Folders - Educational accounts

Folders, previously known as shared folders, allow members of your groups or School organization on ThingLink to access and work with the same media. The content inside folders can be edited simultaneously by multiple students working on a group project - for more information, please see the article on Collaborative editing.

Click the links below to quickly jump to different parts of this article:

• What plans can use folders?
• Creating a folder
• Folder visibility settings
• Moving content to a folder
• [School plan] Managing other users' access to a folder
• Deleting a folder

Availability

Folders are available on all paid educational accounts.

Creating a folder

To create a folder, go to 'My Media' and click a plus icon beneath the Folders heading. Then, enter a title for your new folder and click the blue 'Create' button.

Note that students cannot create folders.

Folder visibility settings

Folders can be set to two privacy settings: 'My organization' or 'Private'. These settings can be managed by opening a folder and clicking the grey 'Settings' button below the folder's thumbnail. 

• 'My organization' folders will be visible to all students tied to your account, or all members of your School on ThingLink.  Every student will be able to edit, delete and change the visibility setting for all non-private scenes in that folder. They will be able to move their own work to that folder as well.
• A 'Private' folder is not visible to other members of your School and student groups unless you grant them access to it. Individual non-private scenes will be accessible via an embed or a direct link, but students and other teachers will not be able to edit them. Please note that Premium teachers cannot manage access to folders; as a result, private folders cannot be shared with students. You can select 'My organization' visibility setting to share the folder with all of your student groups instead.

Please note that the folder visibility setting does not affect the visibility of individual scenes inside it. A public or unlisted media will be embeddable and shareable via a link even if it's located in a folder.

Moving content to a folder

To move any media to a folder, go to 'My Media', then click the three dots button next to a scene's thumbnail and click 'Move to folder'. Then, select one of the folders and click the blue 'Move' button:

Note that you cannot move content owned by other users, including your students.

You can move content between folders in a similar manner. If you'd like to move content back to your account, open a folder, then click the three dots button next to a scene's thumbnail and select 'Move from folder'. Note that other members of your organization won't be able to edit the media once it's removed from a folder.

[School plan] Managing access to a folder

If you'd like to limit a folder to one of your classes or select students working on a specific project, you can create a private folder and follow the steps below.

Adding users

1. Go to a folder and ensure that it's been set to private visibility setting by clicking the 'Settings' button
2. Click the gray 'Manage access' button below the folder's thumbnail
3. In the new popup window, click on the 'Name or email' field. You will be shown a list of all members of your student groups or School. Click on individual users to add them to the folder. You can type in a username or email address to filter the list.
4. Once you've selected all users, click the blue 'ADD' button.

This will give all users you've selected 'Private access' to the folder. They will be able to view, edit and in other ways manage all content inside the folder.

You can also choose to grant 'Admin access'. Users with admin access to a folder will be able to change the folder's settings, add or remove other users and delete the folder. Simply click on the blue 'Private access' text and choose 'Admin access' instead when adding users.

Changing users' access to a folder

Once a user has been granted access to a folder, you can change their access level or remove them from a folder. To do so, go to a folder, then click the 'Manage Access' button. In the popup window, click on the blue text indicating user's current access level and select the desired access type. If you choose the 'Remove specific access' option, the user will lose access to the folder.

Managing access to 'My Organization' folders

The 'Manage access' functionality is available for 'My organization' folders as well. However, since all members of your School or student groups always have access to non-private content inside such folders, granting them a 'Private access' will only allow them to see and edit 'Private' content. Granting 'Admin access' will also allow them to manage the folder.

Deleting a folder

Please note that deleting a folder, unlike deleting a collection, will permanently delete all content inside it. Make sure to move all media you'd like to keep either back to 'My Media', a different folder or another user's account. 

Once you are set on deleting a folder, open it and click the red 'Delete' button below the thumbnail. Only folder's creator, organization admins and users who've been granted admin access to a folder can delete it.