Sharing

The Sharing page in a user's settings is the central place for everything sharing-related on an account: what others have shared with you, what you've shared with others, and any delegates who can act on your behalf. While individual folders can be shared from within each area of webmail (right-clicking a folder and choosing Share Folder), this page is where you see and manage it all in one spot. The page is separated into individual tabs:

• Shared With Me
• Shared With Others
• Delegation

Shared With Me

This tab displays all the items that have been shared with your user. This includes email folders and sub-folders, calendars, contact lists, tasks and notes. This tab displays the following:

• Shared By - The user sharing the item with you. This can be an individual user or, in the case of shared resources such as Conference Rooms or Equipment, the domain itself.
• Folder - The name of the folder that's been shared. This is, essentially, the name of the shared item. (E.g., Conference Room A)
• Type - The type of shared item: calendar, email folder, notes, etc.
• Attached - This indicates whether the item is actually attached to your user. Attaching is what makes a share appear in your webmail interface — an unattached share exists, but you won't see it in your folder or calendar lists until you attach it.
• Subfolders - This indicates whether the subfolders within the parent are also shared with you.
• Permissions - The permission level you have for the shared item. (E.g., Read-Only)

When someone shares an item with you, you receive a notification email and the item appears on this tab — but it is NOT displayed in your webmail interface until you attach it. To do that, either check the box next to the item and click the Attach button at the top of the content pane, or click the item to open its details and attach it from there. This gives you control over what appears in your interface: a share you don't need doesn't have to clutter your view.

Clicking on an item in the Shared With Me list opens the details of the item. You can see the name, who shared it and the permission for the item. In some cases, there are also customization options available. For example, on calendars and task folders you can adjust the color used for the shared items, and a shared item can only be renamed if you've been granted Owner access.

The Detach button removes an attached share from your view without affecting the share itself. For example, if your CEO's calendar was shared with you, but you need to show your calendar to someone — a client, possibly — you may want to temporarily detach the CEO's calendar from yours so no sensitive information is displayed. In this case, you'd select the CEO's calendar and click the Detach button. Then, once the prospective client leaves, you'd select that calendar and click the Attach button. The key here is that you've removed the item from your view, but the CEO hasn't stopped sharing. Therefore, the calendar is still shared with you; it's just been temporarily detached.

Shared With Others

This tab displays the items you have shared with others within your organization. It offers similar information as the Shared With Me tab, including:

• Folder - The name of the "folder" that's been shared. This is, essentially, the name of the shared item.
• Type - The type of shared item: calendar, email folder, notes, etc.
• Subfolders - This indicates whether the subfolders within the parent are also being shared.
• Permissions - The number of permission levels associated to the share. This is an indication of how many users and/or user groups the item has been shared with. For example, if an email folder is shared with 3 individual users, 3 would be displayed for the item as there are 3 separate shares of it.

Clicking on an item opens its options. This allows you to modify the share by adding additional users, changing permissions for existing users and/or user groups, etc. To revoke a share entirely, select it and use the Stop Sharing button at the top of the content pane — the item disappears from the recipients' interfaces automatically.

Creating a New Share

It's also possible to create a new shared item from the Shared With Others tab. Simply click the New button at the top of the content pane. This opens a New Shared Folder modal and offers the following options:

• Folder - The item you want to share. Everything you have available to be shared is listed in this dropdown: all calendars, all email folders, all address books, all notes and all tasks. (For email folders, a "Share all subfolders with these permissions" toggle is also available.)
• Users - This area allows you to share the item with one or more users, and each user you add to the share can have their own permission level. These are:
• None - This permission acts as a "negater" and is, therefore, only available for users. For example, let's say you have a user group set up for your Marketing Department. However, you don't want to share Notes with Henry because he ate your piece of cherry pie last week. You add Manage access for the Marketing Department user group, then add Henry's username under Users and set his access to "None". That way, you're sharing Notes with everyone in Marketing EXCEPT Henry as you've negated his permission.
• Availability - Used exclusively for calendars, this permission means that the user with this permission can see whether a person is available for scheduling purposes, but it doesn't allow for the viewing of a calendar or its appointments/events.
• Read-Only - This means that the user can only view the items in the share (calendar entries, contact lists, etc.); they have no control over editing entries, adding entries, etc. A read-only share would be good, say, for a colleague who needs access to a contact list, but who doesn't need to manage those contacts in any way.
• Manage - This access allows others to add, edit and/or delete any items within the share. (But, importantly, NOT the share itself.)
• Owner - This access allows others to rename and/or delete the specific folder that's being shared. Basically, they use whatever is being shared just as if it were their own.
• User Groups - This area allows you to share the item with groups of users that have been set up previously, including the built-in "Everyone" and "Administrator" groups. When sharing with a User Group, the same permission levels are available EXCEPT for None, as that is a user-only permission.

As you can see, the process for sharing contacts, calendars, tasks and even email folders is essentially the same and relatively simple: you select the item you want to share, add the users and/or user groups you want to share to, and set the permissions for each. Once you've saved your settings, the people you've shared with are notified and can attach the share so it appears in their own webmail. For more on how sharing works throughout SmarterMail, see the Sharing Overview page.

Delegation

One of the features of Microsoft Outlook (and a few other clients, such as eM Client) is the ability to set up "Delegation". Delegation is the process of allowing another user on your domain to access your user and its associated items (i.e., Calendar, Notes, etc.) and act "on behalf of" you, based on the permission level you set for them.

The benefit of this is that someone — an associate, an executive assistant, etc. — can help manage your schedule, reply to inquiries for you, manage tasks for you, etc. For especially busy individuals, having another person help manage your workload can be extremely beneficial. Delegation allows this. In addition, when actions are taken "on behalf of" someone — for example, sending a meeting invitation — that is noted on the item, even when viewed in the webmail client.

The process of setting up delegation is handled within the client itself, outside of SmarterMail's webmail. The Delegation tab simply shows you whom you've delegated access to, with each delegate's permission level for your Calendar, Tasks, Inbox, Contacts, and Notes, plus whether they can view items you've marked private. This tab also allows you to remove a delegate: select them and click Remove, and their access to your account ends immediately.