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Linking to a Public Files folder in a template

Linda.B.584

Hi everyone,

I would like to create two folders in Public Files - one to hold faculty resources and one to hold Getting Started info for students. Then I would like to create a template that can be used to create our courses that includes links to those two folders so that the information populates all the courses. I have a couple of questions about this:

Once I create the folder in the Public Files area - how do I find the link to that folder?

How would I add links to a resource within a folder that is in the Public Files area? Do those folders only hold actual files but not links?

Thanks in advance for any help that anyone can provide,

Linda

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Roxana.P.315

Hello Linda,

Public files is a location where actual files can be stored and shared. Important to understand is that "Public Files is a publicly available location meaning any user regardless of whether they can authenticate into your site can see the files as long as they have the link".

If that is not something you are concerned about, please feel free to use it. However, most clients prefer to use different locations such as LOR ( Learning Object Repository): https://community.d2l.com/brightspace/kb/articles/3675-about-brightspace-learning-object-repository .

There is a great article explaining the difference between the different types of storing and sharing files here: https://community.d2l.com/brightspace/kb/articles/5780-deciding-between-using-manage-files-public-files-or-lor

Hope this article will help with your decision.

Steve.B.446

Depending on your role and permissions, it's possible to create a link to a file in Public Files from Insert Stuff. My assumption is that having permissions to write to Public Files would give you that option too but that might be optimistic on my part!

Alternatively you can manually use relative links that start with /shared/ within Brightspace (which is handy if you have development and production environments as it makes your content portable between the two). You'll see that path if you navigate to a text or HTML file within the Public Files area and go to Edit, it's listed as the filename.

Linda.B.584

Thanks to both Roxane and Steve for your quick and helpful responses.

Roxane, I see the Learning Activity Library in my list under administrative tools but I don't see Learning Object Repository. Are these the same?

Steve, thank you for the tip on finding the path to a file. Ideally we would link to a folder instead of each individual file within a folder. It also looks like the only way to include links within the Public Files area is to create an html page and add the links to that page. Does that sound correct?

Linda

Steve.B.446

@Linda.B.584 apologies for late reply, I'm not getting notifications of replies for some reason.

That does indeed sound correct.

Greg.S.896

Hi @Linda.B.584 . If you want to have a common layout that is easily copied into other shells, I recommend you build the shells as you'd like to have them. Once you have it as you'd like, the content can be copied through automation, from these shells into the destination shells using the CCB function (Copy Course Bulk). Using this tool means it all stays inside Brightspace and away from discovery / unwanted attention.

Greg S.

Linda.B.584

Thank you for your response, Greg. We do have a common template that provides some common modules of content. However, there are some documents - like a syllabus template for faculty or a faculty handbook - that we want to update each term or academic year. In another LMS we were able to create an administrative folder that contained these files in an and then share out the links to this folder/documents to all courses through a course template. We were also able to update the files without changing the link. This meant that every time we updated those files they were automatically updated to all courses containing the link. It doesn't look like we can do this in Brightspace unfortunately.

Greg.S.896

That clears up the question. This sounds like an item that could be added to the LOR, if you have it enabled in your system. It's a bit clunky, but does allow you to download dynamic links, so when an item is updated in the LOR, it's automatically updated in the course with that link. The down side is searching for some of these documents and the prep needed to get it up and running. We've also created a complete course and then exported it to a zipped file, loading it in a OneDrive folder, so faculty can download and import the file into their courses.

If you did create a web page with all the information, then linking to it may be a better way to keep the latest information always available. We have an Intranet (SharePoint) site for our "Teaching & Learning" content that courses will link to, but the actual content is only on the SharePoint site (one point of update is easiest to manage).

Linda.B.584

Thanks, Greg. You have some good suggestions for us to think about.

I appreciate your input,

Linda