQL).  EFSWS covers these bases for you.

During the installation, you will need to know what default web server ports you will be using.  The default for setup purposes is 80, for standard web traffic, and 443 for SSL use.  However, these can be changed after installation.

When opening EFSWS from the Program File menu in Windows, you are greeted with a screen that has a sidebar based menu for program options.  Each of these menu items contains the choices you will need to configure system options, add and remove users, modify security settings, and define virtual folders for file sharing purposes.  Even if the default options are to your liking, you may want to change some selections.

The first place you will want to look over is the Options menu.  Here is where you can edit the behavior of EFSWS and change service options.  You may or may not want to have it start, as well as start minimized to the tray, when you log into the Windows workstation.  You may want to turn off the guest login, for security purposes, and keep the logins to user accounts only.  Here is also where you can modify the web server ports.

When you get to the Virtual Folders section, you may want to disable the default options of opening up the entire C: drive for sharing.  It would be safer to limit the access to specific folders, like Test Pics in this example.

This way, users would not be looking through the contents of your computer’s hard drive; just one, or more, particular areas.  You can easily remove the default selections by clicking on disk_c, for instance, and then clicking on Delete.

To add a Virtual Folder for sharing, first click on Add.  Then follow along with the new screen that opens up.  Click the … button to add the real location of the folder you wish to share (such as C:\Program Files\), type in the Alias name (like Folder1, which will appear in the web interface), a Description if you want, and a Disk Quota amount, if you are concerned about hard drive space.

Here you can also choose to have blanket policies for Uploads and Downloads for an entire user group, or assign specific permissions to each user.  When finished with your selections, click on Ok.

Now that we have Virtual Folders selected, we need some user accounts to go along with them.  Creating users in EFSWS is not difficult.  Click on the User Account choice in the sidebar menu to do so.

There are some dummy accounts already listed in this section.  You may remove all of them but Admin, and you will want to change this account’s password for your own purposes.  To add a user account, click on the Add button at the top of this screen.

When adding a user, you may use any set of alpha numeric characters for the UserID.  Their password should be in similar format, and can use special characters ($%^& and the like).  You can assign them either Guest, User, or Power user level permissions.

You may also set the account to Disable, if they do not intend to use this service immediately, but at a later time.  Additionally, you can pre-select Download and Upload speed at their account level.  Moving forward, we should have at least one regular user, and one Admin account.  With our settings configured, we will log into the web interface.

When you arrive at the login screen in your web browser, enter you username and password.  For the purposes of testing, we will first enter as the Admin account.  This allows management options from within the web interface.

Notice that there are hyperlinks to Edit, Delete and Manage the Virtual Folders.  These functions are similar to what you have within the program’s options outside of the web browser.  You may also add Virtual Folders from this area if you need to do so, while away from the workstation running the EFSWS service.

At this point, log out of the web interface using the Admin account, and log back in with a regular use account.  You will notice that the administrative links are gone.  There is only a standard set of links to shared folders.

If you were to click on the Test Pics link, you are moved to an area where you may upload files and download the files made available to this account.  This is a simple web interface where you click on a link to download a file, just as you would on an actual external Internet website.  You also have the option of creating a new directory, provided you have permissions to do so.

Easy File Sharing Web Server is not for everyone.  Even though it is rather inexpensive ($50), like any type of centrally located service, it requires monitoring.  It also needs to have someone to manage user accounts and folder permissions, so it is not completely self-regulating.

However, it has a light learning curve, and makes for a practical file sharing solution for a home office or small business setting.  If a simple document sharing solution is what you require, this software is worth considering.