temporary shared folder

[firefighting]

I have a temporary shared folder which has become a dumping ground for students and staff. Does anyone know a way to display a warning when the folder is accessed that says the folder will be cleared on such a day? maybe a web page with a waring and a confirmation button. I can then read the file time stamp and delete (or just move it out) after a preset time.

[User3204]

No idea.

How about putting a quota on it, at about 10mb per person, large enough for a file or two, but they'd have to remove them for the next time.

We have the same problem, there is a "common" staff drive, that was initially a temporary storage, but is gets used to send files from/to staff/SLT etc.

We do have a similar drive for students:
a) there is a subjects folder and then a bunch of subject folders, this is where the staff put files for the students.
b) there is also a year07, year08, etc folders, that are only accessable by each specific yeargroup (I could do forms/classes, but there's far too much moving of people from class to class).


Do you have a VLE ?
I believe sharepoint would allow you to do this... but I don't know how.

[firefighting]

Thank you for replying. Yes, the size limit is a good idea. As it is a common folder, not sure how I can impose size limit per user.

We are just on VLE but operated by LEA so again maybe a rethink.
One though comes to mind is a script to monitor for new file placed in the folder which will open a text file with a warning. Problem is how do I send it to that particular user!

[SteveBentley]

Set permissions on the folder so it is readable by everybody, but only administrators have modify and create.

Make a new subfolder with permissions for everybody who needs to write data to the temporary area, and shift everything into there.

Place a READ THIS BEFORE SAVING ANYTHING HERE.txt file in that parent folder in which you outline your data cleaning policy for the share.

I'd be inclined to automate the clean-up rather than relying on you remembering/having time to do it periodically so that there can be no "but I've left stuff there for weeks before and it didn't get deleted" arguments when somebody loses something.

[firefighting]

What a great idea. Thank you

[daveyboy]

We have folders that are writable by year group (i.e. only yr 7 can see the yr7 folder etc, etc, with staff having full access to each year group.) and they are automatically deleted every night. (script).

I keep a rolling copy for 5 days.

Comes in handy for getting those pesky Jaffa Cakes, when the teacher forgot to copy some work out

[User3204]

If you're running Windows 2000/2003 server (and I assume 2008).
You can create user quotas per disk, per user. See Managing Disk Quotas in Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP This would appear to the user as a disk of 10mb (or whatever the quota is), we do this for the students homeshare.

The only issue you will have is if this disk is the same disk as the one where they store their homeshare, but if you don't want too much stored there, create another partition that's smaller anyway would be a good idea.

If you could work out the VB scripting you could probably get a script them sent a message to each user to tell them what files they have stored on the share, but you'd have to run this on a daily schedule, otherwise it would use up too much processor time.