The Cloud

What is UK Cloud?

UK Cloud is a place for Extinction Rebellion members to create, store, and share documents securely with each another. With it, you can collaboratively edit Office documents, making it a great alternative to tools such as Google Docs or MicrosoftOffice.

By 'Office' files, we mean files created in Microsoft Office programs, e.g. Word, Excel, etc.

UK Cloud can also be used to do a number of other things. For example, you can:

• Create a Kanban board (a visual organisational tool) for managing projects
• Create polls and forms

A short presentation on the XRUK Cloud is available here.

Important: Individual users have no personal storage area in UK Cloud. Instead, all files are the property of an XR group.

Getting access

Important: You should have already completed the steps outlined on the START HERE page before attempting to access UK Cloud. Otherwise, you will not have an account to log in to.

To access UK Cloud:

• Click on the UK Cloud icon on the Hub homepage, which looks like this:

OR

• Type https://cloud.extinctionrebellion.uk into the URL bar of your browser and hit Enter. You will then see a screen that looks like this:

• Log in. The simplest way to do this is by clicking Log in with XR UK Hub.

Note: We recommend adding UK Cloud to your browser's bookmarks/favourites so that it's easier to find in future.

Note: UK Cloud can also be accessed via an app that can be installed on your smartphone or tablet. Please read this guide for instructions on how to do this.

Landing page

Once you have logged in, you will see a screen that looks like this:

We will refer to the parts of the screen circled in red throughout the rest of the document by referring to them by number in red font, e.g. A.

Managing files

Basic tasks

Finding files

On the landing page, you should see a number of folders that you have access to (E).

These include:

• Group folders for all the groups you are in (that have folders)
• Library everyone has read-only access to this folder. It contains files shared with the whole of XR in the UK by selected UK working groups.
• Files and folders people have shared with you individually, or with groups you are in.

To find a file, simply click on the folders to navigate between them until you are in the right one. You can always go back to the landing page by clicking the Cloud icon (A) at the top left of the page.

Uploading files

To upload a file, first click on the relevant folder. Files cannot be uploaded directly to the landing page. Then:

1. Click the button at the top of the screen
2. Select Upload file
3. Choose the file to upload

Important: Although we do our best to keep the data in these tools reasonably secure, you must not post directly incriminating material here. By doing so you risk the authorities taking down the server, which would upset our communications severely. Not only would you risk your own arrest, but the arrest of the system administrators.

An alternative is the XR Cryptpad with end-to-end encryption, but we still discourage long-term storage of directly incriminating material.

Deleting files

To delete a file, click on the three dots to the right of the file and select Delete File.

Editing Office documents

To edit Office documents such as spreadsheets and presentations, click on the document name as it appears on the Cloud. This will open the file in your browser for you to modify.

Editing Office documents can even work collaboratively, meaning that other people should be able to work on the document at the same time as you.

For more information on how to use the different editors, please refer to the ONLYOFFICE user guides.

Note: Unfortunately, Office documents cannot be edited on a mobile device. Please see here for more information.

Advanced tasks

Uploading files from Google Docs

Obviously, the ideal method is to move a document from Google Docs to the Cloud – download it from Google, upload it to your Cloud area, and then delete it from Google Docs.

However, if you really must leave the document in Google's care you can simply have a link to it in the Cloud. In this case:

1. Get a link from Google Docs – with whatever options you require
2. Navigate to the folder where you want the link to appear (in your shared library folder if you want all XR members to have access to it, or in your group folder if it is private to your group)
3. Click the button at the top of the screen and select New Link
4. Enter the name for the link as it will appear in the file list (this doesn't have to be the filename, so it is better keep it fairly short). Don't delete the ".URL" at the end of the name
5. Press enter or click the arrow
6. In the box that pops up after a second or two, enter the link URL from step 1 (or any other link you want) and click Save

And that's it. Your link will appear in the list of files, with a globe icon to indicate that it is an external link:

Sharing files or folders

To share files and folders with other XR members, click on the icon to the right of the file name (circled in red below). Once this icon is clicked, a menu will appear on the right-hand side of the screen with three different sharing options (labelled 1, 2, and 3 in the screenshot below).

The different types of sharing are:

1. Share with someone else in your group

   To share a file with people in your group, click the icon next to Internal link (1 in the screenshot below). This will copy the link to your clipboard where it can then be pasted into an email, Mattermost message, etc.

2. Share with a particular user or group

   To share a file or folder with a specified user or group, type the name of the user/group into the box (2 below). As you type, a list of different users/groups should appear below where you are typing. Click on the user/group that you want to share the file or folder with. A new share should appear below, and you can copy the share link the same way as for internal links (see above).

   Note: We don't recommend sharing files this way as it will clutter up the home page of the person you are sharing the file/folder with.

3. Share with everyone

   If you would like to share a file so that anybody with the link can access it, even if they don't have a UK Cloud account, create a new Public Share link (3 below). This will create a link that can be copied and shared just like the other types of shares described above.

   Important: Be careful when sharing documents publicly that you are not sharing anything that should be kept private (e.g. personal details).

Creating and editing text files

To create a text file:

1. Navigate to the folder you want to create the file in.
2. Click the button at the top of the screen and then click New document.
3. Enter the name for this document (e.g. minutes.md).

The empty file will now open in your browser for you to edit. You can click on the icons at the top of the page to do things like create headings and lists and make text bold or italic. If you prefer, you can also use Markdown to add formatting, which lets you change text to headers, add lists, etc. This is very similar to what you can do in Mattermost.

The file will be automatically saved when you close it.

Undeleting files

1. If you want to find a deleted file, click "Deleted files" at the bottom left of the UK Cloud screen, and then search the resulting list of deleted files
2. You may need to put the file name into the search bar to help, as the list of deleted files can be long
3. Also, if it is a recently deleted file, then ensure that the list is sorted by the most recent files first (toggle the up/down arrow)
4. Find the file, click "Restore" and the file will be returned to its folder

Other tools

Deck

Deck is UK Cloud's project management/Kanban tool. You can access it from the top of the screen (B). Documentation about how to use the tools can be found here.

Polls

This is a tool for creating simple polls. It can be accessed from the top yellow header (C).

Forms

Forms is a tool for creating questionnaires. It can be accessed from the top yellow header (D).

Forms can be filled in from anywhere, with results available on the Forms Tab in the UK Cloud.

You can link a form to an OnlyOffice spreadsheet - choose the .xlsx option and then save the spreadsheet in whichever group's Cloud folder you wish. The spreadsheet will update automatically whenever someone completes the linked form.

• Select Results [top right]
• Select Create Spreadsheet
• Create xlsx
• Save to the folder of your choice

Further information

Why don't we have personal storage space?

Everyone’s Cloud account has 0 bytes of storage in their personal folder. This is for security reasons – if everyone had personal space, there would be nothing to stop someone uploading illegal material to their (fake) account, then reporting it to the police so that they raid XR and shut down the servers.

Everyone has access to the read-only Library, and people in an XR group that has requested storage have full read-write access to their group’s storage (where we trust other members of the group would spot suspect files, and remove them).