Esploro Community Folder Structure

Last updated
Save as PDF
Share
1. Share
2. Tweet
3. Share

The community folder enables institutions to contribute and share reports with one another. All users have full read and write access to the community folder, and can add new reports as well as edit and delete existing reports. Therefore, it is highly recommended that you save any report that you want to maintain without changes to your local institution folder in addition to the copy you saved in the community folder.

No actual customer data is shared, just the fields of the report for other customers to use for their own data.

To access the community folder, select Catalog in the top menu. Then, in the Folders pane, open Shared Folders > Community.

For example, if your institution is East Smithtown College:

If you save a report in any subdirectory of Shared Folders > Community, there is a chance that a member of another institution will edit or delete it.
If you save a report in any subdirectory of Shared Folders > East Smithtown College, no member of any other institution can edit or delete it.

While institutions are able to create folders, reports and other entities in the Community, the overall structure is maintained by Ex Libris with input from the community. This overall structure is described below.

To add a new folder to the Community Folder, select the Community folder from the pane, select the New icon in the top left corner, and select Folder:

Adding a New Folder

The following is an example of the organizational structure and usage methodology for the reports in the community folder. It is currently divided into different subject areas or by who shared them. There are several sub-folders under Shared Folders > Esploro Community > Reports:

Community folder structure.png

Esploro Community > Reports

The following table describes these sub-folders:

Community > Reports
Sub-Folder	Description
Ex Libris	A folder for materials provided by Ex Libris teams, such as the Product or Support teams.
Other	A folder for miscellaneous reports.
Research Assets	A folder for institutions to open sub-folders as desired and share reports, dashboards, etc. for the Research Assets Subject Area. Each institution can contribute their own reports, prefixing the report by the name of their institution.
Research Assets Usage	A folder for institutions to open sub-folders as desired and share reports, dashboards, etc. for the Research Assets Usage Subject Area. Each institution can contribute their own reports, prefixing the report by the name of their institution.
Researchers	A folder for institutions to open sub-folders as desired and share reports, dashboards, etc. for the Researchers Subject Area. Each institution can contribute their own reports, prefixing the report by the name of their institution.
Smart Harvesting	A folder for institutions to open sub-folders as desired and share reports, dashboards, etc. for the Smart Harvesting Subject Area. Each institution can contribute their own reports, prefixing the report by the name of their institution.

The folder is divided into sub-folders according to subject areas. Each institution can add its own reports to the relevant sub-folder to share with others. Each institution prefixes the name of the report with its institution name and a dash so that each report is identifiable by the institution that contributed it. It is advised to give names that will help other users understand what the report contains or is intended to do. For example:

Miami – List Outputs without files
Drexel – Duplicate ISBN clean up report

Reports that are contributed by Ex Libris are prefixed with Ex Libris. For example:

Ex Libris – Prompt year to search for active projects

Each institution can browse the folders for reports pertaining to a specific area or perform a search for reports from a specific institution.

Synchronization of Reports in the Community Folder

All reports placed in the community folder are immediately accessible to all other institutions in the same region. Every Friday each region is synchronized with all other regions, which makes all reports accessible to all institutions in the world.

For example, if on Wednesday institution A in the European data center places a report in the community folder, immediately all other institutions in the European data center are able to access the report. By Friday night, all other institutions in all other data centers in the world are also able to access the report that was added by institution A in the European data center.

Deleting a Folder, File, or other Object from the Community Folder

To permanently delete a file, prompt, filter, shortcut, report, or dashboard from the community zone, enter the word DeleteObject in the Description field in the Properties of the object (accessed from the More menu).

The deletion occurs on Friday when all Data Center community folders are synchronized.
A folder can be deleted only if it has DeleteObject in the description, and it is empty or all entities under it are also marked for deletion. If the folder is not empty, put DeleteObject in the Properties of all reports in the folder as well as in the Properties of the folder.
Deleting a folder or report from the community folder is not possible from the More > Delete option. It should be done as described above.
To move a folder or report in the community folder, first copy it to the new desired location and then delete the folder or report (as described above) from the original location.

For example: