NOTE:
This article represents one of four options for populating collections with remotely stored content. The topic of this article only applies to Player on Windows (and Composer).

Overview

In this article, you will learn how to use synchronized folder solutions like Dropbox as a remote content storage option 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 cloud-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. Publish your experience and then close it.

Step Two: Deploy your experience to the devices running Player

Now you need to put this experience on each device running Player. This can be done by manually placing a copy on each device or via Intuiface's remote deployment capability.

Step Three: Create a dedicated content folder within cloud storage

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

Then, copy all of the content in the original experience folder and put them into the cloud storage folder you just created.

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 Four. For each device running Composer or Player, link your collection to the cloud storage folder

Now, we link the folder created in Step One to the folder created in Step Three. We have to do this on every device the experience has been deployed.

For experiences on Player devices, the following assumes you used Intuiface's remote deployment feature. In this case, the experience is automatically placed in the folder represented by the system variable %PUBLIC% - which is usually C:\Users\Public - and represented by an Experience ID

1. Locate the folder created in Step One.
   NOTE: The value for [DirectoryName] will be the name of the original image folder you drag-and-dropped.
   
   • Composer: C:\Users\[Username]\Documents\IntuiFace\[ExperienceName]\Files\Collection\[DirectoryName]
   • Player: %PUBLIC%\IntuiFace\[ExperienceID]\Files\Collection\[DirectoryName]
2. Copy the directory path of that 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. In either case, the folder with the name "[DirectoryName]" will become a shortcut to the Dropbox folder you intend to use.
   • Composer:
     mklink /D "C:\Users\[Username]\Documents\IntuiFace\[ExperienceName]\Files\Collection\[DirectoryName]" "C:\Users\[Username]\Intuiface Dropbox\[dropbox username]\SharedImages"
   • Player:
     mklink /D "%PUBLIC%\IntuiFace\[ExperienceID]\Files\Collection\[DirectoryName]" "C:\Users\[Username]\Intuiface Dropbox\[dropbox username]\SharedImages"

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 Five: 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 Three 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 run mklink as described in Step Four above.

Once you do this, future deployments using remote deployment will not overwrite the virtual link.

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.

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:

• publish the experience and close Composer
• deploy your experience to devices running Player
• copy the folder created for your Excel workbook - e.g. TestExcel_xlsx - into your cloud storage 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. For Player that would be:
  mklink /D "%PUBLIC%\IntuiFace\[ExperienceID]\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.

Warning for Multi-Device Deployment

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

Once you do this, future deployments using remote deployment will not overwrite the virtual link.