NOTE: This article applies to Player on Windows (and Composer) only. The method explained below will not work with Player on any other supported platform.

Introduction

In this article, you will learn how to use synchronized folder solutions like Dropbox as a data feed source for Intuiface collections. With this trick, you can update content displayed in your running Intuiface experiences simply by changing the source files found in the third-party hosted folder.

Please note that you need to have the third-party associated software (Dropbox, Google Drive, etc) running on every Player device.

Pointing collections to a shared folder hosted by a third-party cloud service

Step One: Set up your collection in Intuiface

We'll be leveraging Intuiface's ability to treat a folder as a dynamic data source.

1. Create a folder anywhere on the PC running Composer and place at least two images within it. These images do not have to represent the content you eventually intend to use. They are used here as placeholders and will be deleted.
2. Next, using Composer, add a collection into your experience. For this example, we'll use the Carousel.
3. From File Explorer, drag and drop the image folder prepared in Step 1 above into your Carousel. It should look something like the following:
   
   Under the covers, Intuiface has copied the drag-and-dropped folder and placed it within the Intuiface project you're editing.
4. Save and close your experience.

Step Two: Create a dedicated content folder within the third-party folder 

Next, create a dedicated content folder within your synchronized third-party file share location - such as a Dropbox folder.

For this example, we'll use a Dropbox folder named "SharedImages", the path may look like this:
C:\Users\[Username]\Intuiface Dropbox\[dropbox username]\SharedImages

NOTE: The [Username] field would contain an actual user name for your Windows PC and, of course, your synchronized folder naming may differ. ("Intuiface Dropbox\[dropbox username]" in our case).

Step Three. Link your collection to the third-party folder

Now, we link the folder created in Step 1 to the folder created in Step 2.

The example below works with the project located on a device running Composer. For devices running Player on Windows, deployed experiences are listed in a different location: %PUBLIC%\IntuiFace\[ExperienceID]

1. Locate the folder created by Intuiface when you drag-and-dropped the original folder in Step One. You will find the copied folder here:
   C:\Users\[Username]\Documents\IntuiFace\[ExperienceName]\Files\Collection\[DirectoryName]
NOTE: The value for [DirectoryName] will be the name of the original folder you drag-and-dropped.
2. Copy the directory path of that image folder and save it for later use.
3. Delete the folder in your project. We're going to replace that freshly deleted folder with a link to your Dropbox folder.
4. On Windows, open a Command Prompt as admin, then type the following command to create a link:
   mklink /D "C:\Users\[Username]\Documents\IntuiFace\[ExperienceName]\Files\Collection\[DirectoryName]" "C:\Users\[Username]\Intuiface Dropbox\[dropbox username]\SharedImages"
   In other words, create a folder with the name "[DirectoryName]" that is actually a shortcut to the Dropbox folder you intend to use.

A folder, with a small arrow icon, should have now appeared within the Collection folder. The arrow icon means it is a shortcut. The name of the folder will be the name of the original folder you drag-and-dropped in Step One.

See the image below for an example. The original drag-and-dropped folder was named Cars. This shortcut now points to a Dropbox folder.

Step Four: Enjoy!

You can now open and play your experience.

As you will see, any image added to/removed from the Dropbox folder created in Step 2 above will appear/disappear on the fly in your collection. You can do this locally on your Dropbox folder or through its web interface.

Left side: Dropbox Web Interface / Right side: Experience playing live

 

Warning for Multi-Device Deployment

For every PC on which you wish to run this experience in Player on Windows, you need to either

• Ensure the path to the third-party folder is identical across all machines
  OR
• Run mklink - in Step Three above - on each device to accommodate different paths to the same third-party folder.

Pointing collections to an Excel spreadsheet hosted by a third-party cloud service

The "mklink" technique introduced above can also be used in tandem with the Excel Interface Asset.

NOTE: With this method, changes to the Excel workbook or to content located in sub-folders will only be recognized after restarting Player for Windows. This can be accomplished either by manually restarting Player or by using the remote deployment feature to redeploy the experience (even if there are no changes to the experience itself) as remote deployment also involves a Player restart.

When you insert an Excel workbook into a scene, a folder will be created within the project hierarchy of your experience. For example, if the Excel workbook is named TestExcel.xlsx, the resulting folder would be located and named as follows:

C:\Users\[Username]\Documents\IntuiFace\[ExperienceName]\Files\InterfaceAssets\TestExcel_xlsx

Now use the same trick as described above:

• close Composer
• copy the folder created for your Excel workbook - e.g. TestExcel_xlsx - into your hosting service folder. If using Dropbox, the following could be the resulting folder path:

C:\Users\[Username]\Dropbox\TestExcel_xlsx

• delete the original folder in your experience project
• create a link from your experience project to the folder using the mklink command:

mklink /D "C:\Users\[Username]\Documents\IntuiFace\[ExperienceName]\Files\InterfaceAssets\TestExcel_xlsx" "C:\Users\[Username]\Dropbox\TestExcel_xlsx"

The result is a shortcut from the original location of the Excel workbook folder to its new location within the Dropbox folder.

You can now modify the Excel worksheets directly in the Dropbox folder, even adding/removing media files from sub-folders. As stated above, you must restart Player for spreadsheet modifications to be recognized.

Warning for Multi-Device Deployment

For every PC on which you wish to run this experience in Player on Windows, you need to either

• Ensure the path to the third-party folder is identical across all machines
  OR
• Run mklink on each device to accommodate different paths to the same third-party folder.